Palila habitat fence slated for expansion – West Hawaii Today

One other 5 miles of fencing round a portion of Maunakea is slated for building this yr, which can virtually, however not fairly, enclose the higher slopes of the mountain after greater than 10 years.

In 2010, the Division of Land and Pure Assets started building of a 6-foot-tall fence to encompass a 67,000-acre space on Maunakea in an effort to shield the vital habitat of the endangered palila chook, the Hawaiian honeycreeper which solely lives on the southwestern slopes of the mountain.

Since then, all however eight miles of the deliberate 59-mile fence have been accomplished, almost enclosing the whole vital habitat.

DLNR’s Division of Forestry and Wildlife had requested the division approve a capital enchancment mission to finish a further part of fencing, closing a 5.25 hole within the present fence alongside the northwestern slope of the mountain, close to Parker Ranch.

That request was scheduled to be mentioned finally Friday’s assembly of the Board of Land and Pure Assets. Nevertheless, the Tuesday previous to that assembly, DOFAW withdrew the request.

“It seems the division went to the board already with that request final yr,” stated DOFAW wildlife biologist Jason Omick. “So, I pulled it from Friday’s agenda as a result of there was no have to go to the board once more.”

With the necessity for board approval obviated, Omick stated DOFAW will start soliciting bids for the mission “shortly,” including that the division has two years to make the most of the $1 million budgeted in capital enchancment funds. However, he additionally famous, the precise value of the mission will most likely vary from between $600,000 and $800,000, relying on contractor bids.

At any time when that stretch of fence is full, the final incomplete a part of the fence might be a 2.5-mile nook on the northeastern slopes of the mountain. No completion date for that part has been set.

The fence is meant to guard the habitat of the endangered palila from ungulates equivalent to goats and sheep, which eat the grasses and shrubs that shelter the birds. Nevertheless, regardless of the development of the fence and in depth ungulate-control packages, there stays fewer than 1,000 palila within the wild. A 2021 research estimated there have been solely 678 of the birds within the wild, about half of the quantity estimated the earlier yr.

Nani Pogline, a member of the Hawaii County Recreation Administration Advisory Fee’s legislative committee, had helped draft a invoice earlier this yr that will require the DLNR to analyze whether or not its efforts to eradicate sheep on Maunakea have truly helped the endangered species, however that invoice stalled virtually instantly upon introduction.

“When the sheep eradication began about 45 years in the past, the palila depend was 6,000,” Pogline stated. “It doesn’t appear to be working.”

As well as, due to the elimination of ungulates from the world, Pogline stated the grasses and shrubs have grown again an excessive amount of and now current a major wildfire threat, which additional endangers the birds.

A associated invoice has survived the Legislature and awaits Gov. David Ige’s signature. Home Invoice 1872 would, if handed, require the DLNR to acknowledge the worth of sport animals as a sustainable meals supply, and that they need to be correctly managed, relatively than eradicated.

The invoice makes no adjustments to the DLNR’s authority. Nevertheless, it additionally notes that correct administration of sport animals, relatively than eradication, “offers advantages to essential watershed areas, together with weed management and the discount of grass fireplace gasoline,” to which BLNR chair Suzanne Case took concern.

Whereas the DLNR finally helps the measure, Case advised in testimony to a Senate committee that the correlation between sport eradication and wildfire threat be omitted, saying it’s “not a common and even widespread profit besides in choose areas, and is finest not generalized in statute.” The ultimate draft of the invoice retains the sentence in query.

E-mail Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.