Feral chickens flummox city officials

The issue of feral chickens — and what happens when they cross the road — is again rearing its head at Honolulu Hale.

The city is looking for a better way to deal with chickens after its first attempts resulted in a cost of $108 per chicken caught and killed.

“A hundred dollars is a lot of money just to capture a chicken,” said Deputy Customer Services Director Randy Leong.

One reason the city found it difficult to capture feral chickens was because they would run from city property to state or private property where the city-paid staffers could not go.

“I don’t want to humorize this, but really, the chickens often cross the road and go into properties such as the state, federal properties and private properties such as condominiums, or strip malls or apartment complexes,” Leong said.

Leong said the city doesn’t have the authority to enter private property, and even if it did, there would be liability issues.

“If a city contractor were to enter a residential neighborhood and traverse through the neighborhood and go from one home to another, the city could be exposed to a myriad of claims,” Leong said.

The city started a pilot program more than two years ago to deal with feral chickens on city-owned properties, Leong said.

The first contract, for $80,000, ran from August to November 2015 and resulted in the capture of 670 chickens from city parks, golf courses and facilities using electronic traps, cameras and monitoring, city officials said. The second contract, also for $80,000, resulted in the capture of 807 chickens, from February to June 2016, most of them from city parks and urban forestry sites where the city receives the most complaints.

The captured chickens were then killed by placing them in an enclosed chamber that euthanizes them, a method approved by the American Veterinary Medical Association, city officials said.

Both contracts were with Sandwich Isle Pest Solutions.

Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s administration, despite raising concerns about using city resources to wrangle feral chickens, said it will work with the state to take another look at the issue after being pressed by City Council members at a recent Parks, Community and Customer Services Committee meeting March 20.

Meanwhile, East Honolulu Councilman Trevor Ozawa, who heads the Council Budget Committee, proposed that the city set aside $160,000 for a citywide feral chicken mitigation program.

At the recent committee meeting, Ozawa told Caldwell officials that he considers tackling the feral chicken issue a core service. “It’s public health and safety, and general welfare of the citizens.”

After the two pilot programs, city officials concluded they needed to work with state authorities to coordinate a joint feral chicken eradication program, Leong said.

Complaints about noisy chickens have in recent years shown up on the agenda of neighborhood boards across the island, from Kailua to Kahala.

AT ITS MARCH meeting, the McCully-Moiliili Neighborhood Board adopted two resolutions: one calling for the city to provide more resources to remove unwanted feral chickens from private property, the second asking the Council to apply animal nuisance laws to property owners with feral chickens.

Leong said two resolutions currently in the state Legislature call on the state to manage feral chickens and cats on state property.

The Hawaiian Humane Society, which holds the city’s animal care and control program contract, will respond to pet-chicken nuisance complaints, Leong said.

But while they will talk to homeowners about how they can quiet their roosters, “the Humane Society does not go out there to pick up or euthanize feral chickens,” Leong said.

Ozawa said he’s been receiving complaints from residents of Kahala town houses who say a colony of chickens in the area has been creating headaches for them.

“A hundred dollars to eradicate one or two chickens is not a lot of money when you’re talking about (the issue) impacting people’s sleep, especially in a high-density area, including town houses where you’ve got maybe a hundred, maybe 200 people right there that can hear, within earshot across the street,” Ozawa said. “I think we need to go back to having somebody go back to focusing on feral chicken eradication … immediately.”

Leong said that in lieu of an islandwide chicken eradication program, city departments are being asked to deal with feral chickens showing up on their respective properties on their own “on a case-by-case basis,” hiring contractors if necessary.

But Ozawa called the policy “inefficient.” He noted there are several chickens around the Hawaii Kai Park and Ride, which is under the authority of the Department of Transportation Services and its director, Wes Frysztacki. “What you’re saying sounds like there’s a procedure, but in reality, I don’t believe Director Frysztacki is going to head out there with a net and go and catch the chickens that are causing the problem,” Ozawa said.

“We don’t have an animal control contractor today to address these feral chicken problems, and it sounds funny, but … it’s not funny because these guys … they can’t sleep, they can’t go to work, they can’t be there for their kids, they can’t tend to their basic needs,” Ozawa said.

Council Parks Chairwoman Ann Kobayashi said she agrees with Ozawa. “It’s a basic core service,” she said.

CUSTOMER SERVICES Director Sheri Kajiwara said the last time the city issued a request for proposals for an islandwide chicken catching program, about four years ago, no one submitted an offer. That’s when the city sought a pilot program, she said.

“We have to come up with a way. … Funding is one of the issues,” Kajiwara said.

Kajiwara said she’s tried already to tackle the issue from many angles, from chicken infertility drugs to asking youths to collect chickens for a reward, all ideas that were determined to be unworkable.

Ozawa suggested that the solution might lie with asking property owners who complain about feral chickens in their yards to allow a contractor to come onto their properties during predetermined times.

Kajiwara said she’d be happy to sit on a task force with Council members, the state and stakeholders to try to address the issue.