City awards contract for feral chicken removal at city facilities including West Loch Golf Course

Honolulu – The City and County of Honolulu has awarded a contract for its Integrated Feral Chicken Management Program on city properties to Sandwich Isle Pest Solutions.

“The demonstration project uses available technology in a targeted approach to managing problematic feral chickens on city property,” said Sheri Kajiwara, Director of Customer Services.

Utilizing a proactive and systematic approach, traps will be set in city facilities such as parks, golf courses, corporation yards, and other areas where the presence of feral chickens have been verified by department personnel.  The contactor will use “smart traps” with wireless cameras and automatic notification of trapping, wildlife cameras to scout and assess sites, GPS to track technician locations, and barcode scanning to log completed assignments.  The city will be provided with access to the contractor’s logging system to review the service records posted for each location.

The trapping will be conducted Monday through Friday, with the traps collected at the end of the work week.  Other trapping methods, such as cage traps and netting, may also be used during the four-month demonstration project.

The $80,000 contract is being funding by a City Council appropriation in the Fiscal Year 2015 operating budget.

“The funds appropriated are not enough for a comprehensive islandwide program including private property, therefore the new program will target chicken roosting areas on city properties for more efficient trapping,” Director Kajiwara said.  “The new Integrated Feral Chicken Management Program will use an active strategy to capture chickens in known locations.  With the monitoring capability, the contract provides for transparency and accountability.”

Captured chickens will be humanely euthanized with a CO² immersion system that conforms to American Veterinary Medical Association guidelines.

Initial trapping begins this week.  Among the 70 city facilities identified for trapping are the Board of Water Supply Yard on Diamond Head Road, the Waikīkī Shell, Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve, Kaiaka Bay Beach Park in Hale‘iwa, Kualoa Regional Park, West Loch Golf Course, and Pali Golf Course.  More than 1,500 chickens were counted at city facilities in May this year.

FACT SHEET
The Integrated Feral Chicken Management Program will humanely capture and remove undesirable feral chickens from public locations identified by the city.

Contractor: Sandwich Isle Pest Solutions
Total Contract Amount: $80,000.00
Trapping

• All sites with active traps will be monitored and checked daily.
• Only humane capture devices and traps will be utilized.
• All traps will have shade cloths, chicken feed, and water reservoirs.
• Remote traps will trigger automatically and notify a technician.
• Remote monitoring of traps use SIM Card enabled wireless cameras to send pictures of traps on demand or when movement is detected.

Monitoring

• A wildlife cam will send scouting and intelligence photos to the technicians’ cell phone or email when the motion sensor detects movement.
• Wildlife specialists will have a handheld computer which is a cellular and GPS-enabled unit that verifies their daily activities remotely.
• The traps will have barcodes that will be scanned by the specialist.  An operations system will post the recorded scans of the completed appointment. The city will be provided access to the system to review the service records posted to each location.
• All contractor vehicles shall be GPS-tracked to allow real-time monitoring.