10-05-2024, 08:31 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-05-2024, 09:02 PM by Olohana 1790.)
~How Herbert C. Shipman Saved the Nene from Extinction~
July 6, 1971 interview with Herbert C. Shipman (1892-1976)
by Kathy Allen
Kea’au in Puna district East Hawaii Island
below is the ‘how he saved the Nene from extinction’ chunk in middle of interview.
ps. I added the info in [brackets]
A: This is kind of changing the subject in a way, perhaps, but you're in nature right now so it makes me think of that nene. What made you aware that the nene was becoming extinct?
HS: I just knew it.
A: You just knew it?
HS: Well, you see, the Robert Hinds--Puuwaawaa [Kona side] and now the Dillinghams-Carlsmiths have [bought] their place--Puuwaawaa Ranch-- and they [the nenes] were all around the house there and they nested in the garden and they were the only ones I knew of left. There used to be flocks of them on Mauna Loa but I think it was mainly wild pigs and hunting that depleted those flocks.
A: Yes, so you must be a hunter because you'd be . . .
HS: No. No. No. I'm not interested in killing birds and things.
A: No. I mean hunting goats or whatever people hunt here on this island.
HS: No, no. And they used to go up and--that was before 1900 --people would come back. There were just eight or ten nene [allowed by law] for eating, you see.
My mother [Mele Kahiwa’aiali’i Johnson Shipman] had had a tame one. We lived out where the tree nursery is and she used to ride horseback into town
and the nene always used to accompany her--fly--and then, of course, there were hitching posts all along the sidewalks and if she tied up her horse the nene stayed right by the hitching post with the horse. And then a man shot it. My father [William H. Shipman] knew who had shot it but he didn't tell my mother for years and she finally found out. Do you remember the Ashfords--Judge Ashford in Honolulu? You probably heard of him.
A: I’ve heard of the name but I don't know him.
HS: Huron was the one son. It was Mrs. Ashford's brother--his name was Hugh Robertson--that shot this animal [the nene] and somebody told him afterwards it was my mother's pet nene.
A: I guess he felt badly about that.
SH: And then Harry Patton, he was the cashier for the First Bank of Hilo . . .
A: That's P-A-T-T-0-N isn't it?
HS: P-A-T-T-0-N, yes. The son's still living and the daughter. Gilbert Patton and Eleanor.
And Mrs. Hind gave him a pair [of nene] and I asked her for a pair and she gave me a pair. And that was about I guess 1918. There's an article in the National Geographic that will give all that. I've forgotten what month. [Nov. 1966; Vol. 128, No. 5]
A: Oh, is there?
HS: Yes, with illustrations. A very, very good article.
A: Quite awhile ago, was this?
HS: Yes.
So she gave me a pair and about that time I moved out to Keaau. That was in 1919.
A: 1919 you moved to Keaau?
HS: Keaau, yes. And we had good success with them. I think at that time, I don't know, the Hinds had lost all of theirs. They had these big water tanks there and the birds used to go swimming in the water tanks and Mr. Robert Hind had rafts in every tank so that they could get on the raft to take off and fly out, you see. And for some reason or other, after Mr. Hind died, Leighton, the oldest son, he removed all the rafts and most of them were drowned
A: Oh. They had no place to rest?
HS: No place to take off from. Anyhow, we had a drought, especially in Waimea, and Mr. Patton, he being a ‘blue nose’, you know, a Nova Scotian and a banker, he was very careful.
He had to buy Los Angeles lettuce and he figured he just couldn't afford to buy lettuce for this pair of geese so he asked me if I would like them. Well, I just jumped at the chance. I didn't tell him that they'd eat honohono and grass and stuff like that because I wanted the geese. (Kathy laughs) So with the four geese, I built--or we built--the flock up to forty-three.
And then we lost a number of them in the tidal wave.
A: 1946?
HS: 1946, yes. They were out on the pond [at Shipman’s makai beach house, near Haena on E.Puna coast], you see, swimming and the big wave came over and banged them down and they drowned.
A: Oh, you got hit out that way too.
HS: Oh yes, really hit. And it came up into the second story of the makai house.
It was that high. It was twenty-seven feet high right there.
A: Gracious. Where were you at the time that struck?
HS: I was up at Ainahou, another place we have that we're giving up.
[their ranch 1 mile west of Chain of Craters Rd. In mid HVNP 3,000’ elev.]
A: Is that A-I-N-A-H-0-U?.
HS: H-0-U in Kau. Yes, right in the middle of the National Park. Now we're giving it up because of the volcano, but we’ll get to that later. Anyhow, I think that [tsunami] reduced us down to about thirteen [nenes].
[referring to a lava flow] . . . across our road, from the Chain of Craters' Road in, about a mile away from the house and on the upper side.
[this would be the 2,000 foot tall fountaining Mauna Ulu eruption of 1969-74].
HS: And we've moved out all the furniture. I had a nice house there. I like it very
much but we've moved everything out of the house and taken it down to Keaau. But the National Park will probably take it up.
A: Is it in the National Park?
HS: Right. Surrounding. Six thousand acres. And now the National Park may purchase land. It had to be given to them before. And improvements. So they'll probably take it off our hands.
A: In other words they'll . . .
HS: Reimburse us. We own all the improvements on the land, you see.
Water. We have about something over 900,000 gallons storage in mostly steel tanks. Then we moved all the nene from Keaau up to Ainahou because up there there're very few mongoose. And, you see, when geese nest and the eggs hatch, the parent birds lose their flight feathers so they can't fly, so they're at the mercy of wild pigs and dogs or anything like that. And then they don't grow their flight feathers again until the offspring are able to fly.
A: Isn't that unusual?
HS: It is. I believe other geese are the same way.
And then, oh, before World War II, Peter Scott, who runs the Slimbridge Wild Fowl Trust in Gloustershire in England, he wrote to me and wanted to get some eggs. Well for some reason or other I didn't answer his letter--I don't know how many years--and one day, going through the file, I found it. So I wrote to him: "This is in answer to your letter of certain-certain date," (laughter) which was almost ten years. So I told him… if he would send a man out here I'd give him a pair [of nene]. So he did.
He sent this Mr. Yieland, I think it was--and he was to take them back. It's almost impossible to distinguish the sexes without a physical examination. You have to use a local anaesthetic and it's quite a procedure. So when he was ready to go--he stayed down here about three weeks and he helped a lot in the Pohakuloa raising of geese, the nene--
I asked the old Japanese man that had been taking care of all these geese for -the best pair.
So he picked out the pair and Mr. Yieland didn’t make a physical examination and they took them back to England. He took them by train as far as New York, then they were flown across the Atlantic and he went by boat. Well anyhow, they got there safely and it was in the
late summer and--I forget, it must of been about October or November--about nine o'clock one night, the wireless here rang up and said they had a wire from England for me, would I take it, and I said, "Yes." And it was sort of to the effect, "Would it be possible to secure the loan of a male nene as both of ours are laying." (laughter) So I telephoned to this Mr. Smith who was with the United States Bird Life and he had his own plane and I rang him up, told him he'd better come up the next morning in his plane and we'd have a male bird ready for him. And so he came up and then I got communication with Pan American, which has always been very cooperative, and they got that bird back to England in, I think, about five days after I got the wire.
A: How about that. That's good time.
HS: Yes. Forgotten how much it cost. It wasn't cheap though. And from that, up to the present time, the Wild Fowl Trust has raised and distributed all over Europe something over 50 offspring from that trio. And I don't know how they did it. With us, they mate for life. But with them--I didn't know if it was the morals in England or what--
(laughter) that they got this male goose to take care of both females. Both of them had fertile eggs. I wrote to Peter Scott, asked him if it was environment or what but he never answered that part of the letter. (laughter)
He'd been out here and visited and we've been there two or three times. And just lately he conducted a tour of the Antarctic. His father was Commander [Robert Falcon] Scott that was lost, I think down at the South Pole. And he's a very good friend of ours--a wonderful person.
Last year, when we were in London, we went to the annual banquet of the Wild Fowl Trust. That's the third time I attended and just happened to be there at the time;
it wasn't planned.
And it'd been sending offspring to Maui but I telephoned there last year and told them I thought they were wasting nene because I was talking on the telephone to the game warden there and they've only found empty nests.
A: Oh!
HS: See, they have wild dogs in the crater I believe and, heavens, sometimes they send fifty out and so they've discontinued it. I think maybe this fall they may send them to Lowell Dillingham for Puuwaawaa, because I gave them what I had left.
About five, I guess. And this year they've raised seven from those I gave them last year. And Wendell Carlsmith and Lowell Dillingham are very much interested so I think we'll get the Wild Fowl Trust to send them to them.
A: You say that Lowell Dillingham and Wendell Carlsmith now have the Puuwaawaa Ranch?
HS: Yeh.
A: That was the Hind ranch.
HS: Yes. Government land. And some of the ones that have been let go from Pohakuloa have taken up residence at Puuwaawaa [Kona side]. They've been attracted by the ones we gave them, you see.
A: Uh huh. Well, I would think that would be a good area for them to hide in.
HS: Well, that's where they originated. I haven't heard the boys say about sighting. There's been a flight of them. They spend the night at PuuOo Ranch [Mauna Kea] and daytime they go back to Mauna Loa. And they sighted forty-eight one day. They come over in the evening and go back in the morning. They cross the Saddle Road.
A: That's their migratory path, I guess?
HS: Yes. And the web in their feet is much smaller than the regular goose and the claws are much sharper. This developed, I guess, from being on the lava flows.
…the picture of two that Mr. Carlson [took]. He took a picture of a couple of them in the wild up on Hualalai. Ones that had been released because you can see the bands on their legs.
A: Oh. Now …
HS: Now, to go back on this ancestry business.
A: Yes, please. (chuckles).
1917
free gay pix
1886
s all photos
July 6, 1971 interview with Herbert C. Shipman (1892-1976)
by Kathy Allen
Kea’au in Puna district East Hawaii Island
below is the ‘how he saved the Nene from extinction’ chunk in middle of interview.
ps. I added the info in [brackets]
A: This is kind of changing the subject in a way, perhaps, but you're in nature right now so it makes me think of that nene. What made you aware that the nene was becoming extinct?
HS: I just knew it.
A: You just knew it?
HS: Well, you see, the Robert Hinds--Puuwaawaa [Kona side] and now the Dillinghams-Carlsmiths have [bought] their place--Puuwaawaa Ranch-- and they [the nenes] were all around the house there and they nested in the garden and they were the only ones I knew of left. There used to be flocks of them on Mauna Loa but I think it was mainly wild pigs and hunting that depleted those flocks.
A: Yes, so you must be a hunter because you'd be . . .
HS: No. No. No. I'm not interested in killing birds and things.
A: No. I mean hunting goats or whatever people hunt here on this island.
HS: No, no. And they used to go up and--that was before 1900 --people would come back. There were just eight or ten nene [allowed by law] for eating, you see.
My mother [Mele Kahiwa’aiali’i Johnson Shipman] had had a tame one. We lived out where the tree nursery is and she used to ride horseback into town
and the nene always used to accompany her--fly--and then, of course, there were hitching posts all along the sidewalks and if she tied up her horse the nene stayed right by the hitching post with the horse. And then a man shot it. My father [William H. Shipman] knew who had shot it but he didn't tell my mother for years and she finally found out. Do you remember the Ashfords--Judge Ashford in Honolulu? You probably heard of him.
A: I’ve heard of the name but I don't know him.
HS: Huron was the one son. It was Mrs. Ashford's brother--his name was Hugh Robertson--that shot this animal [the nene] and somebody told him afterwards it was my mother's pet nene.
A: I guess he felt badly about that.
SH: And then Harry Patton, he was the cashier for the First Bank of Hilo . . .
A: That's P-A-T-T-0-N isn't it?
HS: P-A-T-T-0-N, yes. The son's still living and the daughter. Gilbert Patton and Eleanor.
And Mrs. Hind gave him a pair [of nene] and I asked her for a pair and she gave me a pair. And that was about I guess 1918. There's an article in the National Geographic that will give all that. I've forgotten what month. [Nov. 1966; Vol. 128, No. 5]
A: Oh, is there?
HS: Yes, with illustrations. A very, very good article.
A: Quite awhile ago, was this?
HS: Yes.
So she gave me a pair and about that time I moved out to Keaau. That was in 1919.
A: 1919 you moved to Keaau?
HS: Keaau, yes. And we had good success with them. I think at that time, I don't know, the Hinds had lost all of theirs. They had these big water tanks there and the birds used to go swimming in the water tanks and Mr. Robert Hind had rafts in every tank so that they could get on the raft to take off and fly out, you see. And for some reason or other, after Mr. Hind died, Leighton, the oldest son, he removed all the rafts and most of them were drowned
A: Oh. They had no place to rest?
HS: No place to take off from. Anyhow, we had a drought, especially in Waimea, and Mr. Patton, he being a ‘blue nose’, you know, a Nova Scotian and a banker, he was very careful.
He had to buy Los Angeles lettuce and he figured he just couldn't afford to buy lettuce for this pair of geese so he asked me if I would like them. Well, I just jumped at the chance. I didn't tell him that they'd eat honohono and grass and stuff like that because I wanted the geese. (Kathy laughs) So with the four geese, I built--or we built--the flock up to forty-three.
And then we lost a number of them in the tidal wave.
A: 1946?
HS: 1946, yes. They were out on the pond [at Shipman’s makai beach house, near Haena on E.Puna coast], you see, swimming and the big wave came over and banged them down and they drowned.
A: Oh, you got hit out that way too.
HS: Oh yes, really hit. And it came up into the second story of the makai house.
It was that high. It was twenty-seven feet high right there.
A: Gracious. Where were you at the time that struck?
HS: I was up at Ainahou, another place we have that we're giving up.
[their ranch 1 mile west of Chain of Craters Rd. In mid HVNP 3,000’ elev.]
A: Is that A-I-N-A-H-0-U?.
HS: H-0-U in Kau. Yes, right in the middle of the National Park. Now we're giving it up because of the volcano, but we’ll get to that later. Anyhow, I think that [tsunami] reduced us down to about thirteen [nenes].
[referring to a lava flow] . . . across our road, from the Chain of Craters' Road in, about a mile away from the house and on the upper side.
[this would be the 2,000 foot tall fountaining Mauna Ulu eruption of 1969-74].
HS: And we've moved out all the furniture. I had a nice house there. I like it very
much but we've moved everything out of the house and taken it down to Keaau. But the National Park will probably take it up.
A: Is it in the National Park?
HS: Right. Surrounding. Six thousand acres. And now the National Park may purchase land. It had to be given to them before. And improvements. So they'll probably take it off our hands.
A: In other words they'll . . .
HS: Reimburse us. We own all the improvements on the land, you see.
Water. We have about something over 900,000 gallons storage in mostly steel tanks. Then we moved all the nene from Keaau up to Ainahou because up there there're very few mongoose. And, you see, when geese nest and the eggs hatch, the parent birds lose their flight feathers so they can't fly, so they're at the mercy of wild pigs and dogs or anything like that. And then they don't grow their flight feathers again until the offspring are able to fly.
A: Isn't that unusual?
HS: It is. I believe other geese are the same way.
And then, oh, before World War II, Peter Scott, who runs the Slimbridge Wild Fowl Trust in Gloustershire in England, he wrote to me and wanted to get some eggs. Well for some reason or other I didn't answer his letter--I don't know how many years--and one day, going through the file, I found it. So I wrote to him: "This is in answer to your letter of certain-certain date," (laughter) which was almost ten years. So I told him… if he would send a man out here I'd give him a pair [of nene]. So he did.
He sent this Mr. Yieland, I think it was--and he was to take them back. It's almost impossible to distinguish the sexes without a physical examination. You have to use a local anaesthetic and it's quite a procedure. So when he was ready to go--he stayed down here about three weeks and he helped a lot in the Pohakuloa raising of geese, the nene--
I asked the old Japanese man that had been taking care of all these geese for -the best pair.
So he picked out the pair and Mr. Yieland didn’t make a physical examination and they took them back to England. He took them by train as far as New York, then they were flown across the Atlantic and he went by boat. Well anyhow, they got there safely and it was in the
late summer and--I forget, it must of been about October or November--about nine o'clock one night, the wireless here rang up and said they had a wire from England for me, would I take it, and I said, "Yes." And it was sort of to the effect, "Would it be possible to secure the loan of a male nene as both of ours are laying." (laughter) So I telephoned to this Mr. Smith who was with the United States Bird Life and he had his own plane and I rang him up, told him he'd better come up the next morning in his plane and we'd have a male bird ready for him. And so he came up and then I got communication with Pan American, which has always been very cooperative, and they got that bird back to England in, I think, about five days after I got the wire.
A: How about that. That's good time.
HS: Yes. Forgotten how much it cost. It wasn't cheap though. And from that, up to the present time, the Wild Fowl Trust has raised and distributed all over Europe something over 50 offspring from that trio. And I don't know how they did it. With us, they mate for life. But with them--I didn't know if it was the morals in England or what--
(laughter) that they got this male goose to take care of both females. Both of them had fertile eggs. I wrote to Peter Scott, asked him if it was environment or what but he never answered that part of the letter. (laughter)
He'd been out here and visited and we've been there two or three times. And just lately he conducted a tour of the Antarctic. His father was Commander [Robert Falcon] Scott that was lost, I think down at the South Pole. And he's a very good friend of ours--a wonderful person.
Last year, when we were in London, we went to the annual banquet of the Wild Fowl Trust. That's the third time I attended and just happened to be there at the time;
it wasn't planned.
And it'd been sending offspring to Maui but I telephoned there last year and told them I thought they were wasting nene because I was talking on the telephone to the game warden there and they've only found empty nests.
A: Oh!
HS: See, they have wild dogs in the crater I believe and, heavens, sometimes they send fifty out and so they've discontinued it. I think maybe this fall they may send them to Lowell Dillingham for Puuwaawaa, because I gave them what I had left.
About five, I guess. And this year they've raised seven from those I gave them last year. And Wendell Carlsmith and Lowell Dillingham are very much interested so I think we'll get the Wild Fowl Trust to send them to them.
A: You say that Lowell Dillingham and Wendell Carlsmith now have the Puuwaawaa Ranch?
HS: Yeh.
A: That was the Hind ranch.
HS: Yes. Government land. And some of the ones that have been let go from Pohakuloa have taken up residence at Puuwaawaa [Kona side]. They've been attracted by the ones we gave them, you see.
A: Uh huh. Well, I would think that would be a good area for them to hide in.
HS: Well, that's where they originated. I haven't heard the boys say about sighting. There's been a flight of them. They spend the night at PuuOo Ranch [Mauna Kea] and daytime they go back to Mauna Loa. And they sighted forty-eight one day. They come over in the evening and go back in the morning. They cross the Saddle Road.
A: That's their migratory path, I guess?
HS: Yes. And the web in their feet is much smaller than the regular goose and the claws are much sharper. This developed, I guess, from being on the lava flows.
…the picture of two that Mr. Carlson [took]. He took a picture of a couple of them in the wild up on Hualalai. Ones that had been released because you can see the bands on their legs.
A: Oh. Now …
HS: Now, to go back on this ancestry business.
A: Yes, please. (chuckles).
1917
free gay pix
1886
s all photos