Hunters Are Shot Down in Appeal Of Federal Court’s Palila Decision
For the last two years, a group of sheep hunters on the Big Island have been working to overturn a federal court’s order requiring the state of Hawai`i to remove sheep from the upper slopes of Mauna Kea. In December, their case was dismissed in a four-sentence order of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
The group, Sportsmen of Hawai`i, argued that removal of the sheep was causing grass to grow. The high grass poses more of a danger to the endangered palila bird (Loxioides bailleui) than the sheep ever did, the group claimed, in that the grass, should it burn, can result in greater habitat loss to the palila than the sheep can inflict by their browsing on the mamane trees that are so critical to the palila for habitat and food.
The original palila decision in federal court came in 1979, ordering the state to remove sheep and goats from Mauna Kea. A second case, known as Palila II, added mouflon (a type of mountain sheep) to the list of species to be eradicated in palila habitat.
For a decade, the plaintiffs in the case – Hawai`i Audubon Society, National Audubon Society, the Sierra Club, and an individual, Alan Ziegler – pushed the state to move forward with eradication. Shortly after a formal agreement on a schedule had been achieved in 1999, the hunters, apparently with the blessing of the Cayetano administration, filed their appeal.
When the case was heard in federal court, Judge Samuel P. King heard arguments from the hunters – but also from the state – professing concern over the palila’s welfare in an environment where the threat of fire (that is, the grass) was uncontrolled by any browsing animal. To control this threat, they claimed, at least 200 sheep or mouflon would be required.
In a decision that at times came close to ridiculing the position of the hunters and the state, Judge King reaffirmed his original ruling. The hunters appealed to the 9th Circuit, which heard arguments in November 2000.
On December 14, the three judges hearing the case issued their short and sweet order:
“Defendant-Intervenor-Appellant Sportsmen of Hawai`i’s (SOH) appeal is hereby dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. As an intervenor, SOH must independently establish standing to bring this appeal in the absence of the Hawai`i Department of Land and Natural Resources. Because nothing in the record indicates that SOH or its members will suffer a concrete, particularized injury if the Palila becomes extinct, SOH has not established the constitutional requirement of standing. We therefore have no jurisdiction to hear this case and accordingly DISMISS.” (Two citations have been omitted.)
Arguing the case for the hunters was John Carroll, a Big Island lawyer and former state legislator who last year lost a bid for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate seat held by Daniel Inouye.
Will Carroll appeal? In mid-January, Carroll told Environment Hawai`i he was “looking into it” and was “dealing with attorneys in D.C. right now.”
(Past articles on this case have appeared in the October and November 1999 issues of Environment Hawai`i.)
–Patricia Tummons
Snails from HPU Campus May Threaten Windward Streams
In September 1999, apple snails were slipped into Mamalahoa Stream at the old Hawai`i Loa College campus in Kane`ohe. The snails, allegedly bought from Chinatown markets, were put there as a food stash to be harvested regularly. The intermittent stream didn’t extend off campus then. And if it ever did, it was believed it would flow into a stream that was already infested with the snails. It was an isolated area of water, or so the stream stockers thought.
To All Concerned,
Torrential rain and high runoff accompanying a thunderstorm on October 29 raised Mamalahoa Stream on the HPU [Hawai`i] Loa campus to flood stage, and carried Apple snails through the culverts beneath Interstate H3 and into the lower course of the stream.
This was unfortunate, as the population had been drastically reduced by the joint efforts of faculty, grounds personnel, and students over the last four months, and elimination of the threat was possible. There seems to be little hope of preventing further spread through the Kane`ohe watershed at this point.
Robert Moye
This message, posted on the O`ahu Invasive Species Committee listserve by Bishop Museum snail expert Robert Cowe, “seems to me to be a good example of the inadequacy of public education regarding alien species,” Cow4e wrote. “Apple snails were not in Kaneohe streams until now, though they have spread widely throughout most of O’ahu since they were introduced, in 1990 or shortly before.”
Moye, a political science professor at Hawiai Pacific University, first discovered the snails last February while studying the stream with his students. “At that time, I was not clear on the regulations and I had to get confirmation that, one, the snails were a threat, and two, that it’s illegal to put snails into the streams,” he says. Moye brought the snails to Cowe, who explained to him how bad they are.
A few months after discovering the snails, Moye initiated an eradication project with his students and others on campus. “We’d go every week collecting and destroying egg cases and snails. In three months, we had enormously reduced the population,” Moye says. “Unfortunately, around that time, with the wet weather, the stream had begun to extend off property. On October 29, a major thunderstorm dumped about four inches of rian. It was enough to flood the stream and carried snails downÉ We came awfully close.”
Apple snails are common aquarium pets, suited to the tropics. But outside the confines of a freshwater tank, they can ravage plants of all kinds. The South American Pomacea canaliculata arrived here in 1989 as a food source and aquarium pet. Since then, they have spread throughout island streams by escaping from aquaculture tanks or by intentional stocking, and have caused severe damage to taro on Maui and Kaua`i. On O`ahu, snails from an old Hawai`i Institute of Marine Biology research site in Hakipu`u have slid into a stream and are affecting taro production as well. With a large infestation, a “newly planted taro patch can be eaten entirely by the apple snails overnight,” according to an Agricultural Development in the American Pacific website devoted to apple snails.
In 1999, Cowe surveyed almost every body of water that could hold apple snails and found them in 90 of those streams (20 percent), most of which were on O`ahu’s windward side and North Shore. In a 1992 survey, he found the snails in just five.
How the apple snails will affect the Kane`ohe watershed is “hard to say,” says Cowe, since he has not studied the fauna where they have been newly transported. Little, if any, taro cultivation occurs in Kane`ohe. Still, their spread is worrisome.
“They eat almost everything in sight in terms of aquatic vegetation. I don’t know what they’ll eat and what they won’t, É but in a natural environment – they’ll destroy everything,” Cowe says.
“The main problem I found was there was absolutely no public education [on the snails], no information available from any accessible source,” Moye says, adding that it seemst hat public education about alien species in general is limited.
Years ago, the state Department of Agriculture’s Plant Pest Control Branch published handouts describing the apple snail, but the DOA has done little else to educate the public.
The state Aquaculture Development Program has been “discouraging farmers from growing snails,” says Dean Toda, the program’s information specialist. Still, “One person is raising apple snails, in a safer manner, in Wai`anae [Boke Farm],” he says, adding that the farm is “safe” because the snails are not raised anywhere near streams, and the farm does not sell live animals. Instead, it sells the processed snail meat.
Taro farmers on Maui are growing the snails for sale. In Ke`anae, the University of Hawai`i’s Sea Grant service began a controversial practice a few years ago with snail-plagued farmers there to eradicate the snails by selling them. While the plan provides income to farmers suffering from snail-damaged taro, Cowe is not fond of this idea, which promotes the snails’ desirability as a food source.
“I disagree with selling them for food, trying to grow them,” Cowe says. When you promote them for sale, someone may introduce them to “somewhere without snails. It’s the same with the African snail in Samoa, where it has been recently introduced, to some extent. [There, they are]selling snails for food. People are paddling between islands to gather them and are introducing them to new places,” he says.
— Teresa Dawson
Volume 11, Number 8 February 2001