HONOLULU (KHON2) — Residents said feral chickens have been a nuisance for years. The City said it’s taking steps to deal with the problem. But is it working?
They are not all bad eggs, but they certainly do ruffle feathers. Mason Aiona lives near Booth Park in Pauoa and said the feral chickens are the problem.
“Chickens, you know I can’t handle chickens,” said Aiona. “I don’t like them around making all kinds of racket first thing in the morning.”
Claudia Virtudes also lives near the park.
“The chickens are going off like 10 p.m., midnight, 2 a.m., 3 a.m., 4 a.m.,” Virtudes explained.
According to residents, the problem has been going on for five or more years with no improvements.
Virtudes and Aiona are not alone. According to Kim Hashiro, spokesperson for the Department of Customer Services, the City has received about five complaints per day about feral fowl for the past two years.
KHON2 met with the CSD Director who said the city started a feral chicken mitigation project in February 2022 on city property and expanded it to include private property last year.
“We’ve caught about 1,200 chickens in total with the city program as well as the private property program,” said Hashiro.
She said the vendor has removed chickens from city properties across the island, but she said most of them were caught in three locations.
200 in Waikiki Shell
200 at Blaisdell Park
100 around the Waianae Police Station
“This program is helping to reduce the chicken population. That being said, we know there’s still chickens out there,” Hashiro added.
Hashiro said the feral chickens at the Waikiki Shell continue to be a problem. Despite having caught about 200 of them in the area, they are still around.
“What happens is the chickens are smart and they actually get used to the traps and they don’t go into the traps anymore. So that’s when our vendor suggests we move on, they can always circle back,” she said.
Residents like Aiona hope the City takes care of the problem sooner rather than later.
“We just need to do something with the chickens, you know,” Aiona said.
The City spends about $50,000 a year on the program, working with Sandwich Island Pest Solutions to capture and humanely dispose of the birds.
The legislature passed a bill to appropriate $2 million to address the problem statewide, which includes a campaign reminding people not to feed feral animals.