joint base pearl harbor hickam coconut rhinoceros beetle

#Joint base pearl harbor hickam coconut rhinoceros beetle update#

You can also use, the online reporting tool at, or call the Hawai‘i Department of Agriculture’s Pest Hotline at 643-PEST (7378) toll-free from any island.īy Lissa Fox Strohecker. Look for the mission entitled “Help Save Hawai‘i’s Coconut Trees”- /missions/18256600.

Submit pictures of damaged coconuts or palms via the Project Noah website.

#Joint base pearl harbor hickam coconut rhinoceros beetle update#

To learn more, visit the Hawai‘i Department of Agriculture CRB update page at. Other types of pests can cause cuts and boring, but if you see these symptoms, an expert can help check it out. You can help by looking for boring holes in the palm crown and the distinctive V-shaped cut on the leaves. The key to preventing their establishment–and protecting coconuts, native and landscape palms in Hawai‘i–is detecting their presence early. Coconut rhinoceros beetles have not been detected on Maui. However, with any flying insect, certainty about the extent of an infestation can be challenging. While coconuts are the preferred host, the beetles can live on other palms, bananas, sugar cane, agave, even ironwood and taro.īased on current surveys, the infestation on Oahu seems limited, with all known sites under active control. The adults hatch out at night, flying a few hundred feet to a nearby tree Larvae mature through several stages over the next 2 to 3 months and finally form a cocoon where they become adult beetles. They lack any marking on the underside of their mouth. These brown-headed larvae with bluish-grey tail tints feel “squishy” and crawl on their sides. Even the larvae reach an impressive size: between 2 3/8 inches to just over 4 inches long. Photo courtesy of HDOAĮggs in its lifetime, depositing the eggs in mulch heaps or soft logs where they hatch into large whitish larvae. But this is not a definitive indication–other damage can leave V-shaped cuts. It has spread elsewhere in the world, hitching rides in the holds of aircraft, through nursery stock, cargo, mulch and sawdust.Īs CRB bore through unfurled leaves the leave signs of damage that become apparent as the leaves unfurl. Populations of the beetle in its home range are kept in check by natural controls (predators, disease, and competition) but globalized shipping has transported the beetle throughout the Pacific it has become a major palm pest, affecting the Philippines, the Republic of Palau, Fiji, American and Western Samoa, and most recently Guam. Based on the size of the population, the beetle may have been present for up to two years. Teams mobilized to survey the surrounding area and control the infestation. On December 23, 2013, during a routine survey of the Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, surveyors discovered the coconut rhinoceros beetle in palms on the base, marking it the first reported case of the insect in Hawai‘i. Following its arrival on Palau in 1942, this critter from Southeast Asia quickly spread widely, wiping out 50 percent of the palms in the archipelago. Photo courtesy of Hawaii Department of Agriculture.Īt two and a half inches long and sporting large horns on the front of its head, the coconut rhinoceros beetle (CRB) is a remarkable-looking creature, but this lumbering giant of an insect is also a devastating pest of coconut and palm trees. At over 2.5″ in length, the Coconut Rhinoceros Beetle would seem hard to miss, yet it spends most of it’s life in the crown of a palm tree.