Pritchett photo 300 dpi square

John Pritchett

Cartoons

Into the future

<title>Pritchett Cartoon: In the future ...</title>

Pritchett Cartoon: In the future ...

Ray Tsuchiyama

Real Estate

Columnists

 on property stewardship, I received emails about the family conflicts that happen after parents pass away. This column is a direct response to your stories.

On a recent Sunday I strolled along the water at Magic Island, Ala Moana Beach Park. I smiled at splashing toddlers, did the shaka to sweating fathers with tongs over the hibachi, and waved at mothers carrying macaroni salad containers. Memories of my parents flood my mind. I thought my parents would live forever — but that, as we know, is not life.

Watching the happy families at the beach, I felt fortunate: After my parents' passing, my sister and I have remained close, and as I have grown older, that closeness has become one of the real joys of my life — not something I take for granted. Whatever spared my sister and me the fate of the families in this column was not luck alone. It was trust, built slowly, over years, long before there was ever anything at stake to divide.

Then came readers' emails, and unexpectedly, almost all shared one theme: my writing on capital stewardship (in Hawaiʻi: land and properties) triggered emotional responses of family dysfunction — in short, they ended up not speaking to each other.

Trust is not something a family can suddenly create after a parent's passing, when grief is raw and old roles — the one who stayed, the one who left, the one who managed everything — resurface all at once. It has to be practiced earlier, long before a house is on the table. A family that talks with each other about hard things finds a way to talk about a house, too. A family that has not will find that the house becomes the place where every unspoken grievance finally has somewhere to land.

If there is a lesson in my own life, the trust that makes an inheritance survivable is not built during probate. It is built at a Liliha dinner table or Sundays at Magic Island, before anyone imagines it will ever be tested.

But trust like that is rare — my inbox tells me so.

From one Neighbor Island reader, she said that she had an agreement with her brother regarding their parents' house after their passing – but the brother went his own way. She ended up with what she had planned for — but spent months agonizing over it, while grieving her parents at the same time.

There is a brother from Nu‘uanu who returned from Las Vegas upon his mother's passing and found he had been cut out of the parents' house sale by his two sisters. When he pointed out that he shared family DNA, the sisters pulled out an Excel spreadsheet of all their visits and expenses when their mother was cared for by the two sisters — in rotation. They are fighting in court now.

Finally, one reader from California who "married into a big Hawaiian Kailua family” witnessed the disintegration of the siblings' relationships from his wife's point of view — all about the parents' properties.

Why does it always seem to come back to the 

In Hawaiʻi real estate becomes the battlefield not because families here love each other less than families elsewhere, but because of a few structural realities almost unique to our islands.

First, for many local families, the house 

 the estate. There is no diversified portfolio, no second property on the Mainland, no stock account — just one appreciated, illiquid asset that cannot simply be cut into thirds.

Second, decades of land scarcity and appreciation mean that a home purchased for tens of thousands of dollars in the 1960s or ’70s can now be worth millions — turning a modest family house into the single largest financial event of an adult child's life.

Third, there is the caregiving imbalance that so often goes unspoken. One sibling stays — cares for aging parents, drives them to doctors' appointments, pays the HECO bill — while others build careers and families elsewhere, on the Mainland. That caregiving is real and it is costly, in both time and money. But it is rarely discussed as its own form of compensation while parents are alive. Instead, it resurfaces later, sometimes literally as a spreadsheet, as evidence in a courtroom about what is "fair."

Fourth, we have a cultural reluctance to raise estate questions with living parents. It can feel disrespectful to ask a parent what they want done with the house after they are gone. One friend's mother responded 

 So, the conversation gets deferred, year after year, until it can no longer be deferred at all.

Put together, these forces mean that in Hawaiʻi, the house does not just hold financial value. It holds every unresolved conversation a family did not have time, or the will, to finish.

When I walk on Sundays at Magic Island, watching those young families, I know they are not thinking about wills or houses. They should not have to, not yet. But someday, quietly and without warning, they will.

If I could sit down at one of those picnic tables — a kupuna intruding on a young family's Sunday beach picnic, I would not talk to them about real estate. I would tell them this: Talk to each other 

, while it costs nothing and means everything. Talk to your parents while they can still answer. Talk to your siblings while there is nothing yet to divide, and the conversation is just conversation, not negotiation. Because by the time the house is what is left to talk about, the thing that actually needed saying has usually already gone unsaid for years.

That, more than any property, is the inheritance worth passing down — and it is the one so many Hawaiʻi families do not realize we are either building or losing, one Magic Island Sunday at a time.

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ay Tsuchiyama’s series explores one central question: How does Hawai‘i use the wealth and land it already has to create its next economic future? He can be reached at 

Firefly Gemini Flash funny illustration of a Hawaii family arguing over a house theyve inherited make th 379744

<title>Why Hawaiʻi families stop speaking over a house</title>

The wealth that most people in Hawai‘i stand to inherit is typically real estate — quite often the very homes we grew up in, which are now million-dollar assets. ASD columnist Ray Tsuchiyama has advice for how kama‘āina can avoid the pain of fighting over the house when their parents are gone.

Why Hawaiʻi families stop speaking over a house

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

 just opened in Sam Sung Plaza. The new tonkatsu restaurant is located in the former space of Sushi ii, which closed in July.

The eatery features a variety of tonkatsu sets; sets include rice, shredded cabbage, and miso soup. Customers can enjoy free refills of miso soup and cabbage.

The pork loin tonkatsu ($21 for 130 grams, $25 for 180 grams) and pork tenderloin tonkatsu ($25 for four pieces) come highly recommended.

The eatery also offers a miso pork loin tonkatsu set, which is topped with the restaurant’s special miso sauce. Other options include chicken katsu sets ($21), fried shrimp set (five pieces for $25), chicken katsu-don ($23), pork katsu sandwich ($13) and fried oysters ($15). The fried oysters are one of Tonkatsu Sakazaki’s featured appetizers.

[{"type":"text","text":"Customers can upgrade their miso soup to pork soup for an additional $5."}]

The eatery’s opening special is a $9.99 pork loin cutlet rice bowl (regular price $19). The bowl comes with rice topped with pork cutlet simmered in a savory, dashi-based sauce with onions. This discounted price will be available for about three weeks.

Tonkatsu Sakazaki is also the sister restaurant of Ramen Nakamura, located in Waikīkī. Tonkatsu Sakazaki is offering a special Nakamura oxtail curry ($14) — which features a soup-style broth instead of a thicker texture — that features Ramen Nakamura’s oxtail soup. Customers can enjoy the oxtail curry on its own, dip their katsu in it, or pour the curry over rice.

The eatery will be open for lunch from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and for dinner from 5 to 9 p.m.

Open from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. for lunch, 5 to 9 p.m. for dinner

Tonkatsu Sakazaki plates 090426

<title>Tonkatsu Sakazaki is now open in Honolulu</title>

The tonkatsu eatery just opened in Sam Sung Plaza. Customers can take advantage of a grand opening special — discounted $9.99 pork loin cutlet rice bowls (regular price $19) — for about three weeks. The restaurant specializes in tonkatsu, ranging from pork tenderloin to chicken katsu.

Tonkatsu Sakazaki is now open in Honolulu

Scan 20241017 2

Corey Idleburg

Viewpoints

Every housing conversation in Hawaiʻi eventually comes down to the same thing: permits. They take too long. They cost too much. Fix the permitting system, and the housing will follow.

That argument is not wrong. Hawaiʻi’s permit processing times run more than triple the national average. In Honolulu, a single-family home permit took a median of 394 days in the first half of 2025, before new processing software was introduced. Multi-family units took 585 days. Those delays are real, and they cost real money.

But here is the part of the story that doesn’t get told as often: Hawaiʻi has been building housing. And for most families in this state, it still doesn’t matter. They still can’t afford it.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The numbers are blunt"}]

The University of Hawaiʻi Economic Research Organization’s 2026 Housing Factbook puts it plainly. Affording the median-priced single-family home in Hawaii requires a household income of more than 180% of the state median. The state median household income is approximately $100,000. That means a family needs to earn roughly $180,000 just to qualify, under a conventional 30-year mortgage with a 20% down payment, spending no more than 30% of income on housing.

Only about one in five Hawaiʻi households earns that much.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"One in five"}]

The other four households aren’t priced out because the permitting process is slow. They’re priced out because the market produces homes they cannot afford to buy at any speed.

By mid-2026, the statewide single-family median has risen further. July data from Oʻahu shows a single-family median of $1.207 million, up 12% year over year. Statewide, first-half 2026 data puts the single-family median right at $1 million. Mortgage rates averaging around 6.9% as of mid-2026 erase most of the affordability gains that came from lower rates in 2025. Every uptick in rates means fewer families can qualify, even at the same price.

The statewide number is bad. The county-level numbers tell different stories worth understanding.

Maui County has the highest median single-family price in the state, now approaching $1.2 million for most of 2026, with the luxury end, Wailea and Mākena, averaging close to $2.65 million per sale in the second quarter. Over 55% of Maui renters are rent-burdened. Maui has lost net housing units over the past five years. And the county’s population fell again in 2025, a pattern driven by wildfire displacement, housing costs, and domestic out-migration that has not reversed.

Kauaʻi County tells a different version of the same story. Single-family prices on Kauaʻi surged 15% in the first half of 2026 despite a 12.6% drop in sales volume. A sign that limited inventory is pushing prices higher, even as fewer families can afford to participate in the market. Vacation rentals still account for nearly 20% of all housing units on the island, the highest concentration in the state. Nearly 52% of renters are rent-burdened.

Honolulu County has the highest median household income of the four counties at $106,000, but the Oʻahu single-family median has climbed above $1.2 million in recent months. Only 59.8% of Honolulu households own their homes, the lowest homeownership rate in the state.

Hawaiʻi County remains the relative outlier. The median single-family price of $465,000 is the lowest in the state by a wide margin. But median household income is also the lowest at $78,600, and the county has the highest unemployment rate. The comparative affordability here is not a sign of economic health.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"People are leaving"}]

Hawaiʻi’s population fell by 2,132 residents in fiscal year 2025, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released in January 2026. That brought the total state population to 1,432,820, about 22,447 fewer people than the April 2020 census base. Only Vermont and Puerto Rico lost a larger share of their populations during that same period.

Most of the loss is not natural — it’s people packing up and leaving. The Census Bureau estimated that 8,876 people migrated from Hawaiʻi to other parts of the United States in 2025. International migration and births provided some offset, but not enough to reverse the trend.

That is not a lifestyle shift. That is, families running the numbers and leaving because they cannot afford to stay.

Statewide, 56.7% of renter households are rent-burdened, spending more than 30% of their income on housing. Nearly 29% are severely rent-burdened, spending more than half of their income on rent.

The most expensive rental zip codes are all on Oʻahu. Hawaiʻi Kai has a median rent of $3,501 per month. Salt Lake, a working-class, military-adjacent neighborhood, runs $3,190. These are not luxury markets. They are where regular people live, and the rents are eating them alive.

Rents have grown slowly in recent years, which counts as a small relief. But slowly rising rents don’t fix the underlying problem when rents were already unaffordable before they slowed.

Supply does matter, but it’s not sufficient

Building more housing does put downward pressure on prices over time. UHERO research published in the journal Real Estate Economics traced the 

 of one 512-unit mixed-income condominium near Ala Moana, The Central, and found that its construction freed up more than 500 additional units across Oʻahu through a chain of moves. Those vacated units were roughly 40% less expensive than the new building. The evidence that new supply helps local households at multiple income levels is real.

But “over time” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. For families who need housing now, the long arc of market adjustment doesn’t answer the immediate question.

A few interventions are worth tracking as the 2026 session results work through the system.

Honolulu’s Bill 7 has produced 189 income-restricted rental units, with another 550 under construction. It targets households at or below 100% of Area Median Income. The program’s policy goal is 500 units per year. It has never hit that number. The program also expires in 2030 without legislative extension, and because development timelines run five years or more, the window is narrowing.

Maui’s Bill 9 is the most direct attempt to convert existing units from tourist use back to housing. Condo prices in affected areas were already down 11% compared to 2023, even before full implementation. UHERO estimates a complete phase-out could reduce those prices by 20% to 40%. That’s real movement, but the policy faces ongoing legal challenges from owners in resort areas who argue it violates their property rights, and its ultimate outcome remains uncertain.

On the permitting side, the 2026 Legislature passed SB 2671, which authorizes county mayors to establish a pilot program that uses targeted hiring, higher pay, and performance incentives for permit-processing staff. SB 2673, which requires a statewide permitting data standard and mandatory monthly reporting from each county, was also passed and signed by the governor. These are meaningful reforms. Whether they move the needle on actual processing times is a question the data will need to answer over the next two years.

What they will not do is make a $1.2 million Oʻahu home affordable to a family earning $75,000.

More market-rate supply and faster permits will help households near the top of the affordability curve. For families earning $50,000, $60,000, or $70,000 a year, those improvements are unlikely to arrive at a scale or speed sufficient to change their options in any practical way.

The households most in need are the ones least served by a market responding to normal incentives. They need income-restricted housing, subsidized rentals, and sustained public investment. Not just faster permits for homes, they still can’t afford to buy.

That’s not an argument against supply expansion. It’s an argument for being honest about what supply expansion alone can and cannot do.

The families running the numbers and choosing to leave deserve that honesty most of all.

Reprinted with permission from Corey Idleburg, executive director of 

a Honolulu-based nonprofit that translates research, data, and policy into accessible public information for Hawaiʻi communities.

Oahu neighborhoods homes i Stock

<title>Community Voices: Hawaiʻi's housing affordability problem</title>

Permit reform is a supply problem. What Hawaiʻi has is a price problem.

Community Voices: Hawaiʻi's housing affordability problem

Christian Shimabuku Headshot

Christian Shimabuku

Sports

MĀNOA — Spencer McLachlin estimates he's been inside the Stan Sheriff Center over 500 times since the facility opened in the fall of 1994. 

, both University of Hawai‘i Circle of Honor inductees, Spencer McLachlin would sit in the stands during UH volleyball matches as his father served as TV color commentator alongside Jim Leahey on K5 broadcasts. Wahine volleyball matches were extra special for the McLachlin family, as Beth is still remembered as one of the program's pioneers. A star setter on the 1974 and 1975 teams, Beth McLachlin added the 

With his parents guiding him, Spencer McLachlin went on to become a star athlete himself. While he was a two-time all-state basketball player at Punahou, volleyball was where he truly shined. A 6-foot-7 outside hitter, Spencer McLachlin was a starter in multiple tournaments for the U.S. junior national team. He was one of the sport's top recruits by the time he was set to graduate high school in 2007, and he chose Stanford among his many offers. 

McLachlin started all 105 matches he appeared in for the Cardinal from 2008 to 2011, which included a national championship in 2010. With aspirations of becoming a coach one day, McLachlin helped out with Bay-to-Bay Volleyball Club as he finished up a master's degree with Stanford. 

After a brief professional playing career in Greece, McLachlin returned to Hawai‘i and joined Charlie Wade's UH men's staff as a volunteer assistant in 2014 while he taught at Punahou. He was then elevated to full-time assistant for the Rainbow Warriors in 2015. 

From there, McLachlin was an assistant coach for the Cal women's team from 2016 to 2017, an assistant coach on the UCLA men's staff from 2018 to 2021, the associate head coach for Indiana in 2022, then the associate head coach for USC from 2023 to 2025. His first opportunity to become a head coach was officially announced on Dec. 29, 2025, when UC San Diego named him the new women's head coach. 

On Sunday, the final day of the 2026 OUTRIGGER Invitational, Spencer McLachlin's UC San Diego squad went up against host Hawai‘i to close the tournament. Father Chris was courtside doing color commentary for K5 with Kanoa Leahey, Jim's son, while Beth McLachlin watched intently. As Spencer competed against the University of Hawai‘i for the first time as a head coach, he proved the McLachlin family can still have firsts in its charmed volleyball journey. 

Though the Tritons were just two points away from winning in four sets, the Rainbow Wahine rallied to take Sunday's match 22-25, 25-15, 21-25, 26-24, 15-8. UCSD led as late as 23-22 in the fourth set before UH forced deuce. The 'Bows, who sprinted to a 14-3 lead in the fifth set, went 3-0 over the weekend and improved to 4-2 for the 2026 campaign. The Tritons, meanwhile, fell to 2-4 in McLachlin's debut season and were 0-3 during the weekend. 

"A lot of emotions," Spencer McLachlin told Aloha State Daily following the match, with some of his players seen wiping tears away in the distance. "I feel for my team that fought so hard, but it's life. Learning isn't linear. It's not gonna happen overnight. It's gonna take some really hard lessons, and we had three really hard lessons in the three matches this weekend. I wish it ended up a little bit differently, but that's volleyball. That's why everyone everyone loves it. I'm proud of our girls."

Over a dozen family members were in attendance to support Spencer McLachlin on Sunday. Additionally, a handful of friends from his O‘ahu childhood, including Stanford teammate Kawika Shoji, were there to offer encouragement. 

"I love this place," Spencer McLachlin said of the Stan. "My mom's got her plaque up there in the Circle of Honor. This place means so much to me. It is a top five place to play in the world, and it's because of the fans. It's because of the tradition. ... Just so many great coaches. The volleyball community here is so great. And if I grew up anywhere else, I probably wouldn't have fallen in love with the sport like I did growing up here."

In the heat of the match, Spencer McLachlin admits he gave a quick look to his dad and couldn't help but smile. After the match, Spencer's three young children walked towards the announcer's table. 

"There's Papa," Spencer pointed out to his keiki. 

Chris McLachlin knew that calling Sunday's match came with added responsibility. The school he loves was facing a team coached by his son, and he knew he had to be impartial to both. 

I started out by telling Kanoa if I lapse into nepotism at all, please correct me," Chris McLachlin joked with ASD after the match. "I thought that for the weekend, (Spencer) was really proud of how they performed. They could have won the tournament, you know. They were very close to being 3-0. Instead, they're 0-3. But a lot of good lessons learned, and it's a different kind of proud that he is sharing so much of himself with those girls."

The four years Spencer McLachlin played for Stanford aligned directly with the four seasons current Rainbow Wahine head coach 

 took the floor for the Hawai‘i men's team following a redshirt year. Though McLachlin 

went 8-1 as a player against the 'Bows, Walker never made it easy, leading UH in kills the vast majority of those matchups. 

"Ton of respect for him, just because I know how hard of a worker he is," Walker said following the match. "We knew we were going to get their best shot and they were going to be prepared. That's just who he is and how he operates. I think we both made each other better tonight."

Despite growing up an athletic prodigy of sorts, the coaches in Spencer McLachlin's life are the reason why he set his heart early on becoming one himself one day. 

 was his club coach when he was 10, and Spencer McLachlin remembers how the legendary former Wahine volleyball coach taught him how to pass, one of the underrated skills in the sport. McLachlin joked that with a career record of 2-4 thus far in his debut season, he has 1,200 to go to catch Shoji's career mark of 1202-204-1. 

But if there's one coach who truly made his mark on Spencer, it's his father, who led Punahou to 11 state titles in boys volleyball and three in boys basketball. 

"He's my biggest mentor," Spencer McLachlin says of Chris McLachlin. "Him caring for the athletes and the trust that you build by getting to know them, he has incredible relationships with all of his former athletes and if I could be a 10th of the coach that he is, then I'll have a great career. I think he's a wizard, and I'm so blessed to have him be my mentor." 

Following a brief chat after the match, Chris and Spencer McLachlin went their separate ways, Spencer eager to build on the career he's wanted for as long as he can remember, knowing dad is always a phone call away. 

"He was always asking questions about coaching strategies, so I thought maybe he's gonna be a coach someday," Chris McLachlin says. "He always seemed to glean the most from all the coaches he had when he played in the junior national team. He just always seemed to be gleaning little pearls of wisdom about coaching. And I think when he was very young, he followed me for my basketball and volleyball career, and it always seemed to be not just a kid at the gym, but more like a kid learning at the gym. He was always picking up something and asking questions. He wants to be a good coach in the worst way, and just the art of coaching means a lot to him."

Spencer McLachlin 090626

<title>Punahou alum Spencer McLachlin returns home for emotional weekend as new UCSD coach</title>

Both of McLachlin's parents are in the UH Circle of Honor. He estimates he's been inside the Stan Sheriff Center over 500 times. On Sunday, for the first time as a head coach, he went up against his childhood team.

Punahou alum Spencer McLachlin returns home for emotional weekend as new UCSD coach

WEB square crop Hayley Lehman Headshot RGZ1636

Haley Lehman

Aloha Spirit

Mike Shiroma’s neighborhood in the Pālolo Valley sounds different than it did when he was a kid, all because of the invasive coqui frog.

The quarter-sized tree frog native to Puerto Rico calls from dusk to dawn. They are one of the loudest frogs in the world, with calls reaching up to 100 decibels, similar to a lawnmower or motorcycle. They hitchhiked to Hawaiʻi Island in 1988 and have since set up colonies on Oʻahu in Pālolo Valley, Waimānalo and the Kuliʻouʻou summit.

Shiroma said he’s witnessed the number of frogs grow from a handful to dozens to thousands, and now estimates that there are 15,000-20,000 coqui frogs in Pālolo Valley.

Shiroma described the coqui frog noise as a “permanent, audio graffiti.”

“They're changing the environment forever,” he said.

Sidney Lynch called the noise deafening. She noticed the occassional frog washing down the Waiʻōmaʻo Stream and would call the Department of Agriculture to catch it. She offered to help after she noticed more and more frogs washing down the stream in 2025.

She co-founded Pālolo Coqui, a group of volunteers that meets multiple times a week to catch and kill coqui in the Pālolo Valley. Volunteers have caught 6,085 since they started in March.

“Even though it’s only concentrated in a five street area, it’s getting much noisier and they can spread,” Lynch said. “At this point, if there’s the chance to eradicate them, we may as well try.”

When volunteers came to Shiroma’s door with a flyer earlier this year, they joined forces to fight the invasion, going from what Shiroma called an “army of one” to a team. Shiroma has been hunting coqui frogs for years, and said he’s getting burned out and discouraged.

Volunteers wear long-sleeve neon shirts, long pants, headlamps and sturdy shoes, and carry plastic tubes, UV flashlights, citric acid solution and radios, and head out into the protected state land bordering the neighborhood to search for frogs.

Here’s how it works: Volunteers listen for the distinct “ko-KEE” call, approach the frog and place a long plastic tube on the frog. The frog jumps up and into the tube, and volunteers put the frog into a small bottle full of a citric acid solution where it is killed.

The male frogs like to hang out on logs and smooth leaves, such as monstera, pothos and heliconia. The “ko” of the coqui’s call asserts their territory and the “kee” calls for females.

Shiroma read scientific papers that said certain amphibians floresce under UV light. He tried it out, and found that certain UV light makes the coqui appear black and their eyes glow, allowing volunteers to look for frogs with UV flashlights when they are not calling.

“To me, this is the game changer. There’s no better discovery than this,” Shiroma said.

The coqui frog is one of 15 high priority pests that the 

 is monitoring. OISC is a project under the University of Hawaiʻi Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit that coordinates between communities, the Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity and the Department of Land and Natural Resources. OISC first got involved with coqui frogs in Pālolo Valley in September 2024.

Robbie Snyder, a community engagement liaison with OISC, detailed the negative impacts coqui frogs can have on Hawaiʻi.

Coqui frogs have no natural predators on Hawaiʻi, so they get more dense than they would in their home country. Snyder said that one acre of land on Oʻahu can be home to 36,000 coqui.

The noise changes the soundscape of Oʻahu’s forests, Snyder said. Lynch said that the noise impacts resident’s quality of life.

Homeowners are required to disclose if there’s a coqui frog infestation on or near their property, which can drive down home prices.

Coqui frogs eat invertebrates, which damages Oʻahu’s native plants and can harm native plants when those plants aren’t being pollinated.

“Those insects also play vital pollinating services to our native plants, so when the frogs eat the native insects, we then lose things that can pollinate our native plants, and that has a cascading affect through the ecosystem,” Snyder said.

If snakes were introduced in Hawaiʻi, coqui frogs would provide a “massive food source” and aid their spread.

According to Snyder, the current goal is to contain coqui frogs until the state has the resources or better tools to eradicate them.

“With the resources we have right now, site level eradication of coqui is not possible,” Snyder said. “There isn’t enough funding, there’s not enough people, there’s not enough resources, and that’s even with the incredible community volunteers that we have, but we need more and we need a years-long commitment to funding.”

Snyder said that hand capture alone isn’t enough at this point to eradicate an infestation.

“There are small enough local populations that they haven’t become widespread. Hope is not lost with coqui frogs,” Snyder said.

OISC and state agencies spray a liquid combination of citric acid and water in an attempt to contain coqui frogs. Citric acid, which is found in citrus, some soft drinks and some candies, poses little risk to people and the environment, but is lethal to amphibians because they respirate through their skin.

OISC has been spraying 400 gallons of citric acid month in the Pālolo Valley for about two years and increased to spray twice monthly starting in August.

When coqui frogs infested Wahiawā in 2003, the Hawaiʻi Department of Agriculture and Biodiversity, the Oʻahu Army Natural Resources Program, the Department of Land and Natural Resources and OISC teamed up and eradicated the coqui infestation with a mix of citric spray and hand captures by 2007.

The volunteers in Pālolo have mixed opinions about the use of citric acid spray. Lynch believes citric acid spray is an effective tool and Shiroma believes it’s not as effective as hand capturing the frogs.

Shiroma called it an “agency failure” that the Department of Agriculture hasn’t dedicated more resources to preventing the spread of coqui.

“You guys are using the same broken playbook that’s not working and hasn’t worked for decades. This is not a new problem.” Shiroma. He advocated for the Department of Agriculture to make a dedicated team that works at night.

While the coqui frogs keep calling, Pālolo Valley neighbors will continue donning neon shirts and heading into the forest to stop them.

Coqui in Pālolo

<title>Volunteers battle coqui frog infestation in Pālolo Valley</title>

The Pālolo Coqui volunteer group is working alongside the Oʻahu Invasive Species Committee and state agencies to contain a coqui frog infestation in their neighborhood.

Volunteers battle coqui frog infestation in Pālolo Valley

 is coming up Sept. 12 at Leeward Community College. The event is from 3:45 to 9 p.m.

This cultural celebration, created by JCI Honolulu and Hawaiʻi Todaiji, is designed to support local performers and businesses while rekindling bon dance in Hawaiʻi. 

This year, there is a $1 admission fee for Megabon attendees. Tickets are available online; there will also be QR codes that attendees can scan along the lines at Megabon to purchase tickets via credit card. A cash-only line for tickets will be at the festival’s Skyline entrance.

The opening ceremony starts at 4:10 p.m., followed by a welcome address featuring Gov. Josh Green. Attendees can look forward to performances by Hawaiʻi Shin Kobu Kai, Waipahu Soto Mission Bon Dance Class, Oʻahu District Bon Dance Club and more.

Attendees can also enjoy a variety of dishes from the festival’s numerous food and craft vendors. Participating vendors include Da Bald Guy, Da Mochi Guys, 

, Olay’s Thai Lao Express, Pitch Sports Bar, Sato Seafood, The Savellano’s Lechon and Waba Snacks, to name a few.

Early access tickets cost $10 and includes early entry at 3 p.m.; this pass does not include parking. 

There is no public parking at LCC for the event; only handicap parking on a first-come, first-served basis will be available on-site.

To get to Megabon, attendees can take the Skyline — there’s a Skyline rail station in front of the Megabon entrance. 

For more information, visit Megabon Hawai

Megabon 2026 performance 090126

<title>Save the date for Megabon 2026</title>

The fourth annual Megabon — created by JCI Honolulu and Hawaiʻi Todaiji — is set for Sept. 12 at Leeward Community College. Here’s what you can look forward to during this year’s festival.

Pritchett Cartoon: In the future ...

John Pritchett

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Pritchett Cartoon: In the future ...

Authors

John Pritchett

More in Cartoons

Pritchett Cartoon: Supreme Court rules on basket case

Pritchett Cartoon: Got my mind on a panda and panda on my mind

Pritchett Cartoon: Tommy Waters court challenge

Most read