hunterbishop.com

Puna resident Sid Singer wrote last month in Kauai's The Garden Isle newspaper about the folly of continuing efforts to eradicate coqui frogs.  In the article and on his Web site, CHIRP , Singer says the problem with coqui is our attitudes toward them, not the frogs themselves, which are here to stay and harmless to the environment. Singer also says attempts to eradicate the noisy frogs harm the environment more than the frogs themselves.

Singer never really got a fair shake on the Big Island with his against-the grain approach to the coqui and couldn't even get a review of his book in local media, perhaps because there wasn't enough space in the papers for the impossibly long title: "Panic in Paradise: Invasive Species Hysteria and the Hawaiian Coqui Frog War (Environmentalism Gone Mad!)."

But walking around Saturday's Puna Open House you could see that a lot of resources are being applied to coqui control. Yet the frog populations continue to grow and there seems to be no stopping them. Government officials and volunteers are blanketing areas with large amounts of expensive caffeine and lime and other proposed solutions but the critters keep coming back.

The most disturbing new coqui theory was being advanced by Leilani Estates' resident Jon Olson. Have you noticed a few chirpers starting a little earlier than sunset in the evening? Or maybe a few still chirping past daybreak if they weren't lucky the night before? Olson says these frogs are learning that they needn't fear the light as they have been conditioned to do where daytime predators would quickly devour them. They don't have that problem here, however, and when this gets around among the coquis, look out. Their calls could become a 24/7 thing in Hawaii and not just a nighttime nuisance.

So I'm starting to think more like Sid Singer even though the forest around my house is thick with coqui. Better to embrace them than go mad trying to kill them. Cease fire. The coqui have won.