10-03-2011, 08:28 AM
PROOF BY ASSERTION!
That's all your type know.
You can't even quote someone right.
All the current and former cattle ranch lands from Parker ranch on down cleared all the mamane for firewood, fence post and the heavy footed cattle damaged a whole lot. Not to mention all the fires over the years.
That was the original habitat of the palila bird. Why I get upset about this is that people only want to blame the sheep.
There is also no proof that palila birds even existed higher up on Mauna Kea. Another assumption with no proof.
Back in the 1970's rumen content studies, which were done by Biologists confirmed that the sheep diets consisted of only 2% mamane and a few percent of other plants with over 95% of their diet to be grasses.
People come here today and attribute all the damage to the sheep.That is what people see, you know. A herd of sheep by the side of the road, oh look plenty sheep in the mountains. That is just not true anymore.
I know what the mountain looked like with tens of thousands of sheep and they did produce a good tree line under the mamane but they still had a large canopy to produce seed. The tree line allowed good green grass to grow under it and helped to collect dew. The mountain was so much more green back in the 70's. The sheep had a lot of grass to eat back then.
Look today below Hali Pohaku and the slope is choked out with mamane and dead grass and brush. The ground has become ugly and the sheep are no more.
Our DLNR should have managed our lands better.
I love our birds and landscape as much as anyone.
But killing off all our sheep is just not right. There is less then 2% of the sheep left after 30 years of aerial slaughters and yet the birds are still declining.
There is tons of mamame seed I just took pictures of it this year and the trees are over burden with them. It was a dry year last year too.
As long as they spend all the money on killing sheep they will never save the papila.
They once had good fences back in the 30's up to the 60's but they never
maintained any of it. The fences worked till they started falling apart.
That is when the sheep spread all over.
After they culled the herds they could have spent some of the millions on fencing and a good management plan but no. Gov't just can't run anything for very long. Then comes the sierra club. lets sue to get them to kill all the sheep. Why didn't they help to rebuild the fences and put up secured areas first. We would have had a good thirty years of protected area by now. At least we could have had a little more data to go by.
That's all your type know.
You can't even quote someone right.
All the current and former cattle ranch lands from Parker ranch on down cleared all the mamane for firewood, fence post and the heavy footed cattle damaged a whole lot. Not to mention all the fires over the years.
That was the original habitat of the palila bird. Why I get upset about this is that people only want to blame the sheep.
There is also no proof that palila birds even existed higher up on Mauna Kea. Another assumption with no proof.
Back in the 1970's rumen content studies, which were done by Biologists confirmed that the sheep diets consisted of only 2% mamane and a few percent of other plants with over 95% of their diet to be grasses.
People come here today and attribute all the damage to the sheep.That is what people see, you know. A herd of sheep by the side of the road, oh look plenty sheep in the mountains. That is just not true anymore.
I know what the mountain looked like with tens of thousands of sheep and they did produce a good tree line under the mamane but they still had a large canopy to produce seed. The tree line allowed good green grass to grow under it and helped to collect dew. The mountain was so much more green back in the 70's. The sheep had a lot of grass to eat back then.
Look today below Hali Pohaku and the slope is choked out with mamane and dead grass and brush. The ground has become ugly and the sheep are no more.
Our DLNR should have managed our lands better.
I love our birds and landscape as much as anyone.
But killing off all our sheep is just not right. There is less then 2% of the sheep left after 30 years of aerial slaughters and yet the birds are still declining.
There is tons of mamame seed I just took pictures of it this year and the trees are over burden with them. It was a dry year last year too.
As long as they spend all the money on killing sheep they will never save the papila.
They once had good fences back in the 30's up to the 60's but they never
maintained any of it. The fences worked till they started falling apart.
That is when the sheep spread all over.
After they culled the herds they could have spent some of the millions on fencing and a good management plan but no. Gov't just can't run anything for very long. Then comes the sierra club. lets sue to get them to kill all the sheep. Why didn't they help to rebuild the fences and put up secured areas first. We would have had a good thirty years of protected area by now. At least we could have had a little more data to go by.