Nov. 24—The state Department of Agriculture is moving to take legal action against a handful of “bad actors, ” nurseries that are aware they have an infestation of little fire ants but are doing nothing about it.
The state Department of Agriculture is moving to take legal action against a handful of “bad actors, ” nurseries that are aware they have an infestation of little fire ants but are doing nothing about it.
Sharon Hurd, state Board of Agriculture chair, told a state Senate informational briefing Wednesday that the department is seeking court orders to enter the properties of the offending nurseries and will seek to quarantine any infested plants.
“We know the bad actors and we’re working on it, ” Hurd said.
At the same time, a public hearing is in the works for a rule change approved by the state Legislature in February, Hurd said. As proposed, the new rule would allow the department to become more aggressive in preventing the intrastate movement of pests, including little fire ants and coconut rhinoceros beetles—two of the more alarming pest infestations.
While Hawaii island has been battling the little fire ant and its painful bites for years, it has now become a problem on Oahu, where more than 30 active sites of little fire ants are found from Kahuku to Kahala, according to the Oahu Invasive Species Committee.
Considered one of the world’s worst invasive species, the tiny ants can infest homes and yards, cause blindness in pets and damage farm crops and forests.
A coalition of state and federal agencies has battled the coconut rhinoceros beetle on Oahu for a decade, but it continues to undermine and destroy a growing number of palm trees and spread across the island and beyond—on Kauai and now Maui.
On Wednesday, state agricultural officials announced that 17 beetle larvae were discovered on a golf course in Kihei. The state plans to place traps in the area—just like it did in December 2013 at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, when the invasive beetle was first detected.
While an interim rule restricting the interisland movement of palms and other plant materials in Hawaii is now in place to help contain the destructive beetle, another interim rule covering the little fire ant won’t be ready until January. The permanent rule change will supersede the interim rules.
“Invasive species is a priority for the department, ” Hurd told the joint briefing of the Senate’s committees on Commerce and Consumer Protection, and Agriculture and Environment. “We are moving ahead on the rule-making process because we heard from the public that this is where we should be going—toward a stop movement (of infested plants ).”
Pressed by lawmakers to name the bad-actor nurseries, Hurd declined to say. She said legal counsel would advise against making the five business names public. Letters informing the nurseries of the department’s intent to take legal action were sent to them last week.
Hurd noted that one of the five bad actors—a nursery in Waimanalo—recently allowed state inspectors and treatments on its property. As a result, only 2 % of its property is still infected.
State Sen. Karl Rhoads urged Hurd to publicize the names of the bad actors to put economic pressure on them.
“People aren’t going to want to buy nursery stock from someone who has a known record of possibly giving you little fire ants, ” he said.
State Rep. Lisa Marten, whose district includes Waimanalo, also urged the department to go public on the bad actors, saying rumors about pest-infested plants threaten to hurt all of the nursery businesses in Waimanalo.
Wednesday’s hearing opened with Rep. Chris Lee (D, Kailua-Waimanalo ) playing a recording of coqui frogs in Waimanalo on Tuesday night. The deafening chorus of high-pitched chirps sounded like it was recorded in the wilds of East Hawaii island.
“It’s incumbent on all of us to really try to take the situation seriously and figure out how we can work together to end the spread of invasive species, coqui among them, ” he said.
Christy Martin of the University of Hawaii’sCoordinating Group on Alien Pest Species told lawmakers that the nursery industry and the live-plant trade are the most important pathways for the spread of pests in Hawaii and around the world. She urged the lawmakers to allocate more resources to the problem.
“Invasive species are a kind of slow-moving catastrophe—unlike a tsunami, unlike earthquakes, unlike fire. Once they enter they can be slow to have impact. And so people don’t necessarily immediately take them as serious as some of those major threats, but yet they are. In fact, they are more costly in perpetuity to each and every one of us than any of those other disasters, ” she said.
Martin said the state Department of Agriculture needs the regulations and staffing to properly address the issue and prevent the next onerous invader. Otherwise, the cost of the eventual disaster simply will be passed on to the people.
“Those residents on Hawaii island are paying to manage little fire ants, to try to get used to coqui frogs, to reduce the impact of those pests on their daily lives, ” she said. “Some costs are incalculable. They can’t use their yards. The ants come in and attack people in their beds at night.”
