Millions of years of evolution in isolation. Thousands of plant and animal species found nowhere else in the world. Introduced pigs, goats, deer and sheep roaming freely over public lands. More than 265 extinctions and counting.

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•	damage public and private property including crops, yards, golf courses, roadsides, and parks, inflicting enormous financial costs that no one takes responsibility for
•	damage trails and force hikers to walk through puddles and mud contaminated with urine and feces (especially common with feral pigs)
•	spread other invasive species such as strawberry guava
•	damage Hawaiian forests and streams, impairing the function of watersheds
•	contaminate the fresh water supply with disease-causing organisms
•	destroy native species and their habitat
•	prevent the recovery of rare and endangered species
•	increase rockfalls, mudslides, and reef siltation by accelerating erosion
•	cause vehicle collisions on the roads

THE WAY FORWARD

All limits on taking game mammals, such as seasons and bag limits, should be eliminated. What is the purpose of laws limiting the take of animals that are too numerous? Why should the public pay for enforcing such laws?

Deer, mouflon, and feral pigs, goats, and sheep should be legally designated as invasive pests, to provide legal clarity, make it easier to obtain funding for their control, and make it illegal for people to release or move such animals. It will take decades to dramatically reduce their numbers. There will be plenty of hunting for a long time to come.

The Governor's office should immediately convene a study group to determine how much money introduced game mammals are costing 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 property 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.

Without a carefully considered game mammal control policy, strategy and implementation, game mammal damage and control will continue to be an endless, limitless expense that devastates Hawai'i's natural heritage and bleeds the budget. Future opportunities to support the islands' people culturally and economically by experiencing and showcasing this unique natural heritage are declining every day. No progress will occur until this policy vacuum is adequately addressed.

The State of Hawai'i's leadership (governor, legislature, and land management agencies) continues to be negligent in failing to provide a coherent public policy governing harmful, free-roaming hoofed animals. This policy failure makes it impossible to protect public lands and the irreplaceable plants and animals that are becoming extinct for lack of safe habitat.

In the past, there was such a policy. From about 1900 to the early 1950s, the Territorial government implemented a rigorous animal control and fencing program that removed goats, sheep, cattle, and at least 170,000 pigs from island natural areas. That program ended with the development of a game program in the mid-1950s. The fences were allowed to fall down and pest animals proliferated throughout the islands, despite their well-known harmful effects.

Again Hawai'i lags behind to the detriment of its people and its future, allowing its unique natural heritage to be needlessly destroyed, while other countries and states have developed and implemented stringent rules for the management and control of introduced game mammals.

The current situation, with public agencies writing recovery plans for native species that call for removal of game mammals from the habitat while the same agencies fund hunting programs, trying to fence ubiquitous free-roaming animals out of countless areas while being unable to manage or monitor almost a million acres of largely inaccessible designated hunting area, is the most costly and least effective way to manage Hawai'i's precious public land. Much of the area designated for hunting is supposedly so named for the purposes of animal control. However, since much of it is remote and not frequented by hunters, effective animal control is not taking place. As Mr. Spock would inevitably conclude, "This is not logical." The most urgent need is for policymakers to abandon the protection of invasive game mammals so that Hawai'i's native plants and animals can be better defended.

NOTEWORTHY:

• 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.
• The islands' future food independence is at risk. Introduced game mammals represent a reservoir of disease for both livestock and humans and impair watershed function. 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 would like to believe. It is extremely inefficient to try to feed large numbers of people with wild animals, compared with captive-raised, safely managed livestock. Again, only a few benefit while the majority bears the burden of the environmental and financial cost. Furthermore, the animals' continuous damage to watersheds threatens the size and safety of the water supply.

• 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 and hunted as later animals were. (A few may dispute this, but most evidence indicates the Polynesian pig was a domestic animal, not a game animal. For more information, see P.Q. Tomich, 1986, Mammals in Hawai'i.)

• 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 were removed from the forests statewide.

• During these years, game managers from the mainland began to have a greater influence. Note this curious paragraph from an April 26, 1950 USFWS press release:

"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 Hawai'i, 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, introduced mouflon to Kauai, Hawai'i, and Lanai. Axis deer, previously limited to Molokai, were introduced to Maui, Lanai, and Oahu. With statehood in 1959, HDFG took over responsibility for free-roaming hoofed animals from the Board of Agriculture and Forestry. HDFG ended the policy of reducing animal populations to protect the land and water and instituted a policy of sustained yield, with bag limits and hunting seasons.

• 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.

• 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

DOFAW is the agency charged with protecting Hawai‘i's forests and watersheds:

DOFAW Policy B: Protect and enhance the condition of Hawai'i's unique native plant and animal species, and native ecosystems for their inherent value to Hawai'i's citizens and for their productive value to science, education, industry and the cultural enrichment of future generations and prevent species extinctions whenever possible. (Source: 2004 DLNR DOFAW report to State Legislature)

DOFAW also administers the State's game program. With almost no control over where game mammals go or how many there are, it is impossible for DOFAW to implement Policy B.

• For meaningful protection of watersheds and remaining native species to take place, the state must undertake comprehensive strategic planning and meaningful steps to control the number and range of game mammals. Only then can recovery of the land, water, plants, and animals that game animals have destroyed over past decades begin.
• Hunters would also benefit from the removal of bag limits and seasons.
• All residents can help effect change by insisting on action: implementation of an effective ungulate control plan. Please contact the DOFAW branch manager for your island and ask how residents can get a complete report on what their branch is doing to protect natural areas from game mammals. Hawai‘i is being changed from something rare and beautiful to something very different.

Position paper from the Hawaii Conservation Alliance on feral ungulates (hoofed animals). Alliance partners include UH, DOFAW, USDA, and Kamehameha Schools: HCA Home Page. See also:

Haleakala National Park fencing and USGS on Hawaii's natural history (pdf file)

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