D.C. Duff y and C. Martin Duff y, D.C. and C. Martin. Cooperative Natural Resource and Invasive Species Management in Hawaiʽi Cooperative natural resource and invasive species management in Hawai'i D.C. Duff y1 and C. Martin2 1Pacifi c Cooperative Studies Unit, Department of Botany, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, 3190 Maile Way, Honolulu HI 96822, USA. <dduff [email protected]>. 2Pacifi c Cooperative Studies Unit/Coordinating Group on Alien Pest Species, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, 3190 Maile Way, Honolulu HI 96822, USA. Abstract From the arrival of Polynesians before 1200 AD until Western contact in 1778, Hawaiian land use and resource distribution were centred on the “ahupuaʻa” system of watershed-based management areas that made their inhabitants nearly self-suffi cient. Those units were grouped into larger regions, each called a “moku,” led by lower chiefs who were in turn governed by the high chief or king of each island. While societal and environmental taboo or “kapu” were enforced from above, day to day neighbourhood cooperation served to protect resources, produce food, and sustain up to one million people before Western contact. Following the arrival of Europeans, land and resource management, and governance based on native Hawaiian core beliefs, were replaced by a centralised Western market economy. Modern land ownership, agency mandates and legal jurisdictions provide artifi cial walls that keep people from moving, but do not constrain invasive species, nor are they eff ective for managing public trust resources such as water or native species. Over time government and conservation organisations have come to view decentralised cooperation as a key to protecting the 50% of Hawaiian terrestrial, native habitat that persists. Current cooperative eff orts serve to protect watersheds via watershed partnerships, and to detect and address invasive species through invasive species committees on each island. These and other projects are facilitated by the University of Hawaii’s Pacifi c Cooperative Studies Unit, which plays a unique role in coordinating the use of private and government grant dollars to hire and manage 460 conservation staff in cooperative conservation projects state-wide. Keywords: ahupuaʻa, invasive species, cooperative, watershed partnerships, invasive species committees INTRODUCTION The state of Hawaiʻi comprises eight large islands, seven sources such as fl ightless birds and land crabs, agriculture of them inhabited. The island of Oʻahu, home to nearly became more important, requiring communal investment one million of the state’s 1.4 million residents, is the seat in infrastructure such as fi sh ponds and irrigation systems of the central state government (<http://fi les.hawaii.gov/ (Kirch, 1985; Paulay & Starmer, 2011). Land was dbedt/economic/databook/db2016/db2016.pdf>). Each of often divided into mountain-to-sea pie-shaped wedges the islands has diff erent land use and economic histories. (ahupua‘a) with larger units called moku on each island. While most islands have a few major land owners, almost Although trading occurred, ahupuaʻa tended to be internally all the islands are currently mosaics of federal, state, balanced systems (Andrade, 2008). Ahupua‘a were county, and private properties, making it diffi cult to mount administered by konohiki, resource managers appointed eff ective responses to invasive alien species (IAS), as these by the aliʻi (rulers) of large districts or entire islands recognise neither property boundaries nor jurisdictions, or (Gonschor & Beamer, 2014). There was also a division to manage public trust resources such as native species, between the realm of man (wao kanaka), the agricultural habitats, and water resources (Ikuma, et al., 2002; Rago and community areas, and the realm of gods (wao akua), & Sugano, 2015). This paper presents case studies that the upper forests where entry was granted only to specially explore how Hawaiʻi has responded to conservation trained individuals following strict protocols. While tenure challenges through cooperative eff orts by both institutions of the aliʻi was subject to the political winds of fortune, the and individuals. The list is illustrative, not exhaustive. residents (maka‘ainana) of the ahupuaʻa were permanent. Together with the konohiki, they made decisions about Natural history and the Hawaiian period use of local resources ranging from montane forests and irrigated uplands down to coastal ponds and inshore waters Hawaiʻi is one of the most isolated archipelagos on the and these decisions were regulated by social/religious planet. From still-forming Hawaiʻi Island, the archipelago strictures (kapu) (Mueller-Dombois, 2007). progresses in age through the main islands, to the islets and atolls of Papahānaumokuākea National Monument, The arrival of humans greatly increased the rate of and the submerged Emperor Seamounts, representing 70 species’ arrivals, either deliberately for food or other million years of passage over a tectonic hot spot (Heliker, economic or cultural advantages, or as accidentals, 1989). Before the arrival of humans, new species became incidental to travel and commerce. The fi rst settlers established every 175,000–15,000,000 years (Ziegler, traveling east from Polynesia brought about 30 plant 2002). Isolation and subsequent adaptation to a wide species and several animals, including Polynesian pigs (Sus variety of ecological zones and habitats over millions scrofa) and Pacifi c rats (Rattus exulans), some perhaps as of years produced a stunning biodiversity vulnerable to stowaways. outside perturbations (Carlquist, 1974; Duff y & Vargas, 2017). Despite the capacity of Hawaiian society to mobilise large numbers of people at the island or moku level to Polynesians settled in Hawaiʻi by 1200 AD (Kirch, engage in major community eff orts such as building heiau 2011; Wilmshurst, et al., 2011). Initial populations were (temples) and fi shponds (Kirch, 1985), we have no direct small and the fi rst Hawaiians subsisted as hunter-gathers information on how pre-contact Hawaiians reacted to the with limited agriculture. Even these initial actions had a impacts of invasive species. For example, archaeological massive eff ect on biodiversity in a terrestrial ecosystem evidence suggests that Pacifi c rats caused major changes that had not known mammalian predators. With increasing in lowland ecosystems by eating tremendous amounts of human populations and the extinction of terrestrial protein seeds, damaging or killing plants, and preying on ground- In: C.R. Veitch, M.N. Clout, A.R. Martin, J.C. Russell and C.J. West (eds.) (2019). Island invasives: scaling 497 up to meet the challenge, pp. 497–502. Occasional Paper SSC no. 62. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN. Island invasives: scaling up to meet the challenge. Ch 3B Strategy: Collaboration nesting birds and other species (Athens, 2009). Kepelino More than 100 plant species arrived in the 60 years (1932: 86) reported oral traditions that rats were a major following Cook’s arrival (Nagata, 1985). More recently problem for sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) crops in Loope & Kraus (2009) reported that, during 1995–2003, the lowlands. The aliʻi organised rat hunting contests, 89 species per year became established. To date, over suggesting opportunity, if not necessity (Athens, 2009; 10,000 plant species have been introduced for cultivation Handy & Handy, 1972). in the islands (Imada, et al., 2005). Birds and mammals were introduced for hunting and for human entertainment Post-European arrival (Walker, 1967; Long, 1971). Accidental introduction and deliberate smuggling of herptiles have been a problem, The arrival of Captain Cook in 1778 led to rapid with some becoming invasive (McKeown, 1996; Kraus changes, including the introduction of diseases such as & Cravalho, 2001; Kraus, 2009). Aquatic species have smallpox to which Hawaiians had little resistance, and arrived as deliberate introductions for fi sheries, through the introduction of Western ideals and religion that muted the aquaculture/pet/aquarium trade, in ballast water and as Hawaiian language, culture, and beliefs (Busnell, 1993). biofouling (Eldredge & Smith, 2001; Brasher, et al., 2006; Just seventy years later, the Great Mahele (land division) of Carlton & Eldredge, 2009). Finally, pathogens have been 1848 placed two-thirds of the crown lands in private hands, a continuing problem for both humans and the rest of the the majority non-Hawaiian, as most Hawaiians could not biota since European contact (e.g. Wilbar, 1947; Warner, conceive of a world where they needed to claim rights to 1968; Bushnell, 1993). the land they had always lived on. This alienation of land further weakened the traditional societal structure and the Responding to alien invasive species kapu restrictions that controlled use of natural resources (Chinen, 1958; LaCroix & Roumasset, 1990). The Kingdom of Hawaiʻi enacted the fi rst biosecurity measure for the islands, banning the import of coff ee Land ownership and political power became beans to prevent alien disease from aff ecting the islands’ concentrated in the hands of the “Big Five” corporations own crops (Holt, 1996). Later, import of sugar cane and which were primarily involved in an export economy other grasses was restricted because they might bring centred on sugar production (Dorrance & Morgan, in new diseases and pests of the dominant agricultural 2000). These shifts eventually led to the overthrow of crop (Territory of Hawaiʻi, 1941). By 1975, deliberate the Monarchy (Kame‘eleihiwa, 1992) and the resulting introductions