By Photographer, Star-Bulletin
Joe Gambsky, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park's
roads and trails supervisor, shows a rabbit he
caught at the park last September.

Well, maybe it is worth a giggle or two.

Park spokeswoman Mardie Lane began a description of the newest threat to park wildlife yesterday with the words, "Here comes Peter Cottontail, hopping down the bunny trail."

And to prove that the threat isn't a "hare-brained" prospect, she introduced a real Peter Cottontail, hand-caught by the park's roads and trails supervisor, Joe Gambsky, last September.

Gambsky said his crew spotted the rabbit, surrounded him and scooped him up.

The rabbit became the pet of children of a park employee.

That's where the cute part of the story ends. Park rangers saw two more rabbits later and shot them.

The same fate may await two other rabbits sighted by park visitors. They disappeared before park rangers could find them despite trapping attempts and rangers literally beating the bush to scare them out of hiding, said park biologist Howard Hoshide.

The shoot-on-sight approach doesn't mean rangers like being bunny killers.

The trouble is that the lush areas of the park are made up of plants that evolved in Hawaii over as long as a million years with no thorns, bad odors or unpleasant tastes to keep rabbits and other mainland creatures away.

"To a rabbit, the Hawaiian forest is a salad bar," Lane said.

With plenty of food and no natural enemies, a single pair of rabbits could theoretically multiply to 13 million rabbits over the three-year period of maximum fertility of the female.

An apologetic former bunny owner anonymously confessed to releasing just six rabbits in Hosmer Grove at Haleakala National Park in 1990.

Even as rangers hopped into action there - trapping, shooting and snaring them - the rabbits multiplied to about 100 before Haleakala rangers killed the last known one six months later.

How the rabbits got to the Mauna Loa Road area of the Volcanoes park is guesswork, but it looks like a repeat of the deliberate dumping at Haleakala, Lane said.

The park's big fear is that more dumping could take place with Easter coming and families doing impulse buying of baby bunnies.

Rabbits are offered for sale for as little as $5 along Big Island roads, Lane said.

After Easter, when children realize a rabbit needs as much care as a dog or cat, some families may be tempted to get rid of the new bunny in a forested area, a violation of federal law in the park and state law elsewhere.

The right thing is to take the rabbit to the Humane Societies in East and West Hawaii, which maintain "wish lists" of people who want to adopt animals, including rabbits, Lane said.

An encounter between the two took place Sunday when a loose dog attacked a family of nene near Devastation Trail, spokeswoman Mardie Lane said.

Dogs in the park are supposed to be on a leash, and violators could face a fine of $500 and six months in jail.

Two women visiting the park saw the attack and scared the dog off after it grabbed one of the adult birds, Lane said.

The two adult and three baby nene disappeared.

The next morning rangers found two of the goslings by homing in on radio transmitters attached to them.

Rangers tried to reunite the family by placing the goslings in a pen to see if their cries would attract their parents, but hopes are fading, Lane said.

Ironically, an old park pest could help control a new one, Lane said.

Wild cats are a "huge" problem in the park, killing ground-nesting petrels, but they could also help control newly discovered rabbits in the park, she said.

Beginning in the 1970s, the park successfully reduced the goat population, which was eating native plants, from a herd of 15,000 to just a dozen remaining goats.

Eliminating wild pigs has been more difficult, but they have been cleared from several thousand acres of selected areas of the park, Lane said.

And with the nonnative animals gone, native wildlife returns.

Lane described the changes yesterday while standing in an extensive forest of native koa trees.

Before the park took over the land and eliminated cattle, the area was open pasture, she said.