A Hawaii County program to fight feral chickens on the island could be coming later this year.
A pair of bills on the verge of passing the state Legislature would allocate $50,000 to each of the state’s four counties in order to develop management programs to address the growing feral chicken population — which, the bills argue, present not just a public nuisance but a legitimate public safety concern.
The measures work in tandem. House Bill 2619, a compendium of various state biosecurity measures, includes the $50,000 allocations to each county. The other, Senate Bill 2401, requires the state Department of Agriculture to work with each county to help implement the programs they develop, while requiring each county to match the funds expended by the DOA.
The upshot of this is that each county will have $100,000 to work with for their programs, with funding split 50/50 between the state and counties, said DOA Chair Sharon Hurd.
“For what it’s worth, $100,000 is a little tight,” Hurd said, adding that a $50,000 project on Oahu was able to trap only about 150 chickens.
But, Hurd added, she hopes that the counties will able to draft programs that can be implemented quickly and with measurable results within a year.
“We want to be ready to go (to receive county submissions) on July 1,” Hurd said, adding that the DOA can work to extend programs with additional funding should a program prove effective.
Hurd said the problem of feral chickens is difficult to solve, explaining that the birds don’t return to the same places to feed, and therefore are less easy to bait. While dealing with the problem is primarily the purview of the counties — save for lands owned by the state — she said it “would be nice” if there was a more concentrated effort by the state to deal with the problem.
“Growing up in Hilo, we didn’t have feral chickens,” said Hilo Rep. Chris Todd, a co-introducer of HB 2619. “There were some people who raised chickens, sure, but Kauai was the feral chicken place.”
Todd said the problem appears to have intensified over the last several years — coinciding, he noted, with a certain lapse in state biosecurity efforts over the same period — but added there is little hard data to be found about the scope of the problem.
But, Todd added, the projects funded through the bill would be a good first step in determining how big the problem is and how much resources will need to be deployed to combat it.
The bills argue that feral chickens damage native plants and residential gardens, their droppings create a health concern, and their increasing presence on and along roadways presents a growing threat to drivers. At the same time, they also acknowledge that feral roosters “crow at all times of the day and night,” a nuisance much complained about by residents.
At the same time, Todd and fellow HB 2619 co-introducer Kona Rep. Kirstin Kahaloa said the chicken problem is only a small component of the bill’s greater biosecurity efforts, which include $20 million in new DOA positions and other programs to help shore up defenses against invasive species such as the coconut rhinoceros beetle, adult specimens of which recently were found on the Big Island for the first time.
Kahaloa said the bill reinstates several components of the Clift Tsuji Act, a 2017 biosecurity bill named after the late Hilo lawmaker who developed many of its policies while serving in the state House. Because of funding lapses during COVID-19, she said, much of the Clift Tsuji Act was left unfulfilled.
“(HB 2619) is maybe the biggest bill for agriculture in the last 20 years,” Kahaloa said, adding that the chicken problem is only a small component of the measure added on by Oahu lawmakers.
“(The chickens) ebb and flow in my neighborhood,” Todd said. “Sometimes it feels like they keep the coquis in check. And then it seems like the feral cats keep the chickens in check. It’s a complicated balance.”
Both bills have left conference committees and must face one final vote in each chamber by Wednesday before going to the governor’s desk.
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
