Lloyd Loope

Haleakala National Park, Research Scientist, and National Biological Survey

Bold and comprehensive national and international strategies for dealing with invasions are needed, but often, it is activity at the local level that determines success. Loope tells the following story of a successful response to an invasion of rabbits in Haleakala National Park on Maui, Hawaii. Until 1990, Loope and his colleagues in the National Park Service were involved in little or no community outreach and had no contact with other agencies on Maui. In fact, they felt they had little in common with the state agencies; Forestry and Wildlife had introduced the axis deer to Maui in the 1960s and were quietly watching this known destroyer of rainforests reproduce and spread. There were other instances of neglect by state agencies, and their attitude seemed to be that biological control was the only acceptable method of dealing with invading species. But events in 1990 marked a turning point for the National Park staff in their relations with the public and the other agencies.

In July of 1990, six rabbits were reported at a camping area in the park. An initial investigation confirmed that rabbits occurred throughout an area covering 60 acres. Once established, rabbits would be even harder to get rid of than goats. Eradication of the rabbits was declared the #1 priority of the Park Service and a rush order was made for rabbit snares.

As they hurried to get an effective control program underway, they worried about how to control the rabbits without dispersing them or attracting adverse public reaction. After closing the campground temporarily and shooting the rabbits with silenced rifles, they quickly erected a fence, filed an abbreviated environmental assessment, and issued a press release. This was such a sensitive issue with the press and public that they put some energy into communicating with the press. The results were very successful as the story made the front page of the papers, the articles were consistently positive, and a ground swell of support came from the public.

This support led to the source of the rabbits, an individual who released six rabbits when he got tired of them and innocently decided to set them free. About 1500 snares were put out and 100 rabbits were caught. In May 1991, ten months later, the last rabbit in the park was caught. Public reports of sitings were key to the rapid success. People reported free roaming rabbits outside the park too. Rabbit establishment on the Hawaiian islands is a time bomb waiting to go off, but so far it hasn't happened. Rabbits have not established at low elevations because dogs keep them under control. But away from human habitation, where there are no dogs, rabbits could still become a problem in the future. There is also a problem with people releasing cats, but the rabbit story helped educate the public on Maui about the dangers of releasing exotic animals. Based on the rate of reproduction, if nothing was done, after five years there would have been about 14 million rabbits.

A Miconia calvescens invasion surfaced as soon as the rabbit problem calmed down. Miconia is a neotropical tree that has taken over the island of Tahiti and has an incipient invasion in virtually identical habitat on Maui. They first noticed a tree on the roadside near a botanical garden about five miles outside the National Park. They soon learned of six populations and thousands of individuals, some up to 35 feet high. State agencies jumped in to help. They used a "wanted" poster prepared through interagency cooperation and publicized the problem through newspaper articles to inform the public and give credibility to the effort.

All of these methods were successful and by late 1992, Miconia was finally placed on the state's noxious weed list. Landowners as well as volunteers cooperated in the eradication effort and 20,000 plants (mostly seedlings) were removed over a couple of years. Concern had been stirred up and in August of 1991, a local group formed to lobby to ban this family of plants from the Hawaiian islands and carry out control work. All the agencies got together on this and the Hawaiian legislature appropriated funds for the control effort. In January and February of 1994, helicopter spraying was used to keep trees from fruiting. A committee got agencies to do their job of monitoring and control.

The Park Service is now involved in cooperative efforts against two official noxious weeds: fountain grass and ivy-fruited gourd, and are also involved in three other potentially highly invasive species: pampas grass, mullein, and German ivy.

Formal efforts now underway are led by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Nature Conservancy to identify gaps in the legal/quarantine/control system and close them. These efforts began in 1991 and are expected to culminate this year with the completion of a statewide Alien Species Action Plan with 30-40 organizations involved. A key provision will be a highly publicized annual report to monitor progress. The main barrier to the success of programs that rely on interagency cooperation and community involvement is lack of financial resources; the commitment is there as well as the knowledge of what needs to be done.

Three principles emerge from these stories:

1. Any program, especially one involving detection and elimination of alien species, will not succeed without committed individuals at the grassroots level, and interagency and interpersonal coordination, cooperation and bonding.
2. If an agency creates a healthy climate for employees by clearly defining objectives rather than dictating specifics, and by giving reasonable support to a program's best efforts, even those that are somewhat unorthodox, good things can happen.
3. 3 Public education is important and is possible. The press can be extremely helpful in getting the message out, especially with reporters with a track record of getting the story right.

Discussion

Dr. Loope thinks interagency task forces can be important, especially because agencies can sometimes have conflicting agendas. Local support is very helpful in eradication efforts. People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) raises money by attacking The Nature Conservancy's programs to eradicate invading species, and bad publicity can be very destructive for such programs.

Miconia, marmosets, and other harmful invaders are not yet on the noxious lists, so "black lists" are not working completely. The "dirty list" idea is fine but we have to get all the dangerous species on the list in a timely way. We could lower the presumption to put things on the dirty list, or raise the presumption to get things on a clean list, but they're not equivalent, according to Mark Miller. Dirty lists work but they have to be more comprehensive than they are. Clean lists have been problematic when tried.

A problem with all the current tree planting efforts is that many groups are planting invader species. Australia had proposed that potential importers must go through the routine process of testing and pay for it.

Loope says that the purpose/mandate of the National Park Service is to look at community effects of removing feral animals such as goats and pigs, to look at the biology and status of rare and endangered plant species, and to look at individual pest species and the technologies and strategies for controlling them.