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Seeing more snails than usual? Hawaiʻi’s warm climate, combined with recent rainy weather, creates the perfect conditions for snails to thrive, making them a more common sight across neighborhoods and businesses.

While many people see snails as harmless garden visitors, some species can damage landscaping, spread rapidly, and become difficult to manage. Here’s what Hawaiʻi property owners should know about the snails commonly found around the islands.

Why Are Snails So Active Right Now?

Snails thrive in damp, humid conditions. Rainfall keeps the ground moist, provides plenty of food sources, and allows them to travel without drying out. During wetter periods, you may notice snails:

• Crawling across sidewalks, patios, and driveways
• Feeding on flowers, vegetables, and ornamental plants
• Gathering under pots, rocks, mulch, and dense ground cover

Rain softens the ground, keeps snails from drying out, and creates conditions for feeding and reproducing. During wetter periods, populations can seem to increase almost overnight.

The same damp conditions that encourage snail activity can also increase activity from other moisture-loving pests, including slugs, cockroaches, centipedes, and mosquitoes. If you’ve noticed one pest becoming more active after heavy rain, there’s a good chance others are benefiting from the same conditions.

Common Snails Found in Hawaiʻi

Giant African Snail

One of the most concerning invasive snails found in Hawaiʻi is the Giant African Snail. Growing up to eight inches long, these snails are feed on many plant species, threatening gardens, landscaping, and agriculture.

What makes them especially challenging is how quickly they reproduce. A single Giant African Snail can lay hundreds of eggs several times throughout the year, allowing populations to grow rapidly when conditions are warm and wet.

Beyond damaging plants, Giant African Snails can also carry the parasite that causes rat lungworm disease. While people typically become infected by accidentally consuming infected snails, slugs, or contaminated produce—not simply by touching or seeing a snail—it’s still important to avoid handling them with bare hands and to thoroughly wash fresh fruits and vegetables from your garden.

Common Garden Snails

Smaller garden snails are a familiar sight throughout Hawaiʻi. While they may not cause the same level of damage as larger invasive species, they can still feed on young plants, flowers, herbs, and vegetables, especially when conditions are consistently wet.

Why Invasive Snails Matter

Beyond leaving behind slime trails, invasive snails can become a serious nuisance for both homeowners and businesses.

Large populations may:

• Damage landscaping and ornamental plants
• Feed on vegetable gardens
• Leave unsightly slime trails on walkways and entryways
• Reproduce quickly during wet weather
• Become difficult to control once established

How to Help Keep Snails Away

While no property is completely immune, a few simple maintenance practices can make your landscape much less inviting.

Reduce Excess Moisture

Avoid overwatering landscaping and repair leaking irrigation systems when possible. The less standing moisture available, the less attractive your property becomes to snails.

Remove Hiding Places

Snails love cool, protected spaces. Regularly remove piles of leaves, excess mulch, boards, unused pots, and other debris where they can hide during the day.

Maintain Your Landscape

Trim dense vegetation and ground cover to improve airflow and allow more sunlight to reach the soil. A drier landscape is less favorable for snail activity.

Check New Plants

Before bringing new plants home, inspect leaves, containers, and the surrounding soil for snails or eggs that could be introduced into your landscape.

Slow Moving, But Quick to Spread

They may not be the fastest pests you’ll encounter, but under the right conditions, snail populations can grow surprisingly quickly. While spotting an occasional snail after a rainy day is perfectly normal in Hawaiʻi, large numbers can become a nuisance for your landscape and outdoor spaces.

You can’t make your property completely immune to snails, but reducing excess moisture, maintaining your yard, and eliminating common hiding places can go a long way in making your landscape less inviting. A little preventative maintenance today can help keep snail activity under control tomorrow.

Whether you’re managing a restaurant, hotel, healthcare facility, office building, or commercial property, maintaining a clean facility involves much more than appearance.

Today’s businesses are expected to maintain high standards for cleanliness, sanitation, safety, and overall facility performance.

At Kilauea Pest Control, we’ve spent years helping Hawaiʻi businesses protect their facilities from pest-related issues. One thing we’ve consistently learned is that cleanliness and pest prevention go hand in hand.

That’s why we’re excited to announce our new partnership with P&G Pro, bringing together professional cleaning and sanitation solutions with commercial pest management services.

Clean Facilities Require More Than Cleaning

When people think about cleanliness, they often think about:

• Clean floors
• Sanitized surfaces
• Organized workspaces
• Well-maintained restrooms

While those are all important, maintaining a professional facility also involves:

• Proper waste management
• Drain maintenance
• Employee hygiene programs
• Moisture control
• Facility upkeep
• Ongoing pest prevention

The best facility programs recognize that all of these pieces work together.

Why Sanitation and Pest Prevention Are Connected

Many of the same conditions that impact cleanliness can also create opportunities for pest activity.

For example:

• Food residue can attract ants and cockroaches
• Drain buildup can contribute to drain fly issues
• Improper waste handling can attract rodents
• Standing water can create favorable conditions for pests

This doesn’t mean a facility isn’t clean. Even well-managed facilities face these challenges.

The goal is to identify and address issues early through proactive facility management.

Hawaiʻi’s Unique Challenges

Businesses in Hawaiʻi face year-round conditions that require ongoing attention.

Warm temperatures, humidity, rainfall, and constant visitor traffic can all impact facility cleanliness and pest pressures.

That’s why many businesses take a preventative approach rather than waiting for problems to arise.

Why Kilauea Partnered with P&G Pro

Over the years, we’ve found that conversations about pest management often lead to conversations about sanitation, facility maintenance, cleaning programs, drains, kitchens, and overall facility standards.

Simply put, businesses don’t think about these challenges separately.

They think about maintaining a clean, professional facility.

That’s why Kilauea Pest Control partnered with P&G Pro.

By combining local commercial pest management expertise with trusted professional cleaning and sanitation solutions, we’re helping Hawaiʻi businesses simplify facility operations and support higher standards across their properties.

Benefits of a Coordinated Facility Program

A coordinated approach can help businesses:

• Maintain cleaner facilities
• Support sanitation goals
• Reduce pest-conducive conditions
• Improve operational efficiency
• Simplify vendor management
• Support compliance efforts

Whether you’re operating a restaurant, hotel, healthcare facility, warehouse, office building, or multi-site property, cleanliness and pest prevention are often strongest when they work together.

Looking Ahead

Clean facilities don’t happen by accident.

They’re the result of strong systems, proactive maintenance, effective sanitation programs, and ongoing pest prevention.

That’s why Kilauea Pest Control and P&G Pro have partnered to help Hawaiʻi businesses take a more complete approach to facility care—combining two important pieces of facility management into one coordinated solution.

Mosquitoes have been worse lately.

Hawaii’s warm, humid climate already creates ideal conditions for mosquito activity year-round. But with the recent Kona lows, heavy rainfall, and long periods of saturation across the islands, mosquito populations have had even more opportunities to thrive.

After storms pass, standing water is often left behind in places many homeowners and property managers don’t immediately notice. Gutters, drains, plant trays, buckets, tarps, low spots in landscaping, clogged catch basins, and even small puddles can quickly become breeding grounds.

And it doesn’t take much. Mosquitoes can breed in surprisingly small amounts of water.

Why You’re Seeing More Mosquitoes Around Your Property

Recent weather patterns have created the perfect conditions for mosquito activity across Hawaii. Some of the most common conducive conditions we’ve been seeing include:

• Standing water after storms
• Overwatered landscaping
• Clogged drains and gutters
• Dense vegetation holding moisture
• Shaded areas with poor airflow
• Containers or equipment collecting rainwater
• Saturated soil around commercial properties

Even small amounts of standing water can lead to mosquito larvae developing around the property. 

For commercial properties especially, drainage issues and moisture buildup can create ongoing mosquito pressure if not addressed consistently.

Residential & Commercial Mosquito Solutions

At Kilauea Pest Control, we offer mosquito solutions for both residential and commercial properties throughout Hawaii.

For homeowners, we’re now offering a mosquito service bundle alongside our General Pest Control service. This helps homeowners stay on top of both common household pests and mosquito activity through regularly scheduled service visits.

For many residential properties, mosquito treatments can be integrated into existing pest control service appointments for a more streamlined approach.

For commercial properties, mosquito control often requires a more customized plan depending on drainage, landscaping, water retention, and overall property conditions. 

Small Changes Can Make a Big Difference

While professional mosquito treatment can help reduce mosquito activity, there are also steps property owners can take to help minimize conducive conditions between services:

• Empty standing water regularly
• Keep gutters and drains clear
• Trim overgrown vegetation
• Check tarps, planters, and outdoor containers
• Improve airflow in damp, shaded areas
• Monitor irrigation systems for oversaturation

In Hawaii’s climate, mosquitoes may never fully disappear, but reducing breeding opportunities can make a major difference around your home or business.