LIHU‘E — Charles Vidinha, a 78-year-old Kaua‘i resident, was indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday on charges that on May 21 he killed an endangered Hawaiian monk seal, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. If convicted of violating
LIHU‘E — Charles Vidinha, a 78-year-old Kaua‘i resident, was indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday on charges that on May 21 he killed an endangered Hawaiian monk seal, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
If convicted of violating the Endangered Species Act, Vidinha faces maximum penalties of one year imprisonment and a $50,000 fine.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Marshall Silverberg, who is handling the prosecution, said in a July 16 phone interview that he had expected this announcement would occur “soon.”
The pregnant seal was discovered shot to death at the remote Pila‘a Beach. Another seal died from bullet wounds in April at Kaumakani. There has been no official word on the latter case. The two seals were known as RK06 and RK19, respectively.
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.
RK19 was a 5-year-old subadult male seal discovered dead on the Westside. The otherwise healthy seal was observed alive just a day earlier during the Fisheries Service’s semi-annual Hawaiian monk seal count, according to the same release.
In 2008, RK19 was reportedly fitted with a crittercam as part of a Main Hawaiian Islands foraging study conducted by the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center.
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 Garden Island called the listed phone number here for Charles Vidinha to seek comment from him on the indictment, but was told it was the “wrong number.”
Charges in an indictment are merely accusations, and a defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. The case resulted from an investigation conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, assisted by the Kaua‘i Police Department; DLNR; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.
