Feral Sheep
Feral Sheep
They are not the #1 cause of palila decline
In regard to the front-page article “Feds OK aerial hunting,” it doesn’t take a bird expert to know the palila birds will continue to decline or remain low on Mauna Kea even though sheep populations are at a zero count. I had been hunting on Mauna Kea on regular basis several years before the aerial shooting of sheep started in around 1976. During that time, the sheep may well have numbered over several thousand.
From my years of observations since the aerial shooting began, sheep populations have slowly declined with most of the population remaining the same during the past 10 to 15 years, which brings (my guess) the sheep count to be ranging around 100 to 200 today.
There are also no goats (zero) in any of the palila habitat areas of Mauna Kea or anywhere on the mountain and there has been none for at least 20 years, so I would have to wonder how informed or how old is the information provided to Linda Paul (president Hawaii Audubon Society) that goats are also included with sheep to be the #1 threat.
I have observed overgrown native and nonnative trees and weeds within the palila habitat area and all areas, indicating to me that there are no sheep or very few of them left in any one particular area for at least the past 15 years. Saying that the palila population has declined 66 percent in the last decade because of the sheep is simply impossible to believe. The eradication of them to zero population is like giving a death penalty to a man for a murder he didn’t commit.
I believe other factors that were never addressed, such as dryer weather and as I’ve been informed years ago from a bird breeder, loud noise from bombs and training exercise during the palila nesting periods as possible causes.
The Hawaii Audubon Society, Earth Justice and other environmental groups should not be blaming the decline on the sheep alone but instead help us to save a sport on Mauna Kea and elsewhere on the island where the main goal as a hunter, teenager and adult is learning to respect our aina, shape our life like any sport would and bond with parent, child, family and friends.
Let’s do what is pono, stop the eradication entirely or simply just keep the sheep in check and eradicate only when numbers increase.
Robert DeCoito
Hilo