A bill that would dissolve the state Invasive Species Council to create an administrative body with greater authority to manage invasive species passed all but one committee in the state Legislature.
Senate Bill 2399 would restructure the Hawaii Invasive Species Council into the Invasive Species Authority, granting it greater authority and resources to carry out the state’s biosecurity plan.
One of the major changes the bill would cause is to establish the authority under the Department of Agriculture, rather than the Department of Land and Natural Resources, as the species council is currently structured, said Sen. Russell Ruderman, D-Puna, who co-sponsored the bill.
By moving to the Department of Agriculture, the authority would have a defined operating budget, unlike the council, which operates year-to-year on grant money.
“As an authority, it would have more — not to be redundant — authority,” said Springer Kaye, manager of the Big Island Invasive Species Committee.
Kaye said the invasive species council is frequently underfunded because it often receives less grant funding than it requests.
“That can be a problem, not knowing if you’ll be able work on the same species next year,” Kaye said. “You can have a three-year plan and get funding for the first two years and then you find out you don’t have funding in year three, and that’s two years of work wasted.”
An early draft of the bill would have allocated a $10 million annual operating budget for the authority — a significant improvement from the approximately $4 million budget under which the council previously operated. While the most recent draft of the bill amended that budget to an unspecified amount, Ruderman said he thought the $10 million figure was reasonable.
Kaye said the authority would allow for significantly more departmental overlap when developing action plans, and represents a “critical step” for the state’s biosecurity plan, which was established in 2017.
The biosecurity plan, a 10-year comprehensive strategy to improve the state’s control of invasive species, called for extensive cooperation between the Agriculture Department, the DLNR, the Department of Health and the University of Hawaii.
The bill passed all committees in both chambers of the state Legislature, save for the House Committee on Finance.
“All testimony has been in support of the bill,” Ruderman said. “I don’t think this is something anyone really has the motivation to try to kill.”
More than 100 pages of testimony from organizations, state agencies and private citizens were presented during various hearings as the bill progressed, all of which stressed the importance of managing the spread of invasive species in the state.
“Over the last 20 years on the Big Island, we have witnessed an onslaught of negative impacts to residential life, the agriculture industry and our economy due to harmful introduced species,” reads a statement from the Big Island Invasive Species Committee. “Children are stung at school and in their beds by little fire ants. Residents have endured serious disability due to the rat lungworm parasite. Homeowners have suffered millions of dollars in financial losses due to falling albizia. Kona coffee growers struggle to control coffee berry borer, even as a new introduction, the longhorn beetle, has begun to destroy cacao trees in Puna.
“In our island communities, invasive species are not an abstract concept, but a reality that impacts each of us on a daily basis,” the statement concludes.
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com
It’s good to see that the “invasive species” being attacked are clearly pests, like LFA, rat lungworm, coffee borers. Much different than killing tree frogs because of their chirp, or releasing scale insects to infest strawberry guava, or poisoning mangrove trees. The problem I have with the invasive species approach is that any non-native species can be targeted for being non-native. We all want to stop pests; but we don’t all want to kill non-native species simply because “they don’t belong here”. Unfortunately, the beneficial role of pest control has been twisted into a nativistic campaign to kill introduced species. This should not be about “invasive species”, for which the definition is too broad. It should be about pest species, which the DOA has been responsible for managing prior to the invasion biology fever that has now taken over the state’s environmental agenda.
I’m not sure that I have ever met anyone in the ecosystem management community that indiscriminately targets adventive species for eradication merely because of some arbitrary cutoff date (“post-Canoe Culture” introduction). Even on the mainland, no one has the resources to pursue all possible eradication programs, so you target the species that are presumed pestiferous and for which you hypothesize you have a reasonable chance of mitigation or eradication. This is a costs/benefits analysis based on available performance data for the organism, revised with whatever new data has accumulated since the critter’s arrival. If an introduced species provides valuable ecosystem services, promotes commercial production, has cultural significance, or has a neutral impact, it will not be prioritized for eradication.
I have had discussions with officials in the DOA and DLNR, and while they may not be currently pursuing eradication of a particular non-native species, they make it clear that ecosystem restoration requires the elimination of non-native species. So long as there is funding for restorations, there will be attacks on introduced species, even beneficial and benign ones, simply because they are not part of the prior ecosystem. Perhaps this is the problem. Restoration is promoted over pest control, making non-pest species problematic simply because they are non-native. Restoration is also a problem because of ecosystem change and cultural use pattern changes. But so long as the ecosystem management community is funded to restore ecosystems to pre-contact conditions, there will always be a potential eradication campaign — pending funding. That is why I oppose this new Authority. Until the ambiguities are worked out regarding what can be attacked and why, it is giving too much power to these environmentally destructive wars against non-native species.
While turning back the clock on Hawaiian ecosystems to the Canoe Culture period may be considered desirable by some land managers, everyone in the business knows that from a practical perspective, that horse left the barn centuries ago. It is economically infeasible, and would basically require scraping residential and commercial areas off the map. Many of the plants which folks have come to associate with Hawaii (coconut palms, plumeria, pineapples, orchids, Spanish moss) would have to be removed, and this is patently absurd on its face. They have become culturally important to the State as a whole, they provide an economic benefit, and their impact on extant ecosystems seems to be neutral at worst. I am sure that if there was infinite funding and infinite personnel with infinite time and no jurisdictional boundaries, someone might consider it – but such proposals would be roundly rejected. As you suggest: those ecosystems have changed, and no restoration will ever be able to perfectly recreate them. Parts that were once integral have now gone missing, and their (vital?) services may have been replaced by a novel interloper.
Ecosystem management is no different than running a zoo; it is merely imagined at a different scale, and we are the inhabitants of that zoo as well as the guests. We factor into the greater equation that asks if we can maintain what are patchy museum exhibits in proximity to other influences. Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I clear a state park of all rats and there is a city nearby full of rats, population pressures alone will encourage some to migrate to the nearby forest. While human beings may respect jurisdictional boundaries, the critters never do. Everyone working in the field knows this, although they sometimes wish otherwise.
Do not despair! Your voice and your vote would matter in these discussions, and I encourage you to continue expressing your opinions to the appropriate management agencies. Just understand that you are probably not the only voice in this conversation, and may find decisions going against your opinions. Elected policymakers will make their final decisions based on the scientific evidence and advice presented to them by the Authority, the cultural concerns presented by active constituencies (could be you!), and the commercial concerns presented to them by relevant industries.
Actually… in regard to your concerns about eradicating strawberry guava? While it may not be problematic in your neighborhood, it can form dense monocultural thickets in the mountains, shading out other plant species that might otherwise be more prevalent. Further, strawberry guava is an excellent host for Ceratitis capitata, the Mediterranean fruit fly. This pest is one of the more aggressive tephritid fruit flies, and its establishment here on the feral strawberry guava is one of the major reasons that most Hawaiian agriculture cannot be exported out of the state to either the mainland or most foreign countries without some aggressive form of treatment.
My concern is that the method of control should not be a biocontrol agent that can also attack useful and desired strawberry guava on private property. Past government efforts with T. ovatus as a biocontrol agent received much public opposition. The ends do not justify the means.
Look, I am sorry that you personally like your strawberry guava, but the impact of strawberry guava on Hawaii’s mountain ecosystems and commercial agriculture is indisputable and significant. Once you get up past a certain altitude and hit the right temperature and humidity conditions, Psidium cattleyanum is about the only plant life you will see. Aside from their terrific growth rate and heavy seed-load, perfect for outcompeting other plants, their roots secrete compounds detrimental to the growth of other species of plant. While yes, it does provide fruit as an ecosystem service supporting Hawaii’s native birds, it is a better resource for Hawaii’s non-native birds such as South American parrots whose beaks are better-adapted to consuming the fruit, as they co-evolved with the guava. It produces so much fruit that it supports populations of feral hog, who then root about nearby, further disturbing established Hawaiian plant communities, spreading guava seed in their feces, and ensuring guava monocultural dominance. Last and not least, while it provides some resources to indigenous drosophilid flies, it is an excellent medfly host, and it is harder to find a guava that hasn’t been hit with maggots than one without. These are the maggots that render pretty much all pulpy Hawaiian fruit unsaleable on the global market without some form of aggressive treatment.
Plants are aggressive killing machines out to dominate their ecological niche against all competitors. If you are keeping a strawberry guava, and it is not from a sterile seedless variety or maintained in a secure greenhouse, then you are behaving exactly like a pet-owner who refuses to spay or neuter their dog or cat and who then refuses to take responsibility for any feral kittens or puppies released out into the world. I know it is hard to hear, but you are part of the problem. With every seed carried in the digestive tract of a bird from your backyard to the forest, you are complicit in the ongoing destruction of Hawaiian mountain ecosystems and the gutting of Hawaiian agricultural industry for any jobs associated with the production of tropical fruit.
The idea that “any non-native species can be targeted for being non-native” is utter nonsense. There is a legal definition for invasive species, as designated federally by Executive Order, which states that the species must be non-native AND ALSO must cause harm to the environment, economy, or human health. There is so little money to fight invasive species in Hawaii – HDOA and DLNR don’t have the money to fight most of them. They concentrate the little funding received on only the very worst ones. The idea that they have enough money to run around flinging money at whatever species they don’t particularly care for is just silly.
I wish you were right, Holly. The problem is that managers who are charged with habitat restoration consider non-native species an implicit threat to native ecosystems. They take space and they potentially compete with native species. The EO you referred to is being interpreted to mean that the existence of aline species in a native habitat is implicitly an environmental harm. They have zero tolerance. The only thing holding them back is funding.
What should a particular species do to apply to become a new ‘native’ species here? Or doing this is not allowed (then maybe one should build a wall around Hawaii)?