Hawaii as a Role Model for Comprehensive U.s. Biocontrol Legislation: the Best and the Worst of It

The United States currently has no comprehensive, integrated legislative or regulatory framework to manage the permitting of imported biological control agents. There are unresolved questions of whether the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has jurisdiction over parasitoids that are not plant pests; there are differences in protocol between weed and arthropod biocontrol agents; there are unresolved issues of State vs. Federal authority; and there are overlapping and ever-changing requirements from a wide assortment of Federal and State agencies and a diverse array of laws that were designed for other purposes. In contrast, the State of Hawaii has specific, detailed, and exhaustive rules for obtaining import and release permits for natural enemies. In some respects the Hawaii system could serve as a useful model for national protocols with coordinated scientific evaluation at several levels of specialization, and input from a wide range of concerned parties. However, some aspects of this system lead to bureaucratic entanglements and unconscionable delays that hinder the practice of biological control in the islands. If we could capture the best parts of the Hawaii system and mitigate the legalistic and bureaucratic redundancy, then a thorough, streamlined, efficient, transparent, accountable, and enabling regulatory framework could be put in place that would safeguard non-target species while facilitating biological control and environmentally sound pest management at the national level.