No dynasty for ducks ADVERTISING No dynasty for ducks Get ready for a year of brainwashing as Hawaii’s media promotes a new government agenda. It’s duck season in Hawaii, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to shoot as
No dynasty for ducks
Get ready for a year of brainwashing as Hawaii’s media promotes a new government agenda. It’s duck season in Hawaii, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to shoot as many wild ducks as it can find.
They are aiming for the mallard, not the endangered Hawaiian duck, or koloa. The koloa so resembles the mallard that mallards and koloa can’t even tell themselves apart, which seems to be part of the problem.
Scientists are not certain whether the female koloa attracts the attentions of the male mallard, or if the male mallard, with his flashier colorful appearance than the drab male koloa, is just considered hotter by the female koloa.
Whatever the chemistry, the two species find one another irresistible and create fully viable offspring. This is why some bird experts treat the Hawaiian duck as a subspecies of the mallard.
But will killing our wild ducks help save the koloa, of which there are only about 3,000 remaining? And, more importantly, why does it matter? Why are we destroying our successful wildlife to save our unsuccessful wildlife? Will the world be worse off if the Hawaiian duck became assimilated into the mallard population?
The Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of Land and Natural Resources are also targeting Hawaii’s cattle egrets and barn owls for slaughter.
These days, all introduced birds run afoul of the law, which protects only native and endemic species while trying to eradicate everything else.
However, if we continue to kill our introduced wildlife we will have no more wildlife. Then, the environmental managers will again realize these islands in the middle of the ocean need life introduced to them, and there is nothing wrong or evil if people are the agents of that introduction.
Until we return to that realization, wildlife will have to duck.
Sydney Ross Singer
Pahoa
The perils of leading
Sometimes, in a bad situation, it might not be the leadership’s fault. It could have inherited a broken piece of junk.
Nonetheless, fair or not, people subconsciously think if a leader inherits a system in disarray, he should fix it. And if he is endowed with something good, he should make it better.
So, in the end, whichever way it goes, the leader becomes the scapegoat! Fair or unfair?
T. Ono
Hilo
