The top state agencies fighting invasive species have formally agreed to coordinate their efforts against “high-priority pests.”
The state Department of Agriculture, Department of Land and Natural Resources, and the University of Hawaiʻi recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to handle major pests — namely little fire ants, coconut rhinoceros beetles and coqui frogs.
The DLNR houses the Hawaiʻi Invasive Species Council, while the islands’ invasive species committees are projects under UH.
The agencies all work to prevent and control pests, but the MOU aims to fix inefficiencies such as issues with communication, data sharing and resources.
“Challenges that we were trying to address with this MOU are just lack of regular and consistent communication amongst the agencies and partner organizations,” Chelsea Arnott, program support for HISC, said at a council meeting this week.
“We all know that there's so many invasive species issues out there, so many priorities. … So, there really was a need to have regular communication.”
A Hawaiʻi Interagency Biosecurity Plan already exists and has been effective since 2017. The MOU says it “furthers our collective progress on implementing the Biosecurity Plan.”
As part of the MOU, the agencies have also agreed to deadlines to make and implement action plans against priority pests. They’ve agreed to “facilitate management actions” against little fire ants within five months. They have a year to do so for coconut rhinoceros beetles and coqui frogs.
They’ve also given themselves a year to develop standards on how they’ll share data with each other.
The agreement assigns points of contact for each involved agency. Community groups, other state agencies, and the federal government are expected to continue helping with invasive species.
Invasive species management was a priority for lawmakers during this year's legislative session.
