Isle council urges
cooperation to stop
invasive species
The Hawaii Invasive Species Council has the potential to make a difference in the battle against non-native plants and animals, observers say.
Because the council, which met for the first time yesterday, is composed of state department heads, it can order changes in state policy, said Mark Fox, director of external affairs for the Nature Conservancy.
"Our intent is not to replace what others are doing, but to work with them," said Peter Young, director of the Department of Land & Natural Resources, who successfully led the multiagency cleanup of the invasive weed Salvinia molesta in Lake Wilson.
Young has repeatedly used that cooperative effort, which cost about $1 million, as an example of what the Invasive Species Council might be able to accomplish with other pests, such as the coqui frog or miconia.
The potential costs of inaction are high, said Christy Martin, public information officer for the Coordinating Group on Alien Pest Species, giving some examples:
>> If Hawaii became infested with biting sand flies or mosquito-transmitted malaria, tourism would be at risk."The time for drastic action is now," Maui County's environmental coordinator, Rob Parsons, told those at yesterday's meeting.>> If brown tree snakes got here from Guam, the economic toll could be $123 million. In just 20 years the snakes have decimated Guam's wild bird populations and regularly cause power failures there.
>> In Texas the imported red fire ant costs $300 million a year in agricultural losses.
>> Tahiti is 70 percent covered with aggressive South American miconia plants, which elbow out all other vegetation, destroy native forest and cause erosion. Already, the Big Island has 111,000 acres of miconia, Maui has 25,000 acres, Oahu has 6,000 acres and Kauai has 1,800 acres. "And that's just what we know about," she warned.
>> If the coqui frog is allowed to proliferate, it could wipe out native insects, and "we'll have to issue all of you paintbrushes to do the pollination services for native plants because the insects won't be there to do it."
