“What Emergency?” - Dept. of Agriculture and Biosecurity Downplays CRB Crisis as Community Fills in Biosecurity Gaps

By Wayne Tanaka | Reading time: 5min

As the highly invasive coconut rhinoceros beetle (CRB) began its spread across Oʻahu - including through the sale of bagged commercial potting soil and mulch - farmers, cultural practitioners, conservationists, and other community members waited expectantly for the Department of Agriculture to take action. 

And waited. And waited. And waited.

It took nearly a decade for the Department to deploy its unique regulatory powers - which it finally did, via an “interim” CRB rule, in 2022. Per the rule, it was game over in the fight against CRB on Oʻahu. To prevent the beetle’s spread to the neighbor islands, compliance agreements would be required for the movement of palm trees and other host material within and from the island. 

Unfortunately, this was too little, too late. A few months later, CRB appeared on Kauaʻi. Again, no regulatory action was taken - and CRB has now spread across the Garden Island, from Kekaha to Hanalei, with nearly all hope of eradication now gone.

To avoid the same fate as Oʻahu and Kauaʻi, neighbor island communities have refused to stand idly by in the face of the looming CRB threat. While their community-level education, detection, and eradication efforts were critical, community groups knew that enforceable regulations would be vital to their success. But could they get the Department of Agriculture - which legislators would rename the Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity, as a reminder of its long-neglected responsibilities - to act with more urgency? 

Molokaʻi moved first, as the only island that had not yet had a CRB detection. Niu Now Molokaʻi’s ʻAnakala Kunani and ʻAnakē Ipo Nihipali submitted a petition to directly to the Board of Agriculture and Biosecurity, asking for rules to stop the movement of CRB host material to the island. Thanks to a tremendous organizing effort, including by Molokaʻi-Maui Invasive Species Committee coordinator Aunty Lori Buchanan, island farmers, homesteaders, businesses, and elected officials, along with residents from across the islands, successfully convinced the Board of Agriculture and Biosecurity to adopt the petition’s proposed interim rules in record time. 

Then, in West Hawaiʻi Island, it became exceedingly clear that a county “voluntary” stop-movement order was not stopping the spread of CRB from Waikōloa, where it the beetle was detected in March 2025, to the Kona airport, to as far south as Keauhou - and potentially, to Hilo and other parts of the island. Hawaiʻi Wildlife Fund’s Megan Lamson and Pōhaku Pelemaka’s Leila Kealoha accordingly submitted their own petition to the Board, urging its adoption of interim rules to require a compliance agreement to employ best management practices, before any business could move CRB host material from a designated “infested zone.” Again, overwhelming public support convinced the Board to also adopt the proposed rules in March of this year.

Then, after multiple new detections of CRB on Lānaʻi and in Kahului, the Lahaina Community Land Trust submitted their own petition for interim as well as emergency rules, to prohibit the shipment of potted plants or CRB host material to Maui and Lānaʻi. Substantial public support convinced the Board to move forward with rulemaking for the interim rules, but Department staff convinced the Board that the CRB situation was not an “emergency” warranting the immediate protections of the proposed emergency rule. 

While this community-driven progress may seem promising, Department leadership have made it abundantly clear that continued community pressure will be needed to ensure actual follow-through on the regulatory actions their own Board have deemed critically necessary.

For example, the West Hawaiʻi CRB interim rules went completely unimplemented for three months, well beyond the “grace period” that established May as the rule’s deadline for compliance. Despite dozens of trainings that were held by Big Island Invasive Species Committee staff to help area businesses comply with the law, Department managers refused to issue any compliance agreements, leaving both businesses and community groups in limbo. In a May Board update, Department managers blamed a lack of sufficient staff to support the implementation of the rules, and did not even know how many compliance agreement trainings had taken place.

It was only after community outcry led to inquiries from elected officials, such as House Agriculture & Food Systems Committee Vice Chair Matthias Kusch and County Council Members James Hustace and Dr. Holeka Inaba, that the Department suddenly found itself able to begin issuing compliance agreements. Nonetheless, questions still remain regarding the Department’s commitment to continue its follow-through, including whether and how the rules will be enforced against noncompliant businesses, such as “big box” stores like Home Depot and Lowes. 

Meanwhile, during the Board of Agriculture and Biosecurity’s consideration of the Maui and Lānaʻi rules, Department managers went out of their way to argue that the CRB situation on Maui should not be considered an emergency.  The rise in local CRB detections; the growing CRB infestations on Oʻahu and in Kona near and at nurseries where plants and mulch are sold, including to neighbor islands; and the suspected presence of breeding sites on Maui that are diverting much of the island’s CRB detection and eradication resources. Their reasoning - that the CRB has already been in Hawaiʻi for over a decade, so an emergency cannot exist - carried no logical weight, but was enough to convince Board members to defer any emergency rule adoption.

As a result, Maui and Lānaʻi will remain unprotected until the interim rules are passed.

Notably, the June 4 discovery of multiple live CRB near a commercial green waste facility in Wailuku also went unannounced for nearly two weeks, as county agencies and frontline organizations waited, and waited, for Department leadership in Honolulu to approve alerting the public.

Unfortunately, the Department’s foot-dragging has raised concerns even larger than the CRB fight. Two years ago, funding for the Hawaiʻi Invasive Species Council (HISC) for the 2026 fiscal year was placed under the Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity, rather than the Department of Land and Natural Resources, where HISC is housed. Should the Department choose to drag its feet in the release of these funds to HISC’s well-established and high-functioning programs, or worse, award them to private businesses owned by associates of its leaders - as recently documented in Environment Hawaiʻi - Hawaiʻi’s overall biosecurity framework could crumble. 

As things stand, only community initiative appears to have been able to get the Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity to take any steps toward fulfilling its regulatory role. Moreover, sustained community pressure will almost certainly be needed to let current Department leadership know that the public is watching and ready to take action, should they continue to make excuses rather than do its part in our all-hands-on-deck biosecurity responses. 

Fortunately, there are upcoming opportunities for the community to keep the pressure on, including a Hawaiʻi County Council resolution urging the Department to take more action to implement its West Hawaiʻi CRB rules, and the anticipated final adoption of the Maui Lānaʻi interim CRB rules by the Board of Agriculture and Biosecurity. 

For action alerts on these and other biosecurity issues, sign up for our invasive species email list here (and check out our other issue- and island-specific action alert sign up options here), and be sure to follow us on Instagram @sierraclubhi to view and share our upcoming biosecurity calls to action.