Hawaii showing signs of beetle spread but battle isn’t over

HONOLULU (KHON2) — Breeding sites of the Coconut Rhinoceros Beetle have been spotted in Kona and the invasive pest has already taken hold on Oʻahu, but officials said the Big Island still has a chance to stop it.

The Coconut Rhinoceros Beetle is spreading on Hawaiʻi Island — two breeding sites were found in Kona during the week of June 30. One of those sites contained 30 in their larva stage, over 30 fully grown beetles have been trapped since March.

“At the stage we are on Big Island, there’s probably zero to one beetles in a tree at any time. So if you’re looking at the palms, it’s not a big concentration of them,” said CRB Response program manager Keith Weiser.

Palms take the damage, but breeding sites like mulch piles harbor far more larvae and eggs that fuel the spread — often driven by humans.

“You’ve infested material, there’s eggs or grubs, they put it in a truck or whatever. They drive it to another place and they dump it out and obviously right now you created potentially another breeding site that you need to now mitigate,” said HDOA Plant Quarantine Branch manager Jonathan Ho.

Officials said thousands of yards of potential host material have been inspected on the Big Island since March and a voluntary ban on moving green waste through September is also in effect.

“Plant Quarantine Branch, we have the ability to restrict movement, but not necessarily purchasing,” Ho said.

“But if community members are watching each other and, they can, they can report some kind of infraction if there is a rule in place, that’s possibly a way that that they could get some community and business action to help have safer practices,” said Weiser.

CRB are known to fly at night, but experts said their main way of getting to other islands is because of human activity since they arrived on Oʻahu in 2013. Officials have seen success in the beetle battle on the Big Island, however.

“You always hope when you use the term, ‘Eradication,’ that you can get there. And, you know, and I think to the extent that it’s possible, Waikoloa Village they have, we have not seen a beetle since last year,” Ho said.

“So, that appears to have worked. It’s a little too early to call it definitively, but we’re not finding beetles in Waikoloa anymore. They did show up in Kona, and so we’re trying to repeat that success,” Weiser said.