Larry Katahira, resource specialist at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, surveys an area trampled by pigs in search of food such as the amau fern, below. Photos by Kathryn Bender, Star-Bulletin

"I've seen pigs come into a beautiful, intact native forest and when they're done, ... literally all that's left are their pellets," said Wood, whose work with the National Tropical Botanical Garden on Kauai takes him into wild lands around the state. "It's a sickening thing to see."

Pigs are the most commonly found and frequently hunted animals in the state, but they aren't the only ones wreaking havoc in the back country. Scientists agree that goats, deer, mouflon sheep and wild cattle also mean trouble for many of Hawaii's rarest birds and plants.

And controlling the wild, hooved mammals isn't always a question of science. In these days of hunting clubs, environmental lawsuits and legislative lobbying, more people are demanding a say in the fate of Hawaii's feral ungulates.

This has been particularly true on the Big Island, where fierce opposition from hunters forced state land manager Bill Stormont to drop plans to fence prime acreage within the Natural Area Reserve System.

Stormont said he knows many hunters "feel very, very threatened that a part of their lifestyle could be lost." But he also sees wild pigs as a major threat to the native ecosystems and endangered species he is required by law to protect.

A hunting dog drinks from a hole left after
pigs eat the inner, tender parts of a fern.

Hawaii is virtually alone in its quandary, the sole state where hunters seek only introduced game that, if left unchecked, could harm the native environment, said Michael Buck, director of the state Division of Forestry and Wildlife.

"We need public hunting to provide animal control at a certain level. We need to protect hunting."

Reduction has begun

Conservationists have long pressed for that type of active management, saying it's the best way to save what's left of Hawaii's pristine native areas, while still allowing hunting on less ecologically valuable lands. "Lord knows we have enough guava forest for the pigs," said Marjorie Ziegler of the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund.

But some, like Pig Hunters of Hawaii founder Steven Lichter, don't want to give up the good lands because they often offer the best hunting. They also downplay the environmental harm, contending hunters put enough pressure on the animals to keep down the damage.

Hunters have become more organized, lobbying for better game management and against the loss of public hunting grounds.

As a result, nearly all animal control has occurred on private and federal lands, where political pressures are less intense or nonexistent.

Areas have been fenced

But local land managers must deal with lawmakers sympathetic to the hunting lobby, Stormont said. Besides controlling the purse strings for resource protection programs, state legislators have passed resolutions directing managers to work with hunters to prevent the further loss of hunting grounds.

But a solution to management conflicts won't be easy to legislate, Buck said, because each island has unique problems and players.

Deer that could be hunted are devouring dry forests on Lanai and southeast Maui, but much of the land is privately owned or inaccessible. Molokai subsistence hunters joined ranks with mainland animal rights activists to protest pig snaring and push for more access to Nature Conservancy land.

A statewide lottery was held to bring hunters into Kauai's Kalalau Valley by helicopter to help control the goats. And Big Islanders are trying to find land suitable for new game management areas.

Art by Kip Aoki, Star-Bulletin

Conflict avoided on Oahu

"We haven't restricted anything," he said. "We provide access, liability and cooperative agreements with the military and private landowners to get hunters into these areas."

Kennedy also relies upon a roster of local hunters when he wants to clamp down on goats and pigs.

That sort of approach hasn't worked on the Big Island, where Stormont said hunters see it as "doing the government's dirty work."

It's an attitude that dates back more than a decade, when hunters boycotted the court-ordered eradication of sheep from the slopes of Mauna Kea, leading state workers to shoot hundreds of animals and waste the meat.

Stormont said animosity from that incident lingers today, with some hunters already vowing to boycott upcoming eradication hunts in the 33,000-acre federal Hakalau refuge.

Buck said he knows hunters are angry because resource protection is getting more money than game management.

He's considering more aggressive management efforts that may call for some new hunting rules and fees, better enforcement and greater use of volunteers, he said.

Meanwhile, Buck is pushing for "more science" to help answer questions about the numbers of animals and their movements, and is trying to encourage hunting on more private lands.

Thinning out to continue

"We will get used to a certain level of animals in our forests that might not be as much as some people would like," Buck said. "Things will never be the way they used to be, and I know there's a certain longing for that."

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