Even as roadkill carcasses of wild sheep and goats pile up along West 91直播 highways, budget constraints for the Department of Land and Natural Resources continue to hamstring efforts to address the problem.
It’s an all-too-common sight while driving the Daniel K. Inouye Highway, also known as Saddle Road, and Highway 190, also known as Mamalahoa Highway: heaps of mangled, furry flesh lying on asphalt, with ranks of still-alive animals browsing patches of green grass growing along the shoulders.
In a cruelly ironic cycle, roadways catch and funnel rain which sprouts new growth, attracting animals searching for fresh grazing in an otherwise arid environment, luring them dangerously close to oncoming traffic.
This can turn a scenic trip from Hilo to Kona into a nerve-wracking affair, with some 60-mile-per-hour sections passing by large groups of wildlife milling about just a few hoof-steps away from certain death. In January 2025, a herd of hundreds of mouflon sheep was caught on a viral video crossing Saddle Road and slowing traffic to a standstill.
It’s such a common occurrence, in fact, that phones in the offices of state legislators hailing from West 91直播 are often ringing with calls from concerned drivers demanding something be done about the pervasive traffic hazards.
“Probably one of the number one constituent complaints that I receive, surprisingly, is just about goats,” said Rep. Nicole Lowen, who represents Kailua-Kona and Waikoloa. “(Even if) they’re fast enough to get out of the way … it could cause someone to slam on their brakes or swerve.”
State bills have stalled
During last year’s legislative session, Lowen co-authored a bill with a group of other 91直播 Island lawmakers — including Reps. Kirstin Kahaloa, David Tarnas, Matthias Kusch and Chris Todd — that would prohibit DLNR from establishing bag limits for goats in public hunting areas.
The measure, House Bill 347, was deferred by the House Committee on Water and Land, with committee Chair Mark Hashem justifying the move during a meeting to discuss the bill by saying “nobody really supports it” with a smirk, eliciting laughter from the audience.
Other bills attempting to tackle booming feral animal populations have met similar fates. Senate Bill 568 stalled early in this year’s legislative session, and would have required DLNR to establish a program to trap feral goats, sheep and pigs. Senate Bill 2130, also from this year, would have required the department to designate new public hunting areas on 91直播 Island and other islands, but also died in committee.
Sen. Tim Richards co-introduced SB 568 and represents the areas of West 91直播 that see the most feral animal roadkill, including North Kona, Waimea, Waikoloa and Kohala. A sixth-generation cattle rancher, he sees increased trapping as a practical, cost-effective solution to an issue that — similar to Lowen — drives concerned constituents to his office.
“We can’t just pretend it’s not there,” Richards said. “One of the challenges … is that no one really wants to claim ownership of the animal and thereby liability of the animal, and I get that to a point. But if government’s not going to claim any ownership or maybe responsibility over this, so how do we get it done? First of all, I’ve got to get somebody to say, ‘yeah, we do have a responsibility to manage this,’ and so that was my driving force to introduce this.”
Meat from trapped animals, he contends, could create economic opportunities for enterprising hunters, if only they had permission. Generally, it’s illegal to trap game animals on public hunting lands in 91直播.
“There are people that are willing to set up traps and trap the sheep and goats and sell them for slaughter,” he said. “That’s one way. It wouldn’t cost the state much … what we have to do is we have to think outside the box and create the program.”
Being born and raised in the affected area, and drawing on decades of hunting and ranching experience, Richards has seen firsthand how drastically feral animal populations have grown.
“In my lifetime the population of sheep and goats has exploded,” he said. “When I was a kid — you know, a teenager — we used to go hunting goats, and you had to hunt to even see one let alone get one. And now drive between Waimea and Waikoloa, and what? (You see) 40 or 50?”
He’s worried that in the wake of March’s back-to-back heavy rainstorms, the ecological and road safety threats posed by these animals will only get worse.
“Mother nature responds,” he said. “With these Kona lows and all that, the amount of water that we’ve dumped on these arid areas was huge. Now it means we are going to have response with the grasses growing, which is environmentally great to heal some of these hills. But the animal world is going to respond as well, and we’re going to see a surge in some populations and I am concerned about that.”
What is being done?
Some game mammal legislation has made it into law, however, like a bill authored by Tarnas in 2022 which tasked the DLNR with convening a task force to develop a “feral ungulate management plan.” The group includes representatives from DLNR, the 91直播 Invasive Species Council, the 91直播 Game Management Authority Commission and others.
Their collaborative plan makes several suggestions for reigning in the growing populations of invasive animals, including expanding hunting seasons and removing bag limits in both the Pu‘u Wa‘awa‘a Forest Reserve and Pu‘u Anahulu Game Management Area.
It also proposes implementing a trap rental and training program, creating zero-vegetation zones along highways, replacing grooved rumble strips that can hold rainwater, erecting fencing along road corridors with high animal activity, and establishing at least four new DLNR staffing positions of wildlife technicians, biologists and program coordinators.
All of these efforts cost money, and some are prohibitively expensive.
Kanalu Sproat is a DLNR wildlife biologist working in West 91直播, and concedes that the department’s current budget is insufficient to cover everything legislators and the management plan — which he co-authored — are calling for.
“It’s not enough,” Sproat said. “We put a budget request in every year for positions and hope it gets passed — no new positions this year.”
One of the priciest fixes involves building physical barriers, which Sproat admits is the best answer to keeping feral animals off of roadways.
“The most effective solution is fencing,” he said. “Since we wrote that (plan), myself and my counterpart in Hilo, we’ve been able to secure some funding to get started at least.”
Barbed wire fence running along six miles of Highway 190 bordering the Pu‘u Wa‘awa‘a Forest Reserve is slated to be upgraded soon by DNLR staff.
“I did get money to replace that barbed wire with hog wire on both sides of the road, which should keep animals off of the road, at least in that stretch,” he said. “And so within the next year or so, we should start putting up that replacement fence.”
The management plan identifies two stretches of West 91直播 roadway as prime spots for fencing, including 23 miles of the Daniel K. Inouye Highway from mile marker 28 to its junction with Highway 190. According to the document, labor and materials costs for a 48-inch-high goat fence along this segment of road would cost roughly $8 million.
For now, DLNR can only afford stopgap measures.
“On DKI, there’s long stretches where it’s only like a half-fence and the bottom half is open,” Sproat said. “Myself and my counterpart both got money to bring that fence all the way to the ground. Maybe (it’s) not the full 20 miles, but we’re trying to piece it together, and we’re making progress on it.”
No government entity knows how many feral goats and sheep are on 91直播 Island — not even approximate estimates. DLNR only has rough numbers for state public hunting areas, projected from camera traps and other data, putting animal populations in Pu‘u Wa‘awa‘a and Pu‘u Anahulu at between 2,200 and 2,500 goats and around 1,000 sheep.
Those numbers have only increased by a few hundred in recent years, which Sproat attributes to increased hunting. Even so, goat and sheep populations could be spiraling outside of those areas and no one would know.
“Based on our data, and in my opinion, the population of sheep and goats has remained stable, maybe slightly increasing, because of our public hunting program,” he said. “But I have no control over hunting and take outside of those areas. And in my opinion, on private lands is where we are seeing the greatest increase.”
Despite the legislative setbacks, some lawmakers like Lowen are refusing to give up. Depending on the political winds next year, she said she could try again to push similar bills forward.
“I think it will be pending seeing what happens and what would be the best solution,” Lowen said. “Some solutions are bills, and some are budgets, and some are working with things already in place. But I do plan to keep working on it. There’s different approaches to solutions, and it could be a combination of all of the above.”
Email Stefan Verbano at stefan.verbano@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
