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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All of Hawai‘i’s game mammals are introduced invasive species that:

•	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

WHICH WAY FORWARD?

Get Some 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 game mammals are destroying irreplaceable resources. This schizophrenic policy makes 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.

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

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.

Get What Policy?

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.

Two options likely to reduce the number of animals in the environment are:

(1) Deregulation. Reinstate the rules in place before WWII, when the Territorial Board of Agriculture encouraged people to shoot feral animals in order to protect the state's watersheds.Bag limits and seasons would be eliminated. The State's managed game program would be limited to game birds, and the mammals could be taken freely. This would allow hunters and shooters to take the initiative to protect watersheds and reduce the cost to the public. Texas handles feral hogs this way. See the Texas Parks and Wildlife Feral Hog page here.

(2) Another option, more expensive than deregulation but less expensive than doing nothing, would be to legally designate these species as "game mammals" only when inside a Game Management Area (GMA) intended for sustained-yield hunting. Outside such areas, the animals would be designated pest species or "injurious wildlife" that people could freely take with no limits.

Start Counting the Costs

Additionally, a comprehensive study is needed to illuminate how much money game mammals cost us 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.

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.

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 say. 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 (HDFG), 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. 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.

• 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

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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