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Jordan Lerma has faced death threats for trying to persuade cat lovers around the Big Island to stop feeding feral colonies and for backing laws to discourage the practice.

As co-founder of a new nonprofit group, , Lerma knows that feral cats threaten Hawaii’s nene geese as they do other native and endangered wildlife. They also live than their domestic counterparts, as little as two years on average.

Now, Lerma is faced with an unusual dilemma. 

In recent months, he’s compiled a first-ever feral cat map for Hawaii pinpointing some 900 colonies across the state — valuable information that could help state land managers and conservation outfits get a handle on which colonies pose the biggest threat to the islands’ native birds and other species.

So far, though, Lerma has kept the map to himself. 

That’s because much of the crowd-sourced information on colony locations and size comes from the cat advocates themselves, the so-called “colony managers” who regularly care for and monitor feral groups.

Concerned about the colonies’ impact on native species, those managers agreed to share details with Lerma with one caveat: He could not make it public. Their fear, Lerma said, is that local government might move in to trap and euthanize the cats where their terrain overlaps with native species habitat.

Further, he added, some private landowners might block access to feed the colonies. That’s what happened at an Alexander and Baldwin-owned shopping center in Waikoloa last year, prompting outcry from cat colony feeders and their supporters.

“Any time we try to better understand the problem, folks feel threatened that we’re going to kill all the cats,” Lerma said.

Initially, Lerma thought he might publicize less specific information from the map — perhaps a of the colonies’ general whereabouts — that would honor the deal he made with the cat advocates.

Lately, however, he’s been rethinking that approach as more nene have died where cat feedings regularly occur. The endangered geese often seek out that food, changing their natural behavior as they become too comfortable around cats and humans.

Last month, a male nene at Lili‘uokalani Park in Hilo was killed in a vehicle hit-and-run as it crossed a road toward a banyan tree where cat feeders often leave food. Its body was found next to a road sign warning drivers to slow down for endangered wildlife.

The same nene had fathered a gosling suspected to have died this past spring of toxoplasmosis, a disease carried by cats that’s deadly to Hawaii wildlife, including monk seals, spinner dolphins and nene. 

Now, Lerma hopes to change his deal and get his cat sources’ blessing to release the map. Short of that, however, he says he’ll release the map in July.

The data that he’s crowd-sourced so far from them and others is too important, Lerma said, for a state that’s been

‘Heated On All Sides’

What to do about Hawaii’s pervasive feral cats — a population roughly estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands — has long been a hot-button topic. Their colonies do widespread damage to the local ecology, largely through the spread of toxoplasmosis, and they frequently prey on native, protected seabirds. 

In Hawaii it’s except for at state-owned harbors, but the food can’t be left for both cats and wildlife to consume. State officers and conservation groups do try to discourage cat-feeding.

The state’s Department of Land and Natural Resources doesn’t keep estimates on how many colonies there are, agency spokesman Dan Dennison said, because they’re not a protected or native species. 

That’s why Lerma’s map could especially come in handy. The crowd-sourced document relies on some 6,000 reports from people across the state, including six colony managers on the Big Island and two on Oahu. 

The map would enable conservation managers and biologists on limited state budgets to focus on the colonies that pose the biggest threat, Lerma said, versus those spotted “in the Costco parking lot.”

“There’s so much to gain from that,” said Alex Dutcher, co-founder of the Kauai-based , which contracts with local county officials to protect the ‘a‘o and other native seabirds along with their habitat.

Dutcher said they’ve seen a single cat kill more than a dozen adult seabirds in about three days. Hallux, working on behalf of the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative and the state, traps and euthanizes the feral cats that enter the birds’ habitat.

“We really applaud Jordan’s actions for pushing this and taking a stand,” Dutcher said.

Some local cat advocacy groups, meanwhile, strongly advocate for the feral cats’ humane treatment while expressing support for the protection of Hawaii’s native and threatened wildlife.

“It’s heated on all sides. People think you’re pro-cat or pro-bird and that’s absolutely not true,” said Lori Luchette, co founder of , a Kailua Kona-based nonprofit that organizes trap-neuter-release events and is trying to create a large-scale cat sanctuary on the Big Island.

“We’re all after the same thing. We want to save the endangered species,” Luchette said. “And the cats.”

Protests Follow Cat Feeding Crackdown

Hawaii’s feral cat issue flared up during an April 2023 demonstration at the Queens’ Marketplace in Waikoloa shortly after DLNR banned cat feedings there. Too many nene were taking food from cat feeding stations, and the state agency ordered those stations removed.

At least 50 people showed up to protest the ban, , many of them chanting “stop starving the cats.” Organizers with the group that used to help lead the feedings there, A Bay Kitties, declined this week to comment on the situation.

After the DLNR crackdown, Aloha Animal Oasis helped trap, neuter and re-home nearly 100 of the feral cats at Queens’, Luchette said. Since then, however, she said she’s heard the colony has grown to around 200 cats, many of them sick and malnourished.

Luchette said that she’s not among the cat colony managers sharing information with Lerma.

“Nobody wants to say where these cats are because they think the cats are going to get hurt,” including by starvation, she said. “If they put a feeding ban then people are going to go crazy. Queens’ is proof of that.”

Luchette added that she believes the toxoplasmosis threat from the cats is overblown, and that any time a nene gets killed local cat advocates worry that the animals will be blamed for it. She said most local colony managers also work to trap, neuter and release the cats they tend.

Part of the problem, Luchette added, is that some senior residents feed the cats but aren’t physically able to trap and neuter them.

Regardless, that the trap-neuter-release approach, or TNR, is not an effective way to contain feral cat colony populations.

Earlier this year, a Hilo woman, Doreen Torres, was cited by a DLNR officer for feeding two nene birds at Lili‘uokalani Park, the same place the male nene bird and its gosling died. Torres regularly leaves food at that site for the feral cats there, according to Lerma and Raymond McGuire, a DLNR wildlife biologist.

Torres, 67, has plead not guilty and that her case is heading to trial, state court records show. She referred questions about the matter to her attorney, Eric Overton, who did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

There are some 3,800 nene found in the wild, including those that live at Lili‘uokalani Park in Hilo and Queens’ Marketplace, according to the latest state estimates. The goose’s population has grown significantly since the 1950s, when less than 30 were estimated to be left in the wild.

“We’ve gone from a species you would never see, (to) now you can go to the local park and see nene,” McGuire said. “While it’s really sad to lose nene, we have to remember we’re all learning to live together.”

Both he and Lerma have grown more exasperated with residents such as Torres who won’t stop feeding the cats even when they know it’s impacting native species. State conservation officers now check Lili‘uokalani Park at least once a day for people leaving food, McGuire said, but it can be difficult to catch them in the act.

Some now approach the park from the hotel parking lot next door, they said, and drop the food under a banyan tree on the corner.

“You do all this work to get things to stop, but you can’t control people,” McGuire said, standing several yards from where male nene was killed in the road last month. McGuire said he implores people to stop but “usually I get yelled at” in response. 

Dreams Of A Cat Sanctuary

Luchette hopes to help ease the problem with a 15-acre sanctuary that could eventually house as many as 5,000 feral cats. Ideally, she said, the Big Island would need several such sanctuaries.

The problem is especially bad on the Big Island, both she and Lerma said, because county shelters don’t take in strays. Luchette said that Aloha Animal Oasis looks to model their sanctuary off the renowned Lanai Cat Sanctuary.

That sanctuary houses 800 cats on a four-acre parcel and largely covers its $2 million annual budget with donations from visitors and other individual donors, according to Executive Director Keoni Vaughn. The sanctuary is especially important on Lanai, he said, because that island doesn’t have any other shelters.

“Our mission is to protect the birds and the cats,” Vaughn said. “Everyone else is just protecting the cats.”

No other sanctuaries of similar size exist in Hawaii, although there’s a separate effort to create one on Oahu.

Luchette said her groups is seeking a parcel near the hotels and resorts on the Big Island’s Kona side that would attract both visitors and donors.

Still, Lerma, a Hilo native with a professional background in marine mammal research, said the sanctuaries wouldn’t be able to handle the hundreds of thousands of feral cats across the islands.

He said he’s driven to help conserve the native wildlife that he grew up with for his children, and he’s hopeful that better publicly accessible data can help.

“If everyone has the best information, we can get to the truth of these problems,” Lerma said.

Lerma received death threats this past spring, he said, after he launched an online petition calling for laws to ban feeding cats on county property and other measures to help protect native wildlife.  

“When it first started happening, it kept me up,” Lerma said of the threats, some of which came via the same website that collects data for the cat map. He said that he owns pepper spray and bear spray for protection, but has so far been reluctant to purchase a firearm. He also wears a visor outside so people won’t recognize him.

“I have two kids,” he said. “I don’t want them to go after my kids or my wife in any way. It’s part of the work. And it’s unfortunate.”

Civil Beat’s coverage of environmental issues on Hawaii island is supported in part by a grant from the Dorrance Family Foundation.