Clearing the air
Clearing the air
I’d like to clear up a misstatement attributed to me in a recent article covering the impact on agricultural research resulting from the Hawaii County Council’s ban on open-air GMO experimentation.
In a public workshop in Pahoa last February, I advised participating growers they could minimize exposure to foreign papaya pollen by, among other things, bagging a few flowers on their non-GMO hermaphrodite plants to ensure obtaining self-pollinated seed for the next generation.
I did NOT say cross-pollination could or should be prevented by “bagging trees during flowering periods.” Enclosing multiple trees in an orchard is an expensive undertaking no one in Hawaii recommends, and the “flowering period” in papaya is continuous, once initiated.
For more information about the issue of pollen movement between GMO and organic papayas, please see the following publication from the UH College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources: www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/BIO-1.pdf.
Richard Manshardt
Topical Plant &Soil Sciences Department, University of Hawaii at Manoa,
Honolulu
Save the birds
I am sickened by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s plan to kill off our cattle egrets and barn owls.
The barn owls that prey on endangered petrels and shearwaters should be relocated to where there are no problems like this. Typically, the barn owls eat rats that prey on birds’ eggs and egrets eat cattle flies. They are not competing with native birds.
If UFAW wanted to do something positive for the native birds, it could build fences, remove pigs and other ungulates and plant native trees to reforest their habitats.
Syd Singer, a medical anthropologist living in Pahoa, thinks killing immigrant animals will stimulate more racial tensions in Hawaii. Native humans all over the world resent immigrants and this genocide of immigrant animals is a political drama. Please tell your representatives you want to save the native species, not kill the immigrants.
James David Buck
Keaau
Good parenting
I read the news story about Judge Kathleen Watanabe’s sentence for Robert Demond “making his kid walk home to think about what he did wrong” (Tribune-Herald, Friday, May 30).
What is wrong with her? She thinks the punishment is “old school?” She needs to rethink what she did. There are many kids who walk to school each day. Should we arrest all of those parents and take them to court?
I also think the judge and the prosecutor should review the arrest blog. How many “contempt of court” entries do you see? I bet if the parents of those people provided some good old-fashioned discipline, maybe just maybe, they wouldn’t have gotten into trouble with the law to begin with.
I could go on and on about our civil decline. This judge’s ruling solidifies my thoughts that we need to do more good old-fashioned discipline.
Mr. Demond should be commended and fire his attorney.
Stephen Palmore
Mountain View