HONOLULU (AP) — Deer can swim, but not very far. When they showed up for the first time on the Big Island of Hawaii, mystified residents wondered how they got there.
The island is some 30 miles southeast of Maui, where deer are plentiful.
Hawaii
wildlife authorities think someone dropped a few from a helicopter on
the northern tip of the island. And tracks along the southern coast
indicate deer were pushed into the ocean from a boat and forced to
paddle ashore.
Whether they
arrived by air or sea, wildlife managers want to eradicate them to avoid
a repeat of the destruction seen on other islands where they ate
through vineyards, avocado farms and forests where endangered species
live.
Officials estimate that there are 100 deer on the northern and southern ends of the Big Island. A government-funded group is leading efforts to get rid of them before they breed.
"They
didn't get here by themselves, so the people who brought them over did
so and have done it many times," said Jan Schipper, the group's project
manager.
People have reported
seeing deer on the Big Island for a while, but it wasn't until a
motion-sensor camera captured a photo of one last year that their
presence was confirmed.
Axis deer, called chital in their native India, are similar in size to whitetail deer found in the continental U.S. Tigers and leopards keep axis deer numbers reasonable in India, but the deer population is growing 20 percent to 30 percent per year in Hawaii because there aren't any natural predators — except for humans.
The
deer first came to Hawaii in the 1860s as a gift from Hong Kong to the
monarch who ruled at the time, King Kamehameha V. They were first taken
to Molokai Island.
In the
1950s, some deer were taken to Maui as part of post-World War II efforts
to introduce mammals to different places and increase hunting
opportunities for veterans, said Steven Hess, wildlife biologist with
the U.S. Geological Survey. Biologists believed they could improve the
environment by introducing species that didn't naturally exist, he said.
The
experiment has had devastating, unforeseen consequences in Hawaii,
where plants and animals evolved in isolation over millions of years and
lack natural defenses against introduced species.
In
Maui, deer have caused $1 million in damage during the past two years
for farmers, ranchers and resorts, according to a county survey. They
spent half that amount during the same time trying to eradicate the
animals. On Lanai, deer that eat everything from Hawaii's native ebony
tree, the lama, to a native olive tree and a now-extinct mint helped
turn a rich native forest into a desert-like landscape so desolate
people compare it to the moon.
Big Island hunters like Tony Sylvester welcome the axis deer as a new source of meat.
There
are no native land mammals in Hawaii except for a bat. Big Island
hunters, who hunt to supplement their diet, say the deer should stay
because the gift to the former king was for all of Hawaii.
Sylvester
suspects other hunters brought the deer from nearby islands to
retaliate against government agencies and conservationists for
converting vast tracts of hunting ground to forest restoration. He said
he understands the concern for the environment and the need to protect
the forest, but he said the deer can coexist if managed properly.
"Before
you know it, everywhere is a pristine area and it's more and it's more
and it's more," he said. "And our culture is slowly getting pushed away
and pushed out."
Officials
have fenced off forests and killed sheep, goats and pigs inside the area
to help save a multitude of species inside, such as the slow-growing
mamane tree and the palila songbirds that eat its seeds.
The
Pele Defense Fund, a group that led a successful legal fight in the
1990s to win Native Hawaiians access to private land for hunting, is now
rallying hunters together for a class action lawsuit against the state
to stop its efforts to eradicate game animals and fence off land.
"They
go in and kill all the pigs and everything else. Then you eliminated
the hunter," said Palikapu Dedman, the fund's president. "I think the
hunter has been ignored and it's the state's responsibility to look out
for them, too."
Jimmy Gomes,
operations manager at Ulupalakua Ranch spanning 18,000 acres on the
slopes of Haleakala volcano in Maui, said deer have been jumping over
rock walls and through wire fences to eat ranch grass set aside for
cattle. Gomes said he's seen a thousand at a time, and has had to wait
several minutes for a herd of deer to pass before he can ride through
them on horseback.
"Sometimes
you're driving cattle, you're moving cattle across, and all of the
sudden you see this — like the mountains moving — this deer coming
down," he said.
Gun club
members and ranch employees have killed more than 1,000 deer on the
ranch this year, but Gomes said it hasn't made a dent in their numbers.
Sam
Ohu Gon III, senior scientist and cultural adviser at the Nature
Conservancy of Hawaii, said the deer could threaten Big Island plants
that are important for the environment and Hawaiian culture. Among those
are the uhiuhi tree, which has a hard wood ancient Hawaiians favored
for making weapons and tools, and the ohelo berry, which is used to make
jam and is sacred to Pele, the goddess of volcanoes.
The
threat to the Big Island's native ecosystems is particularly serious as
half the island still has native vegetation — a high ratio compared
with other Hawaiian islands.
"It
cannot be a free-for-all of hunting everywhere you want and the hell
with everything else. Because what would that result in? That just
spirals us down into less and less of what makes Hawaii unique," Gon
said.