2021-09-19 Game Management Advisory Commission Minutes

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JBF: I’m sure she’d be happy to talk to the commission. AA: Thanks, J.B. BL: Brian Ley – District 4. If I can get in? AA: Yeah, go ahead Brian. BL: Hey, thanks for your presentation. Hey, what about the borer beetles? I know we have problems with borer beetles they puncture the bark and put holes in the trees. I mean, has anybody looked into the borer beetles? JBF: Yeah, yeah. I will say that – I showed you guys 10 slides – I have 125 slides for presentation so… The beetles are we believe a key part of this whole thing because what happens – what we believe is happening is the trees get the disease – they get attacked by the beetles that drill into it and I’ve seen a lot of places with trees you can just see the sawdust from all the boring beetles on the trunks of the trees. That sawdust is hot – that’s a pool fungal spores because, again, these beetles they’re not landing on the bark they’re drilling right into the sapwood. That sawdust blows around and that and that’s the inoculum blowing around so if you put that sawdust created by the beetles on an injury it will infect the tree. Now, we don’t think that beetles are directly carrying the disease to healthy trees. One of the things for me is just anecdotes from loggers – millers that cut down healthy trees they don’t see holes. They cut down a diseased tree then there’s a million holes in it. So, but the beetles creating a lot of sawdust blowing around is – that’s the inoculum that blows around – the fungus does not have windblown spores. What can you do about it – the beetles are everywhere, in fact, one of them that you find at higher elevations like the Volcano is natives, you’re not supposed to kill it – the other ones are not but anybody who has cut wood knows that, you know, you cut mango or even like fresh koa it’s gonna get hit by the ambrosia beetles. On Kauai where there’s just a few incidents – we’re starting some experiments with beetle repellants which is something used for bark beetles on the mainland so if you just had one tree in a healthy forest maybe if you notice it goes down put these beetle repellants on it and keep the beetles off it – other than that, you know, we’ve been doing – in the beginning when there’s just a tree or two felling it and getting it on the ground so it doesn’t form a beetle hotel in that but absolutely the bark beetles are a big part of this and it’s small ones like the black twig borer that attacks coffee, not the big long horned beetles don’t really seem to be involved with it. BL: Like I said, I lived in Leilani and I brought it to the, well, actually, my girlfriend and her friend brought it to the attention of the university in the department of forestry, because I was taking walks – I’ve lived in a lot of places – I’ve seen the pine blight and sudden oak death in California and realized something was wrong – they took samples in and they got boo-ha-haed and 3 years later after it blew out of the area it was, it was too late. We could have contained it but, you know, past is past… 24