Christmas Declares War On Hawai'i

Thousands of Christmas trees are presently in Hawaii or are soon on their way. I’ve written about Christmas before, but the danger of importing Christmas trees is still a huge threat to Hawaii. Perhaps the Department of Agriculture doesn’t read my blogs. Nevertheless, in today’s Star Bulletin, “Trees in four containers from Oregon were infested with slugs and denied entry to the state," said Leslie Iseke, plant import specialist in the state Department of Agriculture Plant Quarantine Division.

Four containers!

I’ve worked in nurseries that sold cut Christmas Trees since the late 80’s. When I worked for Sloat nurseries in California, I unpacked every semi-trailer for the 11 nurseries owned by Sloat. That is over 100,000 trees unpacked and carried in the two years I worked there. When I first moved to Maui, I worked for Lowes in the garden department. During the Christmas season, I was promoted to garden department manager. Because of this, I found myself inside the trailer, pulling out Noble and Douglass fir trees for 12 hours a day.

Bundled Christmas Trees


Christmas trees are cut at a tree farm and then wrapped up tightly with a string tied around the base of the tree. They are measured and tagged and packed into large refrigerated containers. The largest trees are placed on the bottom of the container with the smaller and lighter trees stacked on top. The largest trees, much to my dismay, are also placed near the front of the container. This means that if a customer wants an 11 foot tree, the employee has to take a bunch of smaller trees out of the truck and literally dig their way to the bottom of the pile and try to pull the behemoth out of the pile. A friend of mine tore the muscles in his back trying to do this. It is a very difficult and annoying job.



It is imperative to understand just how tight the trees are packed into the containers in order to comprehend what the Department of Agriculture is doing to protect against invasive species. What the Ag. Dept. does is thus: They open the back of the container and drag out the trees, maybe two rows deep. They take a few trees, cut off the twine and shake the tree. If they find any insects, they are supposed to quarantine the container. However, the larger trees, the ones that actually can contain insects (or bird nests, or a dead squirrel) are not inspected.

Picture of a slug in California taken with camera phone


When I worked at Lowes, I found a variety of insects, mostly bees or wasps and all were dead. I brought this to the attention of my manager, but was told to keep my mouth shut. Sadly, that is what I did. However, today we have a news report that a variety of slugs –vegetable-eating slugs, were found in the Christmas tree shipping containers and four containers were shipped back (or are at least, scheduled to be shipped back). In the Star Bulletin article, snail/slug specialist Robert Cowie at the University of Hawaii's Center for Conservation Research and Training for identification said, “[the slugs found on the Christmas trees] "will certainly become a pest if they're established here in the vegetable-growing area[s] of Kula, Maui, and places like that," Cowie said. "They've already got some temperate species."




Christmas trees are the Trojan horse for invasive species. For all the talk about a “War on Christmas,” the practice of importing Christmas trees to Hawaii is a threat to our food security. We cannot afford to have vegetable-eating slugs on Maui. Instead of buying a cut Christmas tree, I suggest, (if you must have a tree in order to celebrate) buying a local, live Christmas tree. For instance, the Permaculture Group has 3 native species available as replacements. You can click on this link if you are interested. Plant A Wish



We need to rethink our idea of what Christmas means to Hawaii. Inspecting a few trees every year is not going to protect Hawaii from a potentially devastating horde of invasive species.

Oregon Christmas Tree Regulations
Star Bulletin

Christmas Tree Cultivation, Cutting & Loading (Play with Volume Turned OFF! -You'll Thank Me)