Excerpt from civilbeat.org
Kimeona Kane drives his pickup truck around his neighborhood on the Windward side of Oʻahu pointing out dead and dying palm trees along the road. Nearby, the copious piles of mulch and rotting wood littering lots and private properties host the culprit: coconut rhinoceros beetles.
Kane has been trying to get a handle on the infestation for the past four years as chair of the Waimānalo Neighborhood Board, but he said his calls to the state’s reporting hotline, 643-PEST, went nowhere.
“I think at this point for Oʻahu, everyone’s kind of on their own,” he said.
As the Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity focuses on stopping the spread of coconut rhinoceros beetles on Hawaiʻi island and Moloka‘i residents fight to block it from reaching their shores, resources to deal with Oʻahu’s growing invasion have been diverted elsewhere.
Money allocated by the Legislature last session for the CRB Response Team offers some hope. According to the team’s Mike Melzer, the $500,000 will fund mitigation efforts on all of the islands, paying for things like pesticides, netting and biocontrol research.
The team recently returned from a trip to the Southern Hemisphere with samples of the Malaysian-borne nudivirus, which has shown promise in controlling beetle populations but may also have a negative impact on native species. While officials tap into limited resources to help all the islands, they’re also trying to empower local communities to fight the problem on their own.