Endangered Hawaiian Hawk may be De-Listed

[Mitzi M]

The 'Io, or Hawaiian Hawk is currently listed as an endangered species with an estimated population of around 3,000. But now USFWS wants to de-list the 'Io and remove it's endangered species status and protections. USFWS beleives that the 'Io's numbers are now sufficient to insure its survival.

The hawk is one of only 2 native raptors, the other being the Pueo, or Hawaiian Owl. The 'Io previously lived on other islands but has become extinct on all but the Big Island. It lives and nests in older forests and can be found over most of Puna.

It's hard to fathom what the hurry may be to de-list so many species in recent years when the rate of extinction is rising ever faster. Perhaps they are inconvenient to the path of "progress".

I wholehartedly oppose removing the 'Io from the endangered species list and I hope you do too. As many have discussed in the Puna CDP forum, there are 40,000 lots out there that someone, someday is probably going to develop. When that happens we will lose a lot of prime 'Io habiat. When you consider that they once lived on all the major islands and now live only here, the number 3,000 sounds even less like anything that could be called "secure".

USFWS will take public comment on the de-listing proposal for 2 months, ending Oct. 6th. Please take a moment to help protect the graceful 'Io. You can send comments to:

http://www.regulations.gov

You can find more about this where I first read about it on Jan Tenbruggencate's blog:

http://raisingislands.blogspot.com/

Aloha,
Mitzi

[loffelkopffl]

the republicans have hated the enviromental protections for the past 35 years, this is another gift to them from the bush regime,allowing department heads to make decisions on the endangered species instead of being reviewed by those pesty scientists

[Kapohocat]

Mitzi - Any ideas of the chances of the repopulating the other islands before being removed from the list?

The Hawk is truly amazing - we had one come and sit on our tree near the deck for a few days. Everyone said it could not have been the hawk but we had pics!! (Maybe they were lost on their way back to HA!)

[Liz]

We have the 'Io behind our house, too. It's so cool to watch the young ones being coaxed out of the nest by the parents. And when they finally take that leap of faith and FLY for the first time, you should hear the happy commotion!
Every time another one hatches out and learns to fly and hunt on its own, we cheer and celebrate their survival.

I hope these wonderful little raptors have enough numbers and habitat to continue to thrive.

aloha, Liz

"The best things in life aren't things."

[DickWilson]

Sent a comment to the link above. Hope it does some good, but until King George is gone, Science will continue to be ignored and the environment raped. That moron is proof positive of the desirability of retroactive birth control.

dick wilson

[DickWilson]

quote:

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Originally posted by DickWilson

Sent a comment to the link above. Hope it does some good, but until King George is gone, Science will continue to be ignored and the environment raped. That moron is proof positive of the desirability of retroactive birth control. Someone please get busy and invent time travel.

dick wilson

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dick wilson

[Jared I]

Not only do Republicans eat Hawaii's native raptors, but they brought down the Hindenburg, hung Christ on the cross, gave us American Idol and built tiny electronic devices that have been placed in everyone since Ben Franklin.

I seriously don't believe in govt intervention, only when people value a resource will it be important enough to them to "save". Maybe we should encourage more hunters and fisherman into the field, because their permit dollars are huge resources for wildlife; look at Ducks Unlimited.

While I don't know if I support the removal from the endangered species list they are protected under the US raptor protection act. My question is since there are 3k hawks, what has the govt done to re-introduce them to other habitats and improve their sit-rep. Hell look what they did with the CA condor, if they can bring them back from like 70 what could be done with 3k? Maybe we need more falconers to raise domestic stock to be released in the wild.

Now lets get to the heart of the matter, lets spay and neuter anyone found in the harrassing or distrubing these hawks.

[DickWilson]

I don't have a problem with Republicans, being basically on myself. My problem is with ignoring good science and endangering species that are struggling. His highness doesn't think there is any danger to polar bears either. 3K hawks is not a huge number and what reason is there to remove the protection? If its not broke, don't fix it.

dick wilson

[Carey]

In one of my biology courses last year, the predicament of a species that has had a population bottleneck (when the population gets very low) was explored... one of the big things to consider is that the Hawaiian Hawk now has potentially far less gentic diversity than it did before.

Even with a population that some think is OK, that population may be much more vulnerable to disease or habitat change than the original population... that is one of the reason to keep protection on the species....

One of the reasons to down grade the protection from 'endangered' to 'threatened' would be to have critical habitat resources for another species... that is one of the problems with our endangered species protection, we have so few resources available for the species, and many of the species on the list have had no work done to improve their status... the bigger 'top of the food chain' species (esp. the 'poster species' that look 'good') have had more resources devoted to them.

Just some thoughts to both sides of the issue.

[Kelena]

Jared,

When you say you don't believe in "government intervention" you are saying that you do not believe in the right of we, the people, to agree to take action for the common benefit. Without government (i.e., us), the Soviet Union would have landed on the moon before us, the Bald Eagle would have gone the way of the buffalo, and you would be sucking up DDT with your tomatoes.

Dick: True conservatives want to conserve the environment as well. That's why when we were kids, they called it "conservation" and not "environmental activism". Some of my best friends are Republicans. But the party has been taken over by corporations that have no allegiance to this country. They prey on people's emotions (look out, gay people marrying!), so they can lower wages, destroy unions (the only power employees have), and suck resources from a country until it is dry. Then they move one. These forces are unamerican.

Hawaii is small enough where we can actually see the immediate results of our actions --and inaction. Love you all! Ciao!