{"id":2117,"date":"2013-07-25T19:56:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-25T19:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/2013\/07\/25\/gunning-for-noxious-weeds\/"},"modified":"2019-08-16T18:22:35","modified_gmt":"2019-08-16T18:22:35","slug":"gunning-for-noxious-weeds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/?p=2117","title":{"rendered":"Gunning For Noxious Weeds"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:13029,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.hawaiinewsnow.com\\\/story\\\/22893437\\\/paintball-guns-the-latest-weapon-against-invasive-plant-species&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.hawaiinewsnow.com\\\/story\\\/22893437\\\/paintball-guns-the-latest-weapon-against-invasive-plant-species&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:13030,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.outdoorhub.com\\\/news\\\/hawaii-officials-use-paintball-guns-to-halt-invasive-plant-growth&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.outdoorhub.com\\\/news\\\/hawaii-officials-use-paintball-guns-to-halt-invasive-plant-growth&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>\nThe Hawaiian islands are having trouble with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hawaiinewsnow.com\/story\/22893437\/paintball-guns-the-latest-weapon-against-invasive-plant-species\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">an invasive weed that is shading out natural plants<\/a> and causes erosion.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"tr_bq\"><p>\n<i>The weed in question is miconia, a plant that has infested much of the Big Island and has been trying to gain a foothold on Oahu, Maui and Kauai. Miconia&#8217;s large leaves can block out sunlight for smaller plants, and its shallow root systems can increase erosion. A single miconia plant can produce eight million seeds a year.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Miconia is the number one weed problem in the state of Hawaii that most people don&#8217;t know about because it&#8217;s impacting areas that people don&#8217;t have access to,&#8221; Leary told Hawaii News Now in an interview from the UH Maui Agricultural Center in Kula.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The solution developed by conservation scientists from the Hawaii Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management is called Herbicide Ballistic Technology or HBT. In layman&#8217;s terms, they are using a paintball gun with special paintballs filled with herbicide to kill the miconia.<\/p>\n<p>The scientists from NREM take to the air in helicopters searching for the miconia and shoot it with the herbicide-filled paintballs. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.outdoorhub.com\/news\/hawaii-officials-use-paintball-guns-to-halt-invasive-plant-growth\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">It has been likened to helicopter hunting <\/a>for feral hogs in Texas. It appears that they have have some significant success according to Dr. James Leary of the University of Hawaii.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"tr_bq\"><p>\n<i>\u201cWe have protected over 3,000 acres, eliminating 5,000 miconia targets, and reducing what we call incipient populations, or satellite populations, by 80 percent,\u201d he said.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Who would have ever thought that paintball guns could be put to such important conservation use.<\/p>\n<p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"315\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ASOTkdhSCoE\" width=\"560\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Hawaiian islands are having trouble with an invasive weed that is shading out natural plants and causes erosion.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":2,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[740,2943,2944],"class_list":["post-2117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-hawaii","tag-invasive-weeds","tag-paintball-guns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2117"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9349,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117\/revisions\/9349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onlygunsandmoney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}