![]() ![]() A few different peculiarities of the Hawaiian islands made it a great home for the axis deer. Hawaii was a base to explore the Pacific and a halfway point to Asia, but some of the early sailors found it tough to restock their ships without land mammals to hunt. “Introducing grazing animals here was considered a good thing,” says Jeff Bagshaw of the communications and outreach team for Hawaii’s Department of Forestry he focuses on deer in Maui. The deer were initially released on Molokai, and they multiplied quickly some were later moved to Oahu, Lanai and, eventually, in 1959, to Maui. The gift-givers were from Hong Kong, then a colony of Britain. They first showed up in Hawaii in 1867, given as a gift to King Kamehameha V: three bucks, four does and one male faun, for a total of eight deer. They’re sometimes known as the spotted deer, because they have white spots on their tawny coats, and sometimes as the barking deer, because they are extremely vocal. They are simultaneously invasive and part of traditional culture they destroy food supplies and are an extremely important source of food themselves they are protected by law and despised by some parts of law enforcement they are wildly destructive to Hawaii and also, during the worst of COVID-19, were a beacon of hope.Īs Chaga Keeps Trending, Mycologists Worry About Running OutĪxis deer, which are sometimes known as chital, are native to Sri Lanka, parts of India and Nepal. ![]() The axis deer are a fascinating and multi-dimensional inhabitant. On Molokai, an island of only around 7,000 people, there are somewhere around 70,000 axis deer. None of them should be there.īut the most important invasive species for a few islands, especially Maui and Molokai, is the axis deer. There are wild sheep, goats, cattle, mongoose, wild boar, rabbits, rats, mice and a small but stable population of brush-tailed rock wallabies on Oahu. But there are many mammals traversing the eight main islands in the archipelago today. There shouldn’t be many wild mammals, period the only endemic mammal in Hawaii, besides marine mammals, is a single species of bat. There should not be any land mammals living in the wild on any of the Hawaiian islands. ![]()
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