Hawaii Super Moon Reveals Rare Endangered
Native Pueo In Ewa
by John Bond Kanehili Cultural Hui
Videographer and owl enthusiast Tom Berg was able to capture on video, while rollerskating, a young adult Hawaiian Pueo owl on the very night of the September 27 super moon.
It has been many years since the last Hawaiian Pueo has been sighted anywhere in the Ewa area and this sighting is seen as an especially auspicious event. The Pueo is also regarded as the physical form assumed by ʻaumākua (ancestor spirits) in Hawaiian culture.
Pueo is listed by the state of Hawaii as an endangered species on the island of Oahu.
This particular area where the young Pueo has now been seen has also been documented to be both within the Leina a ka uhane spirit leaping pathway as well as where the 1825 Malden Trail segment led to Kualaka'i village on the Ewa shoreline.
This young pueo was photographed resting on a fence as the strong winds were making flying difficult. It has been able to adjust, so far, to the increasing noise of traffic and nearby rail construction, which makes daytime hunting very difficult.
While numerous Barn owls have been seen in the area, Barns are night time hunters while Pueo's are mostly hunting in the early morning or late afternoon. Owls depend upon both keen sight and acute hearing to locate their prey.
The Barns and young Pueo are not directly competing for food (mice, rats), which have recently been abundant because of the recent rains. Late night hunting is advantageous to the Barn owl because it is much quieter and their rat and mouse prey are easily seen on the roads under street lights.
Pueo once inhabited forests and grasslands throughout the islands of Hawaii but their numbers are declining, particularly in the last two decades, and especially on the island of Oahu.
Unfortunately daytime hunting on Oahu for this increasingly rare and endangered young Pueo also means a greater chance of being hit by a car should it go after prey crossing the highway.
The Pueo (Asio flammeus sandwichensis) is a subspecies of the short-eared owl that is endemic to Hawaii. In ancient times and during the Ewa plantation era Pueo's were fairly common. All of the massive construction and wiping out of once abundant foraging areas has increasingly reduced the Pueo's natural daytime foraging habitat.
Ironically the nearby UH West Oahu, which has as its mascot the Pueo owl, now plans to destroy the lower campus area that has remained as an ideal Pueo foraging area. Nearby Department of Hawaiian Homelands is also blitzing Pueo habitat with new roads and concrete pads.
Planned East Kapolei and Hoopili HART Rail stations will forever destroy the Pueo's natural habitat and foraging areas. HART has pretended instead that concrete pillars with concrete Pueo cartoons is the ideal mitigation for wiping out this species on the Ewa Plain.
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