The Buffalo Brief

Mission Unclear: A $1 Million Contract Involving Invasive Species

Honolulu Civil Beat · Oct 28, 5:01 AM CT

Honolulu Civil Beat reported that hawaiʻi has ponied up tens of millions of dollars to fight the plague of invasive species across the islands.

The same report said that but the state's choice of contractors is raising serious concerns.

It also noted that investigative stories and local news updates.

The account added that award winning in-depth reports and featured on-going series.

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The dispatch went on: but the state’s choice of contractors is raising serious concerns.

Invasive species experts are alarmed by the state’s signing of a vague $1 million contract with engineers who will be tasked with figuring out what imports are most prone to hosting new invasive species.

The contract, signed in June, was awarded to Shizen Consulting Management, a five-year-old engineering firm.

Pest management professionals say the proposal for a pest risk assessment is an exorbitant waste of money, the contractors are unqualified and the work may be redundant.

Others point to the contractors’ close historical relationship with senior Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity staff, its past work with them and the contractor’s relationship with the nursery industry, which is often blamed for pest introductions and outbreaks statewide.

Wayne Tanaka of Sierra Club said the contract is “sketchy” and, at best, “gratuitous.” He highlighted how the agency is facing chronic issues, including staff shortages and existing pest outbreaks.

Shizen’s $1 million contract adds to three biosecurity-related deals signed last year, worth $678,000, awarded to its sister engineering firm EKNA Services.

EKNA, formerly known as Edward K.

Noda and Associates, shares key senior staff and an address with Shizen.

Civil Beat spoke to more than 10 current and former workers in Hawaiʻi’s invasive species sector, including state employees, most of whom did not want to be named for fear of reprisal.

Still, they shared concerns about the company’s proposal, the firm conducting it and why Shizen’s two engineering consultants would be receiving over $600,000 in pay and fringe benefits as part of the yearlong project.

We’re reliant on agencies in the system to make sure that (contractors) are delivering.”.

Pest risk assessments like those sought by the state biosecurity department typically focus on potential invasive species, how they can become embedded in new areas and what their impacts might be.

State Plant Quarantine Branch manager Jonathan Ho, who managed the state’s solicitation, said the Shizen contract is intended to set a foundation for future assessments, to guide agency staff as they try to stop the introduction and spread of pests.

Rather than specifying the work needed for an assessment, the department chose to send out its request for proposals so it could find “new and innovative approaches,” Ho wrote in a May letter.

The solicitation, posted on the state procurement website on May 21, called for just one measurable objective and outcome.

It was vague by intention, Ho told Civil Beat, to allow for “flexibility.”.

Shizen proposed up to eight risk assessments that would form the basis of a methodology that the biosecurity department could deploy in the future.

The consultants’ proposal was still too obscure for many biosecurity stakeholders.

Civil Beat shared the proposal with Mark Burgman, director of the University of Hawaiʻi School of Life Sciences and a seasoned ecologist who was integral to the establishment of Australia’s Centre of Excellence for Biosecurity Risk Analysis.

He said such assessments can be a bit ambiguous and dependent on context, and that conversations can happen offline to clarify intent.

With the Shizen proposal, he said, there is “simply no detail about what was intended, what they’re going to look at, what they’re going to measure.”.

“There’s a million things that they could be doing,” he said, adding that he would have a lot of questions about the proposal.

Hawaiʻi is home to several pest management and invasive species organizations, from grassroots community groups and nonprofits to consultancy groups, formed over the years to combat the persistent threat of pests in the islands.

Shizen was the only outfit to apply, according to records obtained by Civil Beat, emailing its application an hour before the agency’s deadline.

Ho signed off on the proposal the next business day, largely justifying the award because Shizen’s proposal ticked his solicitation’s prerequisites – one objective and one outcome – and Shizen’s relationship with its more experienced sister company, EKNA.

A long and growing list of invasive pests and plant pathogens have made their way into Hawaiʻi since 2000, including little fire ants, coconut rhinoceros beetles and the fungi that cause rapid ʻōhiʻa death and coffee leaf rust.

The organisms together threaten to cause billions of dollars in damage and lost ecosystem services, underscoring a need for the state to pony up for programs like pest risk assessments.

Such assessments could focus on a commodity, an airport, certain flights, a sea port and certain states of origin, leaving a wide scope of possibilities.

Shizen’s proposal does little to firm up details.

The Shizen proposal suggested its two staff, with help from the state and Bishop Museum, could perform eight risk assessments, to analyze pathways for invasive species to get into or around the state.

The proposal does not detail how the assessments will be performed or what kinds of organisms will be monitored.

It doesn’t indicate what commodities or pathways will be assessed, what will be measured or how data will be collected.

The contract does include the Bishop Museum’s zoological staff, who will be enlisted to identify pests found during the assessments.

The Buffalo Brief wrote this from the public report by Honolulu Civil Beat. Nothing was added past what that report said.

Reported by Honolulu Civil Beat. https://www.civilbeat.org/2026/10/mission-unclear-a-1-million-contract-involving-invasive-species