LIHUE — The Kauai County Council will hold a discussion today on how this year’s upcoming Newell’s shearwater fledgling season will impact evening football games. Friday night Kauai Interscholastic Federation and Pop Warner football games on Kauai, for the most
LIHUE — The Kauai County Council will hold a discussion today on how this year’s upcoming Newell’s shearwater fledgling season will impact evening football games.
Friday night Kauai Interscholastic Federation and Pop Warner football games on Kauai, for the most part, have been moved to Saturday since 2009, when U.S. Department of Justice officials launched an investigation into County of Kauai practices to shield fledgling shearwaters from bright lights at county facilities.
One councilman wants night football back.
Councilman Ross Kagawa, who grew up playing KIF and Pop Warner football, said he remembers how important and memorable his Friday night games were.
On an island where there are no amusement parks or college sports to watch from the stands, those football games are a common pastime for many residents, Kagawa said.
“We live a very simple lifestyle and Friday night football games sometimes attract 7,000 to 8,000 people,” Kagawa said. “It goes to show how important it is to our island.”
But now that players and their supporters must attend Saturday games early in the morning, as early as 7 a.m., or in the middle of the day — to accommodate the shearwaters’ fledgling season between September and December — the experience is not as enjoyable as it once was.
“I feel bad that the kids now cannot have that same experience,” Kagawa said. “In the 1970s, when I played, we had shearwaters flying over the stadium and falling down, so we took them to the fire station — we were told that 90 percent of the birds that fell survived.”
Fledgling Newell’s shearwater, an endangered species of endemic cliff-dwelling birds, are attracted to bright, manmade lights and can become confused and fly into utility wires, poles, trees, and buildings.
This causes them to fall to the ground during their first flight to the ocean from nesting grounds, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The County of Kauai pleaded guilty in September 2010 to violating the Endangered Species Act and Migratory Bird Treaty Act at least nine times between 2005 and 2009 after U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials warned that lights at county facilities were maiming or killing shearwaters.
Under the plea agreement, county officials also paid $180,000 to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to benefit protected seabirds on Kauai and an additional $30,000 to the Kauai Humane Society’s Save Our Shearwaters program.
Kagawa added that he’d like to find out how much the federal government is doing to protect shearwaters from invasive predators like rats or feral cats.
The County Council will take up the issue at 10 a.m. today in the Historic County Building’s Council Chambers. Written testimony can also be sent to council testimony@kauai.gov.
