������Ƶ

Did you ever notice that when you come to Hawaii you merely have to complete a brief agriculture statement on the plane, but when you leave Hawaii you are inspected by U.S. Department of Agriculture agents and their scanners?

You would think that Hawaii would be more concerned about bringing pests into the state than in taking them out. Or at least both ways would get inspected. Why the double standard?

The need for a better approach has resulted in the Hawaii Interagency Biosecurity Plan, currently open for public comment until Oct. 21. ( to access a draft version of the plan.)

This is important to everyone, not just environmentalists. That’s because biosecurity, like national security, has an enemy. But who decides who that enemy is?

Over the years, as the director of an environmental/animal protection organization, I have found myself at odds with the government over what is an invasive species. For the government, any species that was not in Hawaii prior to Western contact could be called invasive.

Put differently, if Western civilization brought it, then it “doesn’t belong.” The alien species are interfering with the native population of species. The aliens take space, water, and food from natives. They were not part of the pre-contact environment, making them invasive and slated for eradication.

That’s the hard line of the government environmental managers, who operate under legal mandates to restore native ecosystems, which is achieved by killing non-native species. Despite climate change having redefined Hawaii’s environment over the past 300 years, and despite Hawaii’s modern development, pollution and agriculture forever changing the past, our environmental policy is designed to deconstruct the environment and return it to the a pre-contact state.

For the government, any species that was not in Hawaii prior to Western contact could be called invasive. Put differently, if Western civilization brought it, then it “doesn’t belong.”

Mangrove trees, for example, are revered and protected around the world for their virtues of protecting the shoreline, providing habitat for fish nurseries and cleaning the water. But they are reviled and poisoned here because they were introduced (for their virtues) and are therefore not part of Hawaii’s “native” ecosystem.

Strawberry guava trees are ornamental fruit trees that make a delicious and nutritious fruit that feeds people and wildlife. They were brought to Hawaii at the time of Thomas Jefferson in the early 1800’s as a food source, but they are now considered invasive and are the target of biocontrol experiments using insects and fungus to infest and infect them.

Coqui frogs are the darlings of Puerto Rico, where their sound is revered. Here it is reviled as nuisance noise. They are good for agriculture since they eat insect pests. But they may eat a native insect, which puts them atop the government hit list.

Cattle egrets and barn owls were brought here in the 1950s to eat insects and rodents. But now they are considered invasive because they may compete with native birds, and the government plans to eradicate them.

Subsistence hunters on the Big Island are constantly in conflict with the government, since game animals are also invasive species. Mouflon sheep and dwarf Nigerian goats are shot on Mauna Kea from helicopters by government agents.

You may not agree with the biosecurity experts when they call your fruit tree invasive, or decide to kill the alien birds that feed in your backyard. You may not agree with them when they propose killing feral cats, and plan to release rat poison by helicopters into wilderness areas. You may care about the non-target lizards that die when citric acid is sprayed into the forest to burn coqui frogs to death. You may not agree with them that honeybees are invasive.

That’s the problem with biosecurity. It’s not just about keeping out pests, weeds, and diseases. It’s about values over what to kill and what to save.

You may not share their values. But with the power and money they are seeking, they will decide what can come into Hawaii and what must leave. And they will enforce their opinions with laws and import fees, taxes and mass killings.

Yes, we have a pest problem in Hawaii. We must have a robust way to protect our environment, agriculture, and health from disease and pestilence. But how far can this go? Should it include all non-native species? Should the goal of environmental management be a return to the past?