Hawaii again goes to Australia for advice on invasive species

A delegation of Hawaii lawmakers and officials returned from a more than $50,000 visit to New Zealand looking for ways the state can better protect itself from invasive species, ignoring recommendations the state ignored nearly two decades ago.

The South Pacific nation first made the recommendations during a similar trip in 2006, but Hawaii has invested millions of dollars in biosecurity this year to combat fire ants and coconut rhinoceros beetles.

This investment comes after months of public outrage over the lack of action taken against the pests and the threat of these pests causing irreversible damage to the environment and the economy.

Over five days, 17 people – five MPs and representatives of four state departments – visited New Zealand’s capital, Wellington, and its largest city, Auckland, to tour ports, airports and biosecurity facilities. New Zealand is known worldwide for its biosecurity programme, which began more than 30 years ago.

The country’s multi-layered program – budgeted at about NZ$418 million (US$260 million) – starts on the country’s coast and includes borders, postal centres and ports, as well as pest detection, response and management in the country. New Zealand has a biosecurity minister, a ministerial position.

The country has eradicated some invasive species on 100 islands and is now in the midst of a government-led campaign To rid the main islands of rats, ferrets, weasels and possums by 2050. Hawaii Rep. Kristin Kahaloa, vice chair of the House food and agriculture committee, who joined the recent trip, said its approach to biosecurity was the “gold standard.”

In contrast, Hawaii’s biosecurity measures have fallen short despite a long history of invasive species there, leading the U.S. Department of Fisheries and Wildlife to declare the state a “no-wilderness” state. “The endangered species capital of the world.”

The state Department of Agriculture, which oversees the program, has faced increased scrutiny since early 2023, when the insects spread across the state, destroying coconut trees and eating some local crops, and tiny stinging fire ants took hold on Oahu, preventing some people from using public spaces to avoid getting stung.

Lawmakers responded by injecting $10 million into specific biosecurity programs in the 2024 legislative session. Another $3 million was added to the state agriculture agency’s biosecurity budget, bringing the budget to $9.2 million.

The state estimated in 2017 that it would need to invest $37.8 million annually through 2027 to fully implement a comprehensive Hawaii Interagency Biosecurity Program.

Dexter Kishida, deputy director of the Ministry of Agriculture, who was part of the delegation, said the additional trip to New Zealand was aimed at helping lawmakers, his ministry and other agencies create stronger, smarter plans to stop the rise of invasive species.

“Otherwise we’ll just keep throwing money at CRB, LFA or whatever comes next,” Kishida said, using the acronym for coconut rhinoceros beetles and small fire ants.

Kishida said the agriculture department paid about $50,000 for the visit, which included travel for its staff, members of the legislature and two legislative staffers. Leeward Community College and the transportation, education and business departments covered travel expenses for their delegates.

Senator Donovan Dela Cruz shared what he learned from the trip: email newsletter last WednesdayThese include encouraging greater collaboration between government agencies, creating pathways to new jobs in biosecurity, and raising public awareness.

These are not new ideas, nor are they new to Hawaii, but they now have broad support from key lawmakers.

Paying the High Price of Inaction

Hawaii’s invasive species community called more than 20 years ago for the state’s first biosecurity plan to be similar to New Zealand’s.

Four years later, a delegation visited the state to learn about their methods. The Hawaii Conservation Alliance later commissioned a study of the state’s biosecurity. The resulting 22-page paper, known as the “Warren Report,” was published later that year.

It said Hawaii “pays a far higher price than necessary for the privilege (or obligation) of trading with a world where millions of organisms could not have been transported to Hawaii without human assistance.”

Paula Warren, senior policy advisor at New Zealand’s Department of Conservation, wrote the report and based her analysis on policy and interviews with government officials and civil servants.

“When asked what improvements they would make to the biosecurity system, one interviewee responded after some thought, ‘We don’t have a biosecurity system that we can improve.’ This judgment is both accurate and overly harsh,” Warren wrote.

The 2006 report reached several conclusions, identifying inadequate resources, authority and public support as the causes of Hawaii’s invasive species problems. It found that money was being wasted on inefficient or ineffective programs, in part because decisions were being made in isolation. Warren also made a long list of recommendations, such as better integrating nongovernmental invasive species organizations.

“There’s a need to recognize that biosecurity is as big a problem for public safety as terrorism, and I don’t think your government understands that.” Warren told the Honolulu Weekly in 2006:.

None of the legislators from the last visit were on duty when the report was released, and neither were most of the other state employees on the delegation. Members of the conservation and invasive species community—which handles the lion’s share of public relations and research—were also conspicuously absent from the trip.

But Carol Okada, who ran the Department of Agriculture’s Plant Quarantine Branch when Warren’s report was published in 2006, was among the delegates visiting New Zealand that year.

Okada is not currently employed by the government and is acting as a “community expert on port biosecurity,” Kishida said. intense criticism of his previous work in the departmentIt is the period that dates back to the early 2000s, when some species that continue to be a problem today were first established.

Warren wrote in his 2006 report that the time had come when the Department of Agriculture should embrace “the role of a broad biosecurity agency serving interests outside of agriculture (especially biodiversity).” Warren believed that biosecurity would grow stronger “because people want it.”

Among the species Warren warned about in his report: tiny fire ants.

Kimeona Kane, Waimanalo Neighborhood Board President, A central role in the call for better pest management in HawaiiHe said he was not familiar with Warren’s report but said questions should be asked about how it was and was not used.

“Let’s make sure we get value out of the investment of time and money that comes from these trips,” Kane said. “What did we learn here and how did we make changes? Because if we didn’t learn, it’s just a vacation.”

When he returned from New Zealand, he spoke with his state representative, Senator Chris Lee. Kane said Lee was excited about the possibility of introducing strong legislation to help Waimanalo better control invasive species.

Moving Forward with Hawaii Conservation Plan

Lawmakers appear ready to better address biosecurity in Hawaii, but New Zealand is different and its model cannot be replicated exactly.

Its biosecurity budget is 10 times larger than Hawaii’s. Its agricultural sector dwarfs Hawaii’s, with agricultural exports expected to be more than $30 billion this year. Hawaii’s agricultural sector generated about $700 million in revenue in 2022, according to the USDA’s latest count.

Dela Cruz took inspiration from various aspects of New Zealand’s food system and used them in his multimillion-dollar agricultural hub project in Central Oahu. The center is planned as a one-stop shop for everything related to food and agriculture.essentially building the infrastructure needed to revitalize the province’s agricultural economy, with the aim of replicating the project across the islands.

But Hawaii’s biosecurity won’t get the boost it needs “without significant investments in our biosecurity,” he wrote in last week’s newsletter.

Hawaii and New Zealand may be different, but “it’s more of an apples-to-apples comparison than people realize” because they’re both island communities in the Pacific that face the same sources of risk, Lee told Civil Beat.

“There’s certainly an attitude among the public that there’s nothing we can do about some of these invasive species,” the Senate transport committee chairman said. “New Zealand’s model? It proves that’s not true.”

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This story was originally published by: Honolulu Civil Tribunal and distributed in partnership with The Associated Press.