Category Archives: Scenes

Small Asian mongoose

A small Asian mongoose
Here is a great candidate for exhibit A in ‘good intentions gone wrong in Hawaii.’ Back in the late 1800’s, rising rat numbers on the Big Island were causing concern, especially among sugar plantation owners. I mean, nobody wants rats around. They bite. They carry disease. They breed like crazy. They kill native birds and eat their eggs. They’re just generally nasty and a menace.

So the plantation owners brought in the small Asian mongoose (Herpestes javanicus) to control the rat population. What could possibly go wrong? Well, for starters, mongooses are diurnal, operating mostly during the day. Rats are nocturnal, active at night. So apart from the twilight hours, never the twain shall meet. In consequence, mongooses had next to no effect on the rat population. The plan was dead on arrival. Still, no harm done, right?

Not exactly. Since the mongooses weren’t subsisting on a diet of fat, juicy rats, they needed something else to eat. And one of the many things on their menu was native bird eggs. The net result was that, instead of eliminating rats, the mongoose extended the problems they caused to 24 hours a day. The effect on native birds in particular, was especially damaging. Kaua’i has a far greater abundance of birds than the Big Island, in large part because it is still, theoretically, mongoose-free.

In Hawaii, mongooses are the poster animals for the devastation wrought by invasive species because, well, they bite, they carry disease, they breed like crazy, they kill native birds and eat their eggs. In fact, they’re just generally nasty and a menace.

Here on the Big Island, mongooses are most often seen scooting across highways. A generous scattering of squashed corpses attests to those that didn’t make it.

For more information about the small Asian mongoose, go to instanthawaii.com/cgi-bin/hawaii?Animals.mongoose.

Signs: Flying shark attack?

A 'shark sighted' sign on the fence at Upolu airport.

Last September, a 13-foot tiger shark attacked a spear fisherman off Upolu Point in North Kohala. Luckily he had friends there and they got him to hospital. En route, he posted photos of his serious wounds on Facebook!

Usually, when there’s a shark attack, nearby beaches are closed. In this case, it’s a somewhat remote area with no beaches so there were no closures. But any time there’s an attack or even a reported sighting, these ‘Shark Sighted – Keep Out” signs are posted. What I particularly liked in this case was that the sign was attached to the fence at Upolu Airport (which is no more than a lightly-used landing strip). Was this something new from the sharks? An air attack?

In fairness, there’s really no better place to post such a sign and the dirt road that runs alongside the fence is the one most people use when heading toward the coast. But I like to imagine that some tourist came by and wondering whether some shark had flown in in this instance.

The sign blew away within a couple of days by which time I expect the shark was also many miles away. Or perhaps not. Dun dun dun dun …

For more information about the shark attack off Upolu Point, go to westhawaiitoday.com/news/local-news/shark-attacks-man-upolu-point.

 

The planned Thirty Meter Telescope site on Mauna Kea

Thirty Meter Telescope site on Mauna Kea
This is where the planned Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) is supposed to be built. I say ‘supposed to’ because the project is currently going in reverse. Construction should have started in April of last year, but protests derailed that. Then two court decisions late last year mean the permitting process has to start again. As it stands right now, The TMT people have said they need approved permits by early next year. In the meantime, alternative sites are being checked out, in case things don’t come together.

Personally, I don’t think the telescope will be built here. The protesters aren’t going to go away, I don’t think there’s the will in Hawaii officialdom to get it done, and I don’t think the TMT people want to do what it will take, which would leave them looking like the bad guys running roughshod over Hawaiian cultural practices.

It’s more complicated than this of course, but if I were a betting man, I know where my money would go.

How green is my valley?

Lush foliage on the east side of the Big Island, Hawaii.
The north and east sides of the Big Island get more rain than the west – a lot more rain. Much of that area gets 100 inches and up. A good chunk of it gets more than 200 inches. By contrast, there are areas on the west coast that get less than 10 inches of rain a year. Two of the driest parts of the island are the summits of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, which also get less than 10 inches. That’s because they’re mostly up above the clouds.

The east side’s rain tends to be of the tropical variety – intense downpours that don’t necessarily last long. Several inches can fall in the space of half an hour. Flash floods are a threat all over the island. Those heavy rains falling up on the hills can channel down west side gullies.

Another result of all that rain is that the foliage is luxuriantly tropical: towering trees and shrubs, extravagantly large leaves, and vines with everything. This scene is on the coast near the Hawaiian Tropical Botanical Garden north of Hilo.

For more information about Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden, go to htbg.com.