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HONOLULU (AP) — Long before dawn breaks over Mason Aiona’s residence in Hawaii, the roosters are already crowing.
While the early-morning rooster calls at 3 a.m. are certainly disruptive, what truly frustrates the retiree is the constant battle against wild chickens. These birds are notorious for digging up his yard, creating a cacophony of squawks and flapping feathers, and attracting well-meaning people who feed them at the nearby park.
“It’s a big problem,” Aiona remarked, gesturing towards the growing number of roosters, hens, and chicks that roam the narrow street between his Honolulu home and the adjacent city park. “And they’re multiplying.”
For years, communities throughout Hawaii have grappled with these persistent fowl. Despite spending substantial sums on trapping efforts, Honolulu has seen little success. Now, state lawmakers are exploring new strategies, such as allowing residents to cull feral chickens, classifying them as a “controllable pest” on public lands in Honolulu, and imposing fines for feeding or abandoning them in parks.
Chickens’ cultural ties
However, the situation is a complex one, as wild chickens are viewed by some as a nuisance, while others see them as important cultural symbols. This debate mirrors similar discussions in places like Miami and other cities with their own wild chicken populations.
Kealoha Pisciotta, a Hawaiian cultural practitioner and animal advocate, disagrees with killing feral chickens simply because they’re a nuisance. Some chickens today descended from those brought to the islands by early Polynesian voyagers, she said.
“The moa is very significant,” she said, using the Hawaiian word for chicken. “They were on our voyaging, came with us.”
The Hawaiian Humane Society opposes letting residents kill the chickens “as a means of population control unless all other strategies have been exhausted.”
Aggressive birds
Rep. Scot Matayoshi, a Democrat representing the Honolulu suburb of Kaneohe, said he started crafting chicken control legislation after he heard from an elementary school teacher in his district that the birds were harassing the pupils.
“The children were afraid of them, and they would kind of more aggressively go after the children for food,” Matayoshi said.
Rep. Jackson Sayama said he introduced the chicken-killing bill because there are currently limited ways to get rid of them. The lethal method would be at the resident’s discretion.
“If you want to go old-school, just break the chicken’s neck, that’s perfectly fine,” said the Democrat who represents part of Honolulu. “There’s many different ways you can do it.”
A fowl problem keeps growing
Chicken eradication bills have failed over the years, Matayoshi said. Chicken birth control was an idea discussed when he was on a neighborhood board.
“I think there are people who are taking it more seriously now,” he said.
For more than 30 years, Aiona, 74, has lived in a valley near downtown Honolulu in a house his wife Leona grew up in. Wild chickens didn’t show up in their neighborhood until about a decade ago, they said. The birds proliferated during the COVID-19 pandemic.
He once saw a man take a chicken out of his car, leave it in the park and drive away, he said.
When the chickens first appeared outside his home, he caught one with his bare hands and put it in a plastic trash can, then drove it to a park near the airport. “I took off the cover, tipped it over and the chicken ran right out,” he said. “I said … ‘Don’t come back again.’”
But he quickly realized the time-consuming effort was futile.
He’s personally not interested in killing chickens, preferring for someone to scoop them up and take them to a rural farm. A city trapping program is too expensive, he said.
The city contracts with a pest-control company that traps chickens. A weeklong service costs a private property owner $375, plus a $50 cage rental fee and disposal fee of $10 per chicken.
More than 1,300 chickens were caught through the program last year, said Honolulu Department of Customer Services spokesperson Harold Nedd, who added the department also saw a 51% increase in complaints about feral chickens in 2025.
Chicken for dinner?
Wild chickens aren’t likely to make a cheap dinner. The meat is tougher than poultry raised for harvesting, and the feral birds can be a vector of disease.
One of Aiona’s neighbors shoos them with a leaf blower. “I have a blower, too, but mine is electric,” Aiona said. “It can only go so far with the cord.”
Aiona has grown tired of spending his retirement telling park-goers to stop feeding the chickens. And while he doesn’t recommend that anyone eat them, he welcomes anyone who wants one to come get it.
“No charge,” he said.