Kaua’i residents and visitors alike repeatedly state their hope that the island doesn’t wind up a carbon copy of Maui. Coconut heart rot gives them another reason to feel that way. The disease has killed 25 percent of the coconut
Kaua’i residents and visitors alike repeatedly state their hope that the island doesn’t wind up a carbon copy of Maui. Coconut heart rot gives them another reason to feel that way.
The disease has killed 25 percent of the coconut trees on Maui. The same, or worse, could happen on Kaua’i if action isn’t taken to keep this silent killer at bay.
No one knows coconut heart rot is taking a tree’s life until it’s too late. Once a tree is infected, there’s no saving it. The disease, which isn’t harmful to people, is a take-no-quarter fungus.
Spread by wind, rain and insects, it starts at the top of a tree, works down into the tree’s heart and rots it out, gradually destroying the healthy plant.
Young center leaves that turn brown and fall over are the signature of the disease.
As much as 15 percent of the palm trees in all of Hawai’i have been killed by the disease. The problem has reached epidemic proportions on the wettest parts of Maui, Oahu and Big Island, and is spreading from the windward sides to the leeward sides. On Kaua’i, where the disease was first discovered 30 years ago, officials are scrambling to warn the public and to find preventive medicine against the disease. The Kaua’i Farm Bureau is circulating fliers about the issue, and the University of Hawai’i Agricultural Experimental Station in Wailua is researching potential methods for controlling or eradicating the disease.
Meanwhile, the only known way available to the public to ward off the disease is through a commercial enterprise. A Maui-based company called Hawai’i Coconut Protectors has what it says is an effective vaccine against the disease. For a fee, the company will inject a liquid, rot-fighting nutrient into healthy trees.
Kaua’i has been forced to fight for the lives of its banana trees threatened by the deadly bunchy top virus.
Now palm trees are a new front to preserve indigenous flora. There are financial and aesthetic reasons to enter the fray wholeheartedly. Replacing trees that die can be a sizable financial setback. And there’s another cost that’s harder to quantify but just as painful in its own right: The loss of palm trees as a symbol of the islands. Potentially losing a link in Hawaii’s ecosystem is a serious concern, too.
Every effort must be made immediately to get coconut heart rot in check. This is not an issue that can wait much longer to be resolved.
