hunterbishop.com

While I find some of Mr. Singer's polemics on coqui frogs to be just this side of loony, the introduction of yet another alien species to control an established one is not something to be done lightly. We can only hope that the people at DOA do a better job vetting the species that they plan to introduce than they have done keeping alien species out. (Personally, I think their pest interception efforts are underfunded and undermanned, and not incompetent.) I don't care how carefully they think they have tested everything, there will always be unintended consequences. I have spent countless hours digging strawberry guava out of my ornamental gardens, but I am quite happy to have some at the back of my property to eat. I hope they think twice about this.

Heck, following Singer's logic pattern we should take the bras off the fruit and allow it to really flourish along with the coqui and fruit fly.

While it is true this guava is invasive another invasive species is not the answer. This plant has hard wood for methanol and fruit for ethanol. It should be seen as a resource.

Thanks Hunter for posting this. I agree with Brian about the waiwi. I love the fruit and eat it like crazy when it comes into season. The fruit is very nutritious and the wood is very hard (as in termite resistant) and could probably make some interesting shelters. I think the DOA is making a serious mistake and they have made other mistakes too. Like introducing the mongoose to eat rats when rats are nocturnal and mongoose are not. Or introducing the poisonous toad for the sugar cane and now got toads galore. I hope this is not another American screw up.

Hunter, I also want to add that Syd Singer's press release is NO KA OI (da best). He is right about the nutritional value of the waiwi fruit. I bought some acreage in Mountain View a few years ago that is choke full of waiwi trees and while they are a pain in the okole to clear away, those fruit are very addicting plus the fruit is free and untainted by fruit flies for locals like me who are willing to pick them. Can't get nutritious free fruit like that nowadays. Like I said before, DOA is making a serious mistake. They must be sitting on their brains, eh?

I talked to Syd Singer today and I feel that we should all speak out against the DOA's stupid move to release an insect that will ruin a tree that provides a very nutritious fruit and a hard wood that has so much potential for our sustainable future. Many local people go into the forest to pick maile and some of them get lost for a few days (like my mom's neighbor Wayne who they just found yesterday). I know that if the waiwi were fruiting it would provide an excellent survival food for these lost folks while they are trying to find their way out of the forest. The problem with the DOA
is that they don't even know what the long range effect would be once the waiwi is killed and all the leaves fall off exposing the forest floor to more sun light which will encourage more groundcover grasses to grow. As you all know the lava forest has a lot of pukas and you never want the grasses to cover those pukas so that when you fall in no one can ever find you.

The above comments illustrate the need for public education about invasive species in Hawai'i.

Most invasive species do not come here accidentally, but are brought by well-intentioned folk. When they have no local predators or unfavorable conditions to control their numbers, they have the potential to invade the natural world already here and cause great harm. Guava was brought here for its fruit and shade, its human carriers unaware that these trees would one day crowd out o'hia, hapu'u and kolea, producing impenetrable thickets where healthy native forest existed previously. Although you may clear most of it away on your own property, birds and pigs continue to spread its seeds elsewhere. It's one of the biggest threats to the perpetuation of native ohia forests on the Big Island.

If you care about Hawai'i keeping its native vegetation more than you care about guava jam, think carefully before you undermine scientists who are looking for a natural predator to control the guava population on this island.

With all due respect to Ms. Bidleman, can the proponents of this scale insect introduction GUARANTEE us that there won't be unintended consequences potentially worse than the waiwi? Have they done long-term studies to insure that the scale will not jump to native species once the guava is decimated? Is it really going to reduce the waiwi, or just give us ugly waiwi with scale galls? Insects evolve at much more rapid rates than more advanced, complex organisms and are amazingly adaptable. Ten years from now they might be happily sucking the sap out of the leaves of the ohia trees they are intended to save. I'm sorry to be so cynical, but I don't always trust scientists sponsored by government bureaucrats.

Brian said, "...guava is invasive ... has hard wood for methanol and fruit for ethanol. It should be seen as a resource."

Also, this was an idea (elsewhere here) for a local business.

We are looking at buying a farm in mauka Puna -- 50 acres and more than 30 acres of it is so thick with (mostly...80%?) waiwi that it is, literally, impossible to walk across it.
Soil's better than average, especially for Puna.
Good location and has some good buildings on it.
The cost of removing the waiwi poses, by far, the greatest obstacle to restore this farm land to agricultural production. BTW: other farm land in Puna we are looking at has exactly the same issue: good soil, economic-sized parcels (20 to 50 acres), and so overgrown with invasives (waiwi, albizia, socropia, ironwood, etc) as to make it very expensive to restore the land to agricultural production.

Brian,
You got that methanol and ethanol operation started yet?

Lets get something straight here. Yes, we should be concerned about our native forests but not to the point of killing a tree that has sustainable value with an insect that the scientists say might irreversibly harm other plants. What kind of stupid logic is that? I don't trust the scientists not when many of them are funded by companies that dump poisons in our food and our environment.

Waiwi wood is hardy and would make good fence posts. The waiwi trees on my property are great for holding on to when I am trying to walk across uneven lava rock or jump across cracks and pukas. I also get a whole bunch of free fruit during waiwi season and I don't make jam, I like the fruit just as it is . But what I find as being more bothersome and totally worthless are those stag horn ferns. Those ferns are not only a nuisance but could cause a fire.

James, that is why you would have to bring in a dozer to doze just the portions of land that you need and leave the rest in trees.
Trees by the way are excellent vog filters. We are going to need them more now as Pele becomes more active.

Yes, Keliipio, remove the 'bad trees' (e.g., waiwi, ironwood, guava, albizia, etc). With a bulldozer? Can do. But, the co$t! auwe! "Leave trees"? Yes, and plant some too.
"Clearing" invasive trees and bushes from land by bulldozer and/or harvest for removal is expensive.
Releasing a parasite may or may not be what is needed.
My point is that, if waiwai, albizia, ironwood, etc are such a wonderful resource that we should cherish, then I'd sure like to see someone get on with doing instead of just talking.
Environmental impact?
What is the impact of importing food because agricultural land is made inaccessible by invasive plants?

You know, I really take issue with blanket statements like the kind coming from Bett Bidleman who feel that once a tree is classified as "invasive" by the most invasive species of all, the human being, that it should be put to death without any regard to the longterm consequences of those actions. If she wants to save the Ohia, Kolea or Hapuu, why not grow those trees on her own property? I grew up in the Hawaiian Homestead neighborhood of Keaukaha in the 50s and 60s. The only fruit that we knew of as kids was whatever was growing freely around us. My family couldn't afford to buy us imported fruit like apples, grapes, etc. We ate what we found on our half acre of over grown trees like papayas, lilikoi, mountain apple, and lots and lots of guavas. We had choke guava trees. Hawaii should NEVER be importing ANY of its fruit from distant lands like South America or the North American continent. NEVER!!! Not when fuel prices are soaring and not when this island has the potential to grow ALL of our fruit. I would like to think that our forests are evolving to help us deal with a looming food crises ahead by providing us with fruit that will sustain us into the future but apparently the DOA and many others including people like Bidleman are too blind or shall I say, myopic, to see the holistic picture. But don't listen to the natives cause they couldn't possibly KNOW what they are talking about, no?