The Hoof Beat

State Limits Hunting in Bird Sanctuary: Why?

The Pu`uwa`awa`a Forest Bird Sanctuary on the island of Hawai`i is crawling with feral sheep, goats, and pigs. For that matter, the entire upper portion of the ahupua`a is alive with the animals, which can easily be seen browsing on the parched land.

The rest of the ahupua`a – once declared by botanist Joseph Rock as a “botanical bonanza” — seems to have been declared something of a sacrifice area by the state. The sanctuary, on the other hand, has been set up to provide a haven for native plants and birds from the depredations of ungulates. For that reason, the state conducted in April a public hunt in the sanctuary intended to reduce the numbers of animals in the area.

Yet the rules of the hunt are so restrictive, they appear to a lay person to work against the very purpose of the hunt. Those rules include a bag limit of two sheep a day per licensed hunter (although no bag limit was set for goats or pigs). In addition, hunters may use either muzzle-loaders or bow-and-arrow, but no high-powered rifles. Also, the number of hunters allowed into the 3,800-acre sanctuary is limited to just 40 a day. Finally, there’s the short duration of the season, which consists of just five consecutive weekends, starting April 1.

Jon Giffin, head of the Hawai`i Island office of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Division of Forestry and Wildlife explained the restrictions as follows.

Primarily, the restrictions on weapons are for safety, he said. Cattle ranches adjoin the sanctuary on almost all sides. “We’re concerned with cattle. Also, the area is small, and to some extent we’re concerned that hunters might end up shooting each other,” he said. By their very nature, he added, muzzle loaders and archers are more careful when they fire, since their opportunities for shots are limited. “Rifle guys can shoot a whole clip,” he said, in trying to fell an animal.

Limiting the hunt to 40 people a day has to do with the fact that there is no public access to the area. “We have to go through an existing, working ranch.”

Why not conduct staff hunts, Giffin was asked. Eventually that might occur, he said, but not until the area is fenced to the point that no animals can get through. “I’m pushing fencing as hard as I can,” he said. “By the end of June, the area should be totally enclosed.”

But even then, it won’t be “pig-proof,” he acknowledged. To make the fence able of keeping pigs out of the sanctuary, “we need to replace some existing fence and grade along the fence line. Then, the new fence needs to be pinned to the ground.”

Where the new fence has been installed, “all we have to do is apply anchors to pin the wire to the ground surface.” Without the anchors, the pigs can squeeze through between the bottom wire and the ground.

Until the area is animal-proof (including pigs), Giffin added, “we’d be wasting our money to have staff hunting. So, until then, we’ll continue to use public hunting” to control animals in the sanctuary.

Why the bag limit on sheep? “The reason,” Giffin explained, “has to do with sheep being more desirable than pigs or goats.” The game biologists in his division “want to distribute the sheep kill among hunters,” rather than having just a few hunters take the lion’s share of sheep.

“Sheep hunting is very popular now because of the eradication of sheep on Mauna Kea,” Giffin continued. “There are very few public hunting areas where people can shoot sheep. They’re very popular. We often have had to go to archery or muzzle-loading to control hunting” of sheep.

But does this mean that the pressure on pigs and goats will be reduced, as hunters direct their effort to the sheep? In all likelihood, Giffin acknowledged, this would be the case: “Hunters will be saving their shots for the sheep. Probably not as much effort will be directed to goats.”

The season closes in early May. “There’s no staff to man the hunting stations,” Giffin said. “Mostly it’s done with volunteers. And we have to have the stations manned, since we’re going through a leased area” of state land.

Pu`uwa`awa`a Ranch, owned by F. Newell Bohnett, now holds the lease around the sanctuary. That lease expires in August of this year.

To look at statistics provided by the state, the axis deer on Maui would seem to be outsmarting the hunters. In the area near Kula where deer were first introduced, the state estimates there to have been a population of 2,252 (305 bucks, 1,947 does) in 1999. According to the Department of Land and Natural Resources’ report to the Department of Interior on hunting in Hawai`i, “although the hunting of axis deer on Maui was open year round in the public hunting areas with the exception of legal game bird hunting days, no take of axis deer was recorded at any of the public hunting check stations.” Some deer were probably taken in hunts on private ranch lands, but the state has no information on the specific numbers.

On Moloka`i, there was no hunting season for axis deer at all from July 1, 1998 through June 30, 1999, the period covered by the report. Only on Lana`i did hunters make any kind of a dent in the deer population. There, the deer population is about the same as on Maui (2,256 total, with 456 bucks and 1,800 does), but 1,442 hunters managed to bag a total of 655 axis deer (279 bucks, 376 does).

Lana`i is also plagued with Mouflon sheep, whose 1999 population numbered about 1,858 (347 rams, 1,511 ewes). In the 1999 season, 1,183 hunters bagged a total of 641 Mouflon (378 rams, 263 ewes).

Despite the small numbers of animals taken in comparison to total populations, the state pays a premium to make the deer available to hunters. In its latest five-year plan to the federal government for expenditure of federal matching funds (under the Pittman-Robertson program), the DLNR states: “There is a very high demand for axis deer and mouflon sheep hunting from hunters throughout the state. Huntable populations of these species occur primarily on private lands on the island of Lana`i would not be available to hunters without leasing private lands as public hunting areas. Annually, 3,500 hunter applications are received for the axis deer season and 3,000 for mouflon season on Lana`i.” In return for allowing hunters on 30,000 acres of private lands on Lana`i, the state pays the Lana`i Company $30,000 a year.

Altogether, the state’s management of game operations under the Pittman-Robertson program comes to more than $800,000 a year, of which the state pays about 25 percent, with the federal government picking up the rest. The Pittman-Robertson program for non-game management programs in Hawai`i is roughly a third of that, ranging from $282,713 to $286,878 annually over a five-year period. The state share, again, is about 25 percent. The number of licensed hunters in Hawai`i is less than 10,000.

Like an emerald necklace in a sapphire sea, the Andaman and Nicobar islands stretch from Burma (Myanmar) in the north to the Indonesian island of Sumatra in the south. As with islands elsewhere, these islands in the Bay of Bengal had a high degree of endemism – or unique species, evolved to adapt to special conditions.

In what is a worldwide phenomenon, however, the Andaman and Nicobar island ecosystems are suffering from introduced species, including an overpopulation of the same axis deer that have proven to be a problem wherever they have been introduced in Hawai`i.

Kuppusamy Sivakumar, a researcher in India, which governs the islands, recently summarized the nightmarish history of introduced species on the islands. “For recreational purposes,” he writes, “three species of deer [chital, or Axis axis, barking deer, or Muntiacus muntjak, and sambar, or Cervus unicolor] were introduced into the Andaman Islands around 1915. Because of good vegetation the population of the chital increased rapidly and became [a] menace to the agriculture. Two male leopards were introduced for controlling the deer population in 1952, but those two leopards were not sighted thereafter.”

Goats were introduced on two of the islands in 1891, he notes. A century later, their numbers are in the hundreds. Elephants were introduced as beasts of burden for a timber industry in the 1960s. After the timber industry failed, the elephants were “released into the virgin forests – and now they have become feral.” Other animals that have become established include cats, dogs, domestic cattle, and the palm squirrel (Funambulus pennati).

— Patricia Tummons

Volume 11, Number 1 July 2000