Last Chance

The palila recovery plan, hatched in August 1977, was approved by the Hawaii Audubon Society, National Audubon, the Smithsonian’s International Council for Bird Preservation, and the U.S. Forest Service. But the state, possessive of its mouflon mongrel “resource,” opposed it. When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approved the plan anyway, the state refused to implement it. Ziegler, the Sierra Club, Hawaii Audubon, and National Audubon had had enough. With the palila as the lead plaintiff, they filed suit in U.S. District Court.

It was a slam dunk. Judge Samuel King ordered “complete and permanent removal” of feral goats and sheep. The state appealed and lost. But the mouflon mongrels—which had slipped under the plaintiffs’ radar because of the state-generated superstition that they were less destructive than their feral cousins—proved more destructive. They ranged higher, and they could jump the fence erected around Mauna Kea in the 1930s to prevent feral ungulates from competing with livestock. The state rebuffed a mediation attempt by the plaintiffs, so in 1986 they went back to court, easily winning an order for removal of the mongrels, too. Intervening for the state were the Sportsmen of Hawaii Inc., the Hawaii Island Archery Club, the Hawaii Rifle Association, and four mongrel hunters. Again, the defendants appealed and lost.

Pressured by hunters, the state stopped removing ungulates in 1995. And in 1998 Hawaii Governor Benjamin Cayetano ordered the DFW to continue ignoring the court and the state and federal Endangered Species Acts. So the plaintiffs and the defendants worked out an agreement (approved in a court order) by which they convinced the governor that Judge King hadn’t been kidding. The intervening hunter groups and individuals appealed and lost. The DFW resumed ungulate removal.

Today the goats are virtually gone, but the mouflon mongrels are multiplying. According to division administrator Paul Conry, the fence, partially up, will cost $8 million to $15 million to complete. Conry avers that the state is “fully committed” to obeying the law. But he told me this: “We’re going through our budget-cutting process here with the economy.” Even before that cutting, the division’s annual budget didn’t reach $25 million (about what the New York Yankees pay Alex Rodriguez a year), and the legislature declines to vote appropriations. Such are the priorities of the American public.

“You can’t just snap your fingers and have sheep disappear,” Conry continued. True enough. On the other hand, if the state had started building a new fence 30 years ago, maintained the old one, and not flouted the court order to remove ungulates, adequate fencing would now be in place and the mouflon mongrels might be gone. Instead the mongrels have proliferated and spread from Mauna Kea to many other sensitive areas.

The division staffer I most needed to interview was biologist David Leonard, the DFW’s leading palila authority and  a tireless advocate for recovery. Before I could contact him to set up an appointment he phoned me, having learned of my project and cell phone number “through the grapevine.” But at the time I was maneuvering my rental car through Honolulu traffic and couldn’t talk. When I called back he told me he’d just been informed that only Conry would be speaking to Audubon on this highly sensitive matter.

The court has required the DFW to file biannual status reports about how it’s coming along with mongrel removal. This from the most recent of these reports: “In the higher elevations, mamane appeared healthy, numerous young plants and green seedpods were observed, and browse damage appeared minimal when encountered.” Recalling the devastation I’d seen, I ran the statement by bird biologist Sheila Conant, professor of zoology at the University of Hawaii and former president of Hawaii Audubon. She provided probably the kindest of all possible assessments: “They must have worked really hard to find that place.” 

In 1999 the Fish and Wildlife Service signed off on a deal to let the U.S. Army extend the “saddle road”—between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa—through palila critical habitat. Mitigation included funds to hire a 17-person staff for Banko, purchase his team four vehicles and lease nine, build a camp on Mauna Kea, trap birds on the west slope and move them to the north slope, purchase and retire three cattle grazing leases in former palila habitat, and erect mongrel-proof fencing around these leases so the habitat could recover.

Like so much fish and wildlife “mitigation,” this has been a sham. For one thing, it expires in 2012. After that cattle can graze again; but it takes 20 years for a mamane tree to grow large enough to attract palilas. Most of Banko’s money is gone; his staff is down to two, and he won’t be able to keep them on after this fall. The fence, far shorter than the mostly unfinished one around critical habitat, has been up since 2006. But the gates have been left open so that cattle come and go at will.

On Oahu I visited Special Agent Keith Swindle of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Office of Law Enforcement, a former service biologist assigned to northern spotted owls. “Absolutely,” he replied, when I asked if he thought that the state was in contempt of court. When I asked why his agency hadn’t taken legal action he explained that he’d recommended it but that the Department of Interior chose not to pursue the case.