LIHU‘E — The Kaua‘i man charged with fatally shooting an endangered Hawaiian monk seal earlier this year pleaded guilty on Friday morning to violating the Endangered Species Act, and will likely face 90 days behind bars. Charles Vidinha, 78, will
LIHU‘E — The Kaua‘i man charged with fatally shooting an endangered Hawaiian monk seal earlier this year pleaded guilty on Friday morning to violating the Endangered Species Act, and will likely face 90 days behind bars.
Charles Vidinha, 78, will also be forced to pay a special assessment of $25, according to the plea agreement that was released to the media later Friday by the U.S. Attorney’s office.
Had no plea agreement been reached and Vidinha been found guilty of the one count with which he was charged, he would have faced up to a year in prison and a $50,000 fine. His trial had been originally scheduled to begin Oct. 14.
According to the terms of the agreement — which was signed by Vidinha, Federal Defender Alexander Silvert, Vidinha’s attorney, Ronald Johnson, mayor crimes section chief, and Marshall Silverberg, assistant U.S. attorney — Vidinha admitted that he was at Pila‘a Beach on Kaua‘i’s North Shore on May 21 when he saw a Hawaiian monk seal in the shallow waters off the beach.
He used his Browning .22-caliber rifle to fire four rounds at the seal, RK06, two of which hit and killed her.
“Vidinha knew it was a Hawaiian monk seal at the time he fired his rifle at her,” the agreement states. “Vidinha subsequently destroyed the rifle that he used to commit this crime. Vidinha deeply regrets his actions and he apologizes to the entire community.”
RK06 was a female monk seal, possibly in her mid-teens, found dead on the North Shore. A necropsy revealed the seal was carrying a near term — almost ready to be birthed — male monk seal pup, according to an earlier state Department of Land and Natural Resources press release.
She previously had five pups and was reportedly an important breeding female and a huge loss for the Main Hawaiian Islands monk seal population.
In June, weeks after the deaths of both RK06 and RK19, a five-year-old male, cultural practitioners joined with representatives from the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service and the Hawaiian Monk Seal Conservation to pay their respects in a memorial service at Po‘ipu Beach Park.
The Hawaiian monk seal is among the most endangered seals in the world, with only around 1,100 to 1,200 estimated remaining in the wild.
The monk seal — ‘ilio-holo-i-ka-uaua, or “the dog that runs in the rough seas” — is sometimes referred to as a “living fossil” because they have essentially remained the same for at least 13 million years, well before the arrival of human beings on the planet and even longer than the Main Hawaiian Islands, according to the Marine Conservation Biology Institute.
The monk seal’s lone predators on land here are humans.
The case resulted from an investigation conducted by NOAA, assisted by the Kaua‘i Police Department; DLNR; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.
