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After WWII, something happened that would spell disaster for Hawai‘i’s
watersheds, agriculture, and native animals and plants. Feral pigs,
goats, sheep, and cattle that had previously been controlled in order
to protect watersheds, caught the attention of the tourist industry,
which started to promote trophy hunting and press government for a supporting
program. In the push to Americanize the islands in the years leading
up to statehood, mainland game managers visited. Their expertise did
not apply to managing invasive animals as game species. Mainland programs
including those of the USFWS involved restricting hunting to preserve
native species like elk (see
1950 USFWS press release here). In short order, hunting and tourism
interests got the best of watershed protection, and a government game
program was created that restricted hunting of landscape-modifying hoofed
animals (called ungulates) to increase the number of animals
available for sport shooting. The forest reserve fences were allowed
to fall, and ungulates have since increased far beyond previous numbers
and range.
For 60 years residents have paid an enormous price for this decision.
The USFWS no longer supports protecting invasive hoofed animals at the
expense of Hawai‘i’s environment,
but State government has not caught up. Though there is no evidence
that hunting restrictions of any kind are needed to prevent the eradication
of rapidly reproducing hoofed animals, restrictive hunting remains in
place. It seems that the reason for the existence of the State's game
program has been lost in the mists of time. Since hunters do not need
an official game program to hunt invasive species, and could perhaps
help reduce animal overpopulation if hunting were opened up, public
money could be better spent. It is time to modernize the State's game
program and eliminate policy that protects destructive animal overpopulations
at the expense of farms, watersheds, yards, and native Hawaiian plants
and animals.
Today:
Hawai‘i’s
Forest Reserves have become reservoirs for uncounted thousands of free-roaming
pigs, goats, sheep, and deer, which destroy the understory and impair
the forest's ability to filter and clean the fresh water supply.
As game mammal
populations are expanding and inflicting ever-greater damage on the
islands, Hawai‘i’s
agricultural producers are burdened with more crop losses, fencing and
control costs, and feces and disease organisms deposited in the soil,
water, and fresh produce such as lettuce and sprouts. At a 2010 legislative
hearing, the Hawai‘i
Farm Bureau testified that "something has to be done" about
this problem.
In
natural areas, native species are declining dramatically. A recent botanical
study concluded that more
than 50% of Hawaii's flora is at risk ("extinct, endangered, vulnerable,
or rare"). Free-roaming hoofed animals are a primary cause
of the decline of Hawai‘i’s
native plants and animals. Detailed
information about the harmful effects of these "extreme threat"
invasive hoofed animals can be found in the Scientific References link
at left.
These
are all untallied costs of a State program designed in the 1950s that
restricts hunting of large, resource-hungry invasive animals. Feral
pigs and goats are both on the world list of the "100
Worst Invasive Species." Sheep and deer have also proven to
be highly damaging to the island environment.
All
these animals are protected by the definition "game mammal"
in the Hawai‘i
Revised Statutes and in the Department of Land and Natural Resources'
administrative rules, which define "injurious wildlife" as
"any species or subspecies of animal except
game birds and game mammals which is known to be harmful to agriculture,
aquaculture, indigenous wildlife or plants, or constitute a nuisance
or health hazard..."
Texas also has
a feral pig problem. Texas law identifies feral pigs as nuisance wildlife
and allows unlimited hunting. See 3-minute video at this link: The
pig problem in Texas.
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Legislature:
Make the Required Policy
The
State of Hawai‘i
presently has no coherent public policy governing harmful, free-roaming
hoofed animals. They are protected as "game mammals"
at the same time the State's own scientists write reports detailing
the ways these "introduced ungulates" are destroying
irreplaceable resources. These contradictory treatments make it
impossible to craft a workable strategy to protect private property,
public lands and the irreplaceable native plants and animals that
are becoming extinct for lack of safe habitat.
DEREGULATE
Eliminate the 1950s-era rules that were based on recommendations
from mainland game managers who had no vested interest in watershed
protection. Why would anyone, from hunters to farmers, want bag
limits and seasons on feral pigs? There is no evidence that restricted
hunting is needed to prevent these animals from disappearing. There
is a great deal of evidence that controlling them is extremely difficult.
The State's managed game program should be limited to game birds,
and hunters should be able to shoot as many pigs, goats, deer, and
sheep as they can. Texas handles feral pigs this way. See
the Texas Parks and Wildlife Feral Hog page here.
Every
problem involving public land is difficult to solve. No matter what
the issue, there is likely to be at least a few people who will
fiercely oppose any attempt to change the status quo. This is certainly
true of animal management.Yet something has to change. Pigs, goats,
sheep and deer are large and highly destructive. They use a lot
of resources, and there are many thousands of them degrading public
and private land.
MONITOR.
Baseline and continuing animal censuses should be taken to see what
results from unrestricted hunting, for example, which areas benefit
the most. No matter how rigorous control efforts may be, it will
be many many years before residents would have to consider what
steps are appropriate to ensure future hunting opportunities. Animal
overpopulations will be with us for decades, no matter what.
COUNT
COSTS. Comprehensive studies are needed to illuminate how much
money free-roaming hoofed animals cost residents each year, itemizing
not only annual expenditures on animal control measures such as
fencing and trapping but also quantifying damage to private property
such as crops, golf courses and yards, and public assets including
parks, trails, natural areas and rare and endangered species.
A
better understanding of existing costs will illustrate the advantages
and savings to be had from animal control, and will allow more efficient
planning to reduce costs and damage. Scientists and managers familiar
with adaptive management can design a strategy to reduce animal
predation on crops, more effectively protect watersheds, test whether
commercial use of meat ultimately helps or hinders animal control,
and other considerations.
Action
is neeed NOW. Hawai‘i’s
unique natural heritage is being needlessly destroyed. Meanwhile
other countries
and states have developed and implemented stringent rules for
the management and control of harmful introduced game mammals.
- Other countries
and states control feral animals for human health reasons alone.
Island medical researchers are very worried about avian influenza,
in light of the combination of feral pigs and feral chickens common
in Hawai‘i’s
natural areas. See article, Pigs
Linked to Spanish Influenza Pandemic and detailed
threats and risks from feral pigs
(190kb pdf file) as outlined for the state of Oregon.
- Introduced
game mammals represent a reservoir of disease for both livestock
and humans, and impair the watershed's ability to function as a
fresh water filter. Feral pigs were implicated in the outbreak of
E. coli on the mainland in 2006. They prey on young animals
and eat rotting carcasses of their own species and other livestock.
They do not represent food security by being present "in the
mountains," as some say. It is extremely inefficient to feed
large numbers of people with wild animals, compared with captive-raised,
safely managed livestock.
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- Before the Polynesians
arrived, Hawai‘i
had no hoofed animals. The Polynesians brought small pigs that were
kept as livestock, not released into the forest for hunting. Modern-day
proponents of keeping feral pig numbers high for easy hunting sometimes
argue that Hawai‘i’s
first settlers let their pigs roam free. This has no bearing on today's
problems. There is also no evidence for it and it is highly unlikely,
since pigs are a scourge to agriculture. See also Giovas, 2006:
"Both
Polynesian oral tradition and ethnohistoric reports suggest that
organized extermination of domesticated animals was carried out
on a number of islands within ethnographic memory, including Anuta
in the Solomon Islands and Aitutaki in the Cook Islands (Kirch 2000b;
Kirch and Yen 1982; Luomala 1960a; Yen and Gordon 1973). These sources
recount how free-roaming mammalian domesticates were hunted down
by islanders and exterminated for uprooting crops and gardens (Ellis
1829; Oliver 1974). As Yen and Gordon report for Anuta, ‘‘The Anutans
themselves recall that in the recent past they imported a few pigs
from Tikopia, but quickly killed them off when the unpenned animals
began foraging in the Anutan gardens’’ (92)." (Giovas, Christina
M.: No Pig Atoll: Island Biogeography and the Extirpation of a Polynesian
Domesticate. Asian Perspectives, Volume 45, Number 1, Spring
2006, pp. 69-95)
- During the era
in which Captain Cook arrived in Hawai‘i
it was common for ships’ crews to release domestic animals on
the islands they visited, to multiply and provide a food source for
later visits.
- Cook and subsequent
ships brought goats, sheep, cattle, and European swine to Hawai‘i,
beginning in 1778.
- All these animals
thrived and began to permanently alter the island landscape, as grazing
animals do all over the world.
- Around 1900,
faced with massive watershed damage by feral mammals, the Hawai‘i
Territorial
Board of Agriculture and Forestry initiated an animal control program.
It included shooting, poisoning, bounties, and fencing a system of
Forest Reserves. In about 50 years, 170,000 feral pigs alone were
removed from the forests statewide.
"The numbers
of feral sheep and goats grazing on the ranges of the various islands
also created problems in the loss of habitat--the destruction of
cover and subsequent erosion of the soil. Today the goats, sheep,
and pigs are classed as game and are hunted as 'mainlanders' hunt
deer. Hunting, in some areas, has reduced this 'game' to such low
numbers that seasons must be imposed to insure future sport. The
Japanese, or 'axis,' deer--which were brought to Molakai [sic] Island
during the last century as a gift to the King--also offer possibilities
for transplanting to the other islands to add to hunting opportunities,
Mr. Rutherford* says. The Territory is now studying these acclimated
deer to determine if such transplanting operations are advisable."
*Chief of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Branch of Federal
Aid, who at the time of this press release 'had recently returned
from Hawaii, where he inspected the Territory's projects under the
Pittman-Robertson Federal Aid to Wildlife Restoration Act.'
It is odd that
"the destruction of cover and subsequent erosion of the soil"
is immediately dismissed with the phrase "seasons must be imposed
to insure future sport".
- Beginning in
the 1950s, additional game species were introduced. DOFAW's forerunner,
the Hawai‘i Division
of Fish and Game (HDFG), introduced mouflon to Kauai, Hawai‘i,
and Lana‘i.
Axis deer, previously limited to Moloka‘i,
were introduced to Maui, Lana‘i,
and O‘ahu.
With statehood in 1959, HDFG took over responsibility for free-roaming
hoofed animals from the Board of Agriculture and Forestry. HDFG and
DOFAW have always promoted sustained yield, with bag limits and hunting
seasons. Unfortunately public hunting cannot effectively control this
many animals over this much area.
- Since the 1950s,
there has been no effective plan to protect public land and private
property from the damage caused by pigs, goats, wild cattle, sheep,
and deer that wander freely over the islands. The State has failed
to draft effective policy to address large populations of free-roaming
ungulates on all land ownerships. Such planning and policy is not
within DOFAW's capability and cannot be left up to any single agency.
- In the meantime,
other states and other countries have pursued intensive research,
planning, and policy aimed at reducing the threat from introduced
hoofed animals.
List
of sources
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