Pasture or Trees? Graziers, Planters Pulled Territorial Government in Different Directions

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In 1905, the government of Hawai`i began the process of setting aside forested areas of the islands as reserves, to be protected for their watershed value. By that time, hundreds of thousands of acres of the islands’ forests had already been reduced to stands of dead and dying trees.

Visiting the ranch of Dr. James Raymond at Ulupalakua, Maui, territorial entomologist Jacob Kotinsky wrote: “Along the road to this place, one could not help being pained by the sight of thousands of ghosts of what were once elegant native trees.”

A water engineer for the plantations, M.M. O’Shaughnessy, had experienced much the same grief traveling in the north of Hawai`i island five years earlier. “In Hamakua I rode six miles through a dead forest on the north slope of Mauna Kea. All the underbrush was destroyed and the trees were nearly all dead or decaying… The work of destruction was still going on and what between the plantations on one side and the cattle on the other, except some restraint is exercised in the destruction I have fears for the future of the island.”

The pain of these two men on seeing the forests destroyed was not universally shared. Where they saw loss, others leaped to take advantage of an opportunity to salvage wood for fuel, posts, furniture, and cabinetry. The same year of Kotkinsky’s tour of Maui, applications to use dead timber were made to the Commission on Public Lands by Parker Ranch, which sought to remove 1,500 dead `ohi`a trees from Pu`uanahulu in March and 1,500 more in April. In May, one Beni Amina requested leave to cut 2,250 mamane, `ohi`a, `aiea and a variety of other woods, including ahakea and lama; later in the same month, he sought permission to “clear cords of any suitable wood for home use (fuel) personal use, and poi boards.”

And so it went over the next few years. Dozens of requests, some from the famous still, some from the famous then, and others from people who probably were never known to any but their immediate circle of families and friends, all seeking the same thing: the right to take dead snags by the tens of thousands from lands that were once densely forested with “elegant native trees.”

And all liberally granted.

* * *
Ghost Makers

By what agency had the forested slopes of the islands been reduced to this? A century ago, when the ghosts of forests past were still so visible, those who were asking the question were almost all of one mind as to the answer: Cattle.

Early Polynesian settlers had cleared lowland areas on their arrival, but upland areas were by and large untouched until the arrival of the first European ships. Destruction of native forests began then with a vengeance, in a process that continues to this day. The sandalwood trade may have been the first deliberate attack on the forest, but it was self-limiting: once the sandalwood trees had been reduced to the point they were all but impossible to find, trade in that commodity simply ended.

Far more insidious and lasting was the attack by the hooved creatures unknown in the islands before Western contact. Allowed free run of the hills and forests, wild cattle and goats were for much of the 19th century regarded as a source of ready revenue for the kingdom, requiring no care or investment. Licenses to kill the wild herds were granted in return for a share of the profits from sales of hides, tallow (used as a lubricant and for candles and soap), bones and horn. (Use of the animal for meat was rare, except by the hunters and their families. The wild animals were so thin, the price of preserved beef so low, and the effort of processing the meat so great, that after an animal was skinned, the whole carcass was dumped into the rendering vat.)

* * *
From Kine to Cane

When whaling vessels began to visit the islands regularly in the 18th century, their demand for beef spurred establishment of the islands’ first ranches. And the kingdom realized an opportunity to see revenues flow from domesticated as well as wild stock. Cattle captured from the wild herds were pastured on land owned by the king or chiefs, with rent usually payable in the form of a share of the annual increase of the herd.

After the mahele of 1848, which broadened ownership of the land, ranching operations took over more and more areas, including large tracts clad with native trees. Some of the ranches were on lands privately owned, but far and away the greater part of pasture acreage was owned by the king or the government, whose Commission on Crown Lands began issuing leases in the late 1850s. Land sales resulting from the mahele had brought in much less revenue than the kingdom had expected, and the prudent decision was made to retain title and lease what lands remained rather than sell them.

Most of the leases were for business and house lots in Honolulu. Ranching operations held relatively few leases. In terms of the area of land leased, however, they occupied huge tracts of crown land.

The largest single lease appears to have been that of the entire ahupua`a (land division) of Kapapala in Ka`u, awarded in 1887 to the Hawaiian Agricultural Company. No survey had been done to verify acreage, but in 1903 its size was estimated as 172,780 acres, all classed by the government as grazing land. Rent was $1,200 per year.

Another large ranching operation, the Humu`ula Sheep Station Company, controlled two leases that together came to 238,700 acres, most of it on the slopes of Mauna Kea. For this, it paid $1,310 a year. On Hawai`i alone, 21 leases, encumbering 647,600 acres of grazing land, had been leased by 1903 to just a dozen different companies. The total annual rent for Hawai`i island pasture lands barely totaled $7,000 – roughly a penny an acre.

At the time of the earliest post-mahele leases, grazing was not the only commercial enterprise wanting use of crown lands, but it was the most well organized and politically influential. But soon, the claims of grazing interests to the best lands gave way to those of sugar planters. An acre of land in cane could generate many times more revenue than one used only for pasture. To use Hawai`i island as an example again, in 1903 some 237,000 acres had been leased out for coffee and cane production, from which the government realized more than $35,000 a year in rent. An acre in cane cultivation, in other words, yielded for the government on average 14 times what an acre of grazing land brought in.

The rivalry between planters and ranchers was over more than land. In fact, with hundreds of thousands of acres of marginal lands whose “highest and best use” was thought to lie in their ability to support livestock, competition over land itself was hardly an issue. The most heated battles were fought over the forested uplands. Viewed by ranchers as an extension of their range, and jealously eyed by planters as the source of the water that was vital to their crop, forests became the rope in a tug of war between the two interests that lasted more than half a century.

As the planters gained economic ascendancy, their interests in having stable markets, sources of labor, and water supplies came to dominate governmental affairs. Probably the most famous fruit of the planters’ efforts was the signing in 1876 of the Reciprocity Treaty with the United States, which removed import duties on Hawaiian sugar and eventually gave the U.S. Navy the exclusive use of Pearl Harbor.

Less well known but surely of equal importance to the growers was a law passed that same year by the Legislature “for the protection and preservation of woods and forests.” The act authorized the minister of interior to “set apart and cause to be protected from damage by trespass of animals or otherwise, such woods and forest lands, the property of Government, as may in his opinion be best suited for the protection of water sources, and the supply of timber and fruit trees, cabinet woods, and valuable shrubbery.” A “competent person” was to be appointed as superintendent of woods and forests to enforce rules needed to protect forest lands and keeping them in good condition. The law contained two other far-reaching provisions as well: one authorized the minister of interior to “secure from the Commissioners of Crown Lands” public forests, while the next authorized what amounted to the condemnation of private forest land.

By the time that law was passed, however, much of Hawai`i’s forested uplands had already been destroyed.

* * *
Early Warnings

Around the middle of the 19th century, alarms sounded from a variety of sources over the effects of cattle on Hawai`i’s lands and forests. In 1856, Abraham Fornander, editor of the Sandwich Islands’ Monthly Magazine, argued that the very climate of Waimea had been altered by cattle, which had destroyed the “thick wood” that, as recently as 1825, had stretched across the North Hawai`i plain. “The clearing of the land has been almost entirely effected by cattle…. At this moment they swarm in the thick jungle that covers the windward or eastern slope toward Hamakua. They are now gradually destroying this, and thousands of old dead trees both standing and lying prostrate form the present boundary of these woods and exhibit the mode in which the destruction is effected; for whilst the old trees die of age, no young ones are seen taking their places, as during the last 30 or 40 years, the cattle have eaten or trodden them down.”
An even direr warning was sounded by William Hillebrand, surgeon at Queen’s Hospital and one of the pioneers in Hawai`i botany (his Nu`uanu estate later became Foster Gardens). “Of all the destroying influences man brings to bear upon nature,” Hillebrand said in an address July 1856 to the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society, “cattle is the worst…

“The small area of our islands is too valuable to be devoted to cattle-rearing. Allow them to multiply for all the legitimate purposes of dairy, home consumption, and supply to the shipping. But what goes beyond is of evil. If we rear them for the sake of their hides and tallow, I imagine the expense of producing these is too great. We forfeit by it the vitality of our soil. It is even questionable, if by fostering an export of cured or dried meat, we promote our true interests. The multiplication not only, but the existence of wild cattle and goats ought to be set a stop to.”

On February 25, 1858, the Pacific Commercial Advertiser published an overview of the state of the islands. On Hawai`i, the author wrote, “on the sides of Mauna Kea, at an elevation of from 6,000 to 11,000 feet, roam large herds of wild cattle.” The Waimea plain “was formerly covered with a forest of kukui and `ohi`a trees, but the rapid increase of cattle there within the last thirty years has resulted in the utter destruction of the forest and a consequent change of climate. Old residents speak of the climate of Waimea as having been moist and salubrious, whereas at present it is dry … and exposed to the full force of the cold trade wind.”

On Maui’s isthmus of Waikapu, the report continued, “since the goats and cattle have been allowed to run there, they have destroyed the vines and bushes which served to confine the sand on the windward side.”

In 1864, the Pacific Commercial Advertiser editorialized forcefully on the need to protect forests. “It is noticed by old residents that in some parts of these lands, severe droughts are much more frequent of late years than in former times… There are many remains of old water courses and signs of cultivation in irrigation in places where now no water could be procured to run in those old auwais, were they to be put in repair again. In ‘old times’ there were no herds of wild or tame cattle and flocks of goats roaming the woodlands and hilltops to break down, eat, and otherwise destroy the young wood spring up from seed or root. From these causes and from the constant cutting down of young trees for fuel and firewood, the streams on this island have sensibly decreased in volume, even during the time of our older inhabitants.”

Nor were the planters blameless: “The amount of wood used and destroyed by some single sugar plantations is astonishing,” the editorial continued, “and will strip a large forest in a few years, and this fact ought to lead the proprietors of those plantations, and everybody in their vicinity, to the adoption of measures for economizing and protecting the living trees and for planting seeds of trees on hillsides and other places not cultivated. The woodland might be fenced so as to keep out cattle and … the goats could be hunted out and killed off.”

Whether the climate in these locations had actually changed is impossible to determine. Still, some of the effects of storms noted at that time were probably greater as a result of diminished forest cover. For example, in 1858, a flood devastated Waikapu and Ukumehame on Maui: “The track where the torrent flowed was a lively scene for a number of days,” reported the Pacific Commercial Advertiser, with “crowds of carts and drivers, timber cutters and kalo diggers, pack oxen and pack horses all gathering and bearing away the spoils. It is said the destruction at Ukumehame is even greater than at Waikapu, the kalo lands having been so completely washed away that the inhabitants will be obliged to remove to some more favored neighborhood.”

Again and again, the newspaper railed against the destruction of the forests. In 1866, it noted that “only within the last ten years [have] the Nu`uanu and Pauoa streams … ever been seen dry at any season of the year,” a fact it attributed to cattle roaming unrestrained along stream banks. That year saw devastating drought hit the islands and destructive blazes in Kalihi, Nu`uanu, and Pauoa valleys. Water shortages were common on O`ahu, the newspaper reported, adding: “The question as to the cause of all this may be answered in four words – the waste of forests.” As if to underscore the point, rainfall statistics, collected by G.P. Judd, were published January 26, 1867; in 1865, Honolulu had received just 38.90 inches of rain, compared to 55.25 in 1856 and 73.99 in 1848.

* * *
A Push to Preserve

On April 1, 1865, the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society and the Planters’ Society merged. The former, under the leadership of Hillebrand, had been concerned largely with finding new varieties of plants and animals to bring to the islands. The latter represented mainly sugar growers.

At the first meeting of the combined groups, Hillebrand was authorized to spend $500 on a mission to China and the East Indies to collect “seeds, shrubs, plants and animals, suited to [Hawai`i’s] climate and soil.” On the same mission, Hillebrand, by now commissioner of immigration, was to procure workers for the plantations.

Obtaining labor was to become one of the planters’ chief worries over the next half-century. By 1882, the Planters’ Society had changed its name to the Planters’ Labor and Supply Company (in 1895 to become the Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association) and had begun publication of The Planters’ Monthly.

Labor and water and favorable trade status were the preoccupations of the planters, to judge by their journal. In the first few years, the PLSC included ranchers and published articles on the best types of pasture grass for the islands. Yet the group as a whole was not sympathetic to ranching interests. In the very first volume of the Monthly, the group’s Committee on Livestock expressed its opinion “that cattle, goats, sheep and hogs should be the most stringent laws be confined to enclosed pastures, thus removing a scourge, from which all alike, planters, stock owners, and lumbermen, are suffering, in that our forests are being slowly but surely destroyed, ruining our water supplies, drying our pastures and obliging us to import coal at heavy cost when we have ample space of unoccupied land to raise more than enough firewood for all our wants.” Committee members urged the company to push for laws to “prevent the wholesale destruction of our forests by loose stock … and compel land and stock owners alike to conserve portions of land for forest purposes, allowing each stock owner to have no more than one animal to each acre of fair pasture land held by him.”

A year later, Charles Reed Bishop was chairman of the company’s Committee on Forestry. In 1884, Reed surveyed members of the company as to the “extent of the changes that have taken place in the forests, springs, streams and climate” in the last 30 years. From Kohala, Edward Bond reported the complete disappearance of “fern lands” that once occupied the western portion of the highlands … and were very valuable as reservoirs for the slopes below.” Droughts were rare. “I do not recall any drought of serious inconvenience until since the denudation of these lands by cattle. Long since, this wide stretch of lands referred to has been as bare as the street, save in the matter of short grasses, and hence the droughts which are now serious, and looked for annually as a matter of course.” Bond was not hopeful that laws to encourage tree planting would help, “so long as the rapid destruction of those trees now growing is suffered to go on unchecked. And it is equally evident that in seeking a solution for this delicate and difficult problem that private rights should be expected to give way to public necessity, so far as the general good may demand.”

From Wailuku, E. Bailey wrote: “Flocks of goats in [Makawao] and the neighboring district of Kula have done immense damage… Every goat skin sold has probably cost the country five dollars or so.”

J.M. Lydgate of Laupahoehoe responded that “cattle and goats” were “much more destructive to the forests than any other agencies…. [C]attle kill and eat out all the young trees and undergrowth and continue to do so until the country is denuded of trees. The Kohala mountain, e.g., on the leeward side is being stripped to the very summit… The koa, on the windward slopes of Hawai`i, save, perhaps, in the Hilo jungles, is doomed.”

* * *
A First Try

Increasingly, the planters of Hawai`i turned their attention to developments in the United States. In December 1885, The Planters’ Monthly reported extensively on the annual meeting of the National Forestry Congress. Among the “important conclusions already accepted in the science of forestry,” it reported, were the moderating effects of forests on climate and temperature, their influence on water supply, their holding of soils, and their tendency “to preserve the healthfulness of a country or district.” Among the resolutions the congress adopted was one calling for state governors “to urge upon the legislatures the importance of the preservation of forests and the cultivation of trees.”

Year after year, the sugar planters pressed for legislation in Hawai`i that would do just that. In 1892, their efforts were rewarded with passage of a law that established a Bureau of Agriculture and Forestry, whose president was the minister of interior.

Three years later, the commissioner of agriculture and forestry, Joseph Marsden (at the time, also chairman of the planters’ Committee on Forestry), proposed to the minister of interior what he hoped would become the islands’ first forest reserve. “All the planters [in Hamakua] signed a letter in which they agreed to bear all the expense of building a fence through the district of Hamakua, which would preserve from further destruction a tract of country over three miles wide by twenty miles in length, provided arrangements were made to devote the land within the line … to the exclusive purpose of maintaining a permanent forest.”

Parker Ranch, however, controlled much of the forest land, either through outright ownership or long-term lease, and the ranch’s trustees objected that the fence “would cut their cattle off from the only available water supply in dry times.” Planters countered the objection by proposing that the ranch bear the cost of fencing around the gulches, thus allowing cattle access to the water; ranch trustees again objected, telling Marsden and the planters that the ranch’s financial affairs “are in such a condition that they are not justified in making any outlay for the purpose mentioned.”

“For two years in succession,” Marsden wrote, “the districts of Hamakua and Kohala have suffered from severe and protracted droughts.” Water supplies had diminished to such an extent “that water for animals and domestic use was most difficult to procure, and in some instances water had to be taken from Honolulu in barrels.” Commissioners and residents in the affected districts alike put the cause of the problem “to the unrestricted roaming of cattle in the forests until tens of thousands of acres of land, which were formerly a dense forest, are now but little better than a barren desert, useless alike to the grazier and the agriculturist.” Marsden urged the minister of interior to “take the matter in hand,” and, under authority of the 1876 act to protect woods and forests, “set apart a sufficient area of the upper lands of Hamakua and Kohala for the purpose of maintaining a forest.”

The Act of 1876 came and went, leaving behind not a trace of a public forest reserve by the time it was superceded in 1903. It was not, however, for want of interest. In 1900, President Sanford B. Dole proposed setting aside land at Pu`uanahulu as a forest reserve. At the time, the area was under lease to Eben Low Robert Hind, Jr., and, according to Dole’s report to the Board of Agriculture and Forestry at one of its earliest meetings in 1903, the land was “full of sheep … about 2,000 or 3,000.”

“The injury to the forest is very perceptible,” minutes of the meeting show Dole as saying. “These sheep have completely destroyed the underbrush and the dust is as fine as flour.” Dole then left it to the new board to deal with Pu`uanahulu and the adjoining district of Pu`uwa`awa`a in North Kona.

Private plantations did not wait for the government before acting to protected forested areas under their control. By about 1900, Lihu`e Plantation on Kaua`i had fenced off some 10,000 acres, which it proceed to manage as a reserve by planting new stands of trees and removing livestock. Pahala Plantation in Ka`u, Hawai`i, fenced off about 50,000 acres. Bishop Estate set aside lands on five separate tracts on O`ahu and Hawai`i, totaling about 50,000 acres. H.P. Baldwin on Maui had fenced in and driven stock out of several thousand acres at Ha`iku and by 1900, had planted or distributed some 200,000 trees, mostly eucalyptus, ironwood, and silk oak.

So great was the enthusiasm for forest reserves in the private sector that, in 1899, Haleakala Ranch drove its stock out of forested lands on Haleakala and, according to David Haughs, chief forester for the Territory of Hawai`i, “offered to transfer the same to the government as a forest reserve.” Haughs went on to say he was “not clear as to the conditions … made in regard to the transfer, but I am informed that the Government refused to accept it.”

* * *
An Open Range

Parker Ranch was not alone in balking at fences, but it may have been the most forceful in its arguments against them. In the second half of the 18th century, wild cattle made up a large part – indeed, probably the greatest part – of the ranch’s income. John Parker II, writes Bud Wellmon, “was most interested in increasing the ranch’s beef cattle, and he took great pleasure in watching the thousands of cows and calves that carried his brand on the Waimea plains. When it came time to choose cattle for market, he never took these animals. Instead, he and his men rounded up unbranded cattle and drove them to the slaughter house in the village or to an awaiting ship at Kawaihae… Hides and tallow, not beef, were what brought money, and the quantity of one’s livestock was more important than quality.”1

John Parker II and his brother, Sam, opposed fencing, Wellmon writes, and consented to it only when “a fence was necessary to keep the ranch’s cattle” off a neighboring rancher’s land.

Much of the land occupied by Parker Ranch, as well as other ranches, was leased rather than owned outright. This, writes Wellmon, “was one of the reasons why the trustees hesitated to invest money” in projects such as fencing. “Any extensive improvement completed on parts of the ranch would, the trustees knew, revert to the government when the leaseholds ended.”

And there was another reason: forests were more than sites where watering holes might be found, otherwise Parker Ranch should not have objected to the planters’ fencing proposition. They were also rich – much richer than pasture lands – in the tender young shoots on which cattle love to browse.

In later years, A.W. Carter, manager of Parker Ranch, admitted as much when he described how, during the drought of 1932, he had allowed “a large number of cattle” from Kahua Ranch “into a private forest reserve which is owned by us.”

And by no means was Parker Ranch alone. The annual reports of the Board of Agriculture and Forestry contain repeated accounts of branded cattle in the forest reserves, especially during times of drought. And the practice continues to the present.

* * *
Lost Opportunities

The dispute over who should benefit from the use of government lands manifested itself at the agency level in conflict between the territorial Board of Agriculture and Forestry and the territorial Commission on Public Lands, successor to the Commission on Crown Lands. The former was generally more sympathetic to sugar planters, who had lobbied for the establishment of such an agency for years, while the latter was more inclined to heed the interests of ranchers.

Under the 1903 forest reserve law, no government land under lease for more than two years could be included in a forest reserve. This provision, according to Lorrin A. Thurston, chairman of the planters’ Committee on Forestry, was placed in the law on the theory that, “as the reservation could not go into effect until after the lease had expired, it would make little difference whether the reservation were made now or at some time in the future when the lease had expired.”

But that is not quite how things worked out. The area of Hamakua forest that territorial forester Ralph Hosmer identified as the top priority for protection was not acted upon because of government leases, and although in theory the Public Lands Commission was to seek the advice of the Board of Agriculture and Forestry before re-leasing these lands, in practice it did not. The result was described by Hosmer in his 1908 report on “The Forest Situation in Hamakua:”

“For the past twenty years the forest situation in Hamakua … has received marked attention. Report after report has been submitted, with recommendations numerous and varied. The agitation has resulted in the setting apart and maintenance of private forest reserves of considerable areas of private land, but so far as a general reserve, proclaimed by the government, is concerned, nothing has been done. On the contrary, much forest land has been opened up for homesteads, while other areas formerly under a dense forest cover have come to be considered as grazing land.” Two of the largest parcels, at Kamoku and Nienie, had been leased out to Parker Ranch as late as 1907, despite the Public Lands Commission having been made fully aware of the desire of the Board of Agriculture and Forestry to put them into forest reserves (and despite the fact that one of the members of the Board of Agriculture and Forestry was A.W. Carter, manager of Parker Ranch). Hosmer was grim in his assessment of the future prospects of the land to be set aside and managed for forestry purposes. “I would put on record that it is my belief that had such action been taken twenty or even ten years ago, the government would then have been justified in reserving a block of forest across Hamakua… The forest, though in part open, was then in such condition that had it been properly protected it would have again speedily closed in…. To have made this reserve would, in a word, have been the conservative thing to do, for a forest can always been opened up, whereas often it cannot be replaced…. Unfortunately, on the government lands in Hamakua it is now in most cases too late to take any steps that would be effective.” (Eventually the Hamakua Forest Reserve was set aside, but by the time that occurred, in 1928, it consisted of just 11,000 acres scattered over five sections.)

Another early conflict between ranchers and foresters occurred when the Board of Agriculture and Forestry attempted to set aside government lands at Honuala, on the western slope of Hualalai. “Next to the Bishop Estate land of Keauhou it contains the best stand of large-sized Koa that I have seen anywhere in the Territory; certainly the best on government land,” Hosmer wrote in his recommendation to the board. Despite the interest in the area as a forest reserve, the Public Lands Commission encumbered it with a lease to Frank Gomes and J.G. Henriques. In the end, the territory was able to set aside about 1,300 acres, but had to pick up the cost of fencing.

* * *
Forest Foes

Despite the problems, the Board of Agriculture and Forestry, under the leadership of Hosmer and, after 1913, C.S. Judd made remarkable strides in setting aside large areas of government and private lands as forest reserves. By 1937, 1,027,299 acres – roughly a quarter of the entire land mass in the islands — had been included in 64 reserves. Of that, 65 percent, or 670,527 acres, was land owned by the government; the remainder was in private hands. Eventually, more than 1.2 million acres would be included in the territorial forest reserves.

In the early decades of the reserve system, each year saw miles of stock-proof fence being built or repaired. There was no question among the early foresters that cattle and other livestock posed if not the only danger to the forest, at least the greatest one. In 1918, Judd described grazing as “most detrimental to native forests.” “The continued grazing of cattle today in the native forest for the pecuniary benefit of a few to the detriment of the future welfare of the chief industry of the islands and of the community is very short-sighted. If this one element of damage were removed once and forever, a great deal will have been accomplished for forest protection in Hawai`i…. With the cattle excluded from the forest once and for all by proper stock-proof fences, appropriate steps could then be taken toward getting the forest back into a satisfactory normal condition for water conservation.”

To drive out the animals, the Board of Agriculture and Forestry hired hunters, sponsored drives, attempted poisoning and set traps. Routinely, hundreds of animals were taken from forest reserves each year. What is probably the largest single removals occurred June 26 and 27, 1922, when 176 Boy Scouts from the Big Island, accompanied by 14 troop leaders, and 35 cowboys and volunteers, drove more than 7,000 wild goats from lands at Pu`uwa`awa`a and Pu`uanahulu onto a spit of sand at Kiholo Bay, where the animals were slaughtered. In 1931, Judd reported, 25,234 “destructive wild animals” were eradicated from areas within and near forest reserves, with goats accounting for about half the total (pigs came in second, sheep third, and cattle trailed in fourth-place). Much of the carnage was the work of one Otto Breithaupt, a hunter “hired specially for this work,” Judd wrote. He alone shot 3,811 goats and 295 wild pigs in 19 months in the South Kona area, “and incidentally wore out the barrels of two rifles,” Judd added.

One continuing problem was poor repair of fence lines that ranchers holding government leases were required to maintain as a condition of their leases. Year after year, Judd would write to the Commission on Public Lands, noting all the instances that had come to his attention of downed fences or fences in poor repair that had allowed cattle to enter forest reserves. Rarely, it would seem, were his concerns acted upon in any meaningful way.

    1. Bernard Brian Wellmon, “The Parker Ranch: A History,” Ph.D. dissertation, Texas Christian University, 1969.

— Patricia Tummons

Volume 13, Number 4 October 2002

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