Invasive Beetle in Our Sacred Gardens
An adult beetle- Experts dig through our large piles of wood chips looking for larvae
- They found dozens of larvae in all stages
- Up close
- Damage to coconut palms
- They can devastate and entire area
- The horn give rise to their rhinoceros name
For about two years we have been fighting an invasive and destructive beetle called the Coconut Rhinoceros Beetle (CRB), or Oryctes rhinoceros. As the name implies, they are fond of coconut trees, but they also attack and can kill other palms. We have hundreds of mature palms in our gardens, and many of them are suffering from beetle attacks. A dozen have died and more are threatened.
Yesterday two experts surveyed our large palm collection, which includes hundreds of species, with the goal of developing a plan to reduce the beetle’s rapidly increasing population in the monastery. Their company uses steam to heat mulch piles that serve as breeding grounds for the larvae. The heat kills them before adults emerge and fly off to feed on palm trees. We have also been hiring a drone operator from Maui who has come twice to apply protective treatments to the rarest and most important trees. The Kauaʻi Invasive Species Committee (KISC) has helped us set up traps around the palms to capture the voracious insects. That is helping, but not enough.
Great damage has been done over the last two decades in Guam, where about 70% of palms were killed, as well as in Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and now Hawaiʻi. Biologists are working intensively to deploy a virus widely considered the only long-term solution, but it has so far eluded them.
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