In Hawaii, feral chickens are choosing to leave the country life and make their home in the densely populated areas of Honolulu.
The state notoriously has an ongoing problem with feral chickens, largely blamed on hurricanes setting them loose, tourists feeding them and even on cock fighting operations. The growing populations are a known nuisance in the suburbs and rural areas of the different Hawaiian Islands, but now the wild fowl are infiltrating the concrete jungles of Honolulu in greater numbers.
“Chickens are wandering around like they own the place,” Karin Lynn, a Honolulu resident, told Civil Beat. “They just don’t belong in an urban environment. It seems to be there’s no control over it and it’s getting worse. … It’s a feral menace.”
Aside from roosters crowing in the hours before dawn, the feral chickens damage crops, spread weeds, threaten native plants and are a road hazard.
Honolulu residents, who have gotten tired of the nightly noise pollution, are taking matters into their own hands, literally. This summer, neighbors spontaneously joined other neighbors, whom they didn’t know before, on missions to hunt and catch the roosters that were keeping them all up at night.
“They are pretty fast and fly up on the power lines or on someone’s roof, where you can’t reach them,” Tim Streitz, a Honolulu resident in the McCully-Moiliili neighborhood, told Civil Beat. “It was pretty difficult.”
The informal posse caught “at least five” and released them elsewhere on the island, but residents want more help from the government.
The city has tried to capture the birds in high-problem areas, but capturing them, as the residents experienced, is not as easy as it seems. In May, it was revealed that the city spent $7,000 over two months to catch just 67 chickens, equal to $104 per bird.
“We can’t do much to address all the feral chickens but the city is doing its best,” Honolulu City Council member Calvin Say told Civil Beat.
Streitz thinks people should be allowed to shoot them with pellet guns. Currently, the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources instructs to capture the bird and then euthanize it. Killing the chickens, however, sparks another controversy.
The latest Hawaii bill to manage feral chicken numbers by using a contraceptive bird feed, Senate Bill 2195, failed to pass this session, so it appears the city’s residents will have to contend with more sleepless nights.
