Youth sports
I’m loving your high school sports coverage. So glad you are back in the local sports game. And back you all came, in a big way!
Connor Whitt’s coverage in Sunday’s paper of the Waiakea/Kohala varsity baseball game was active, exciting and had the energy of a press box play-by play.
Kelsey Walling’s great photo of Kohala’s third baseman Kailani Valenzuela’s long lean-in for the catch was a gem.
How great to see our island’s best resource, our youth, front page and center, knocking it out of the park.
Thanks for showcasing the hard work and spirit of our high school athletes.
Barbara Feliciano Pinkerton
Waimea
Save the birds
Hawaii has been blessed with dozens of beautiful bird species found nowhere else in the world, such as the scarlet ‘i‘iwi, the playful ‘elepaio, and the rare, woodpecker-like ‘akiapola‘au.
Sadly, more than half of our endemic birds have gone extinct, mainly because of diseases carried by non-native mosquitoes.
Today, we have a natural, nontoxic tool to combat alien mosquitoes. Releasing incompatible male mosquitoes (which don’t bite) to mate with local female mosquitoes will cause the females to lay sterile eggs and make their populations crash.
This control method is non-GMO and does not involve toxic chemicals. If we don’t do anything, we will lose the rest of our native forest birds, some within the next couple of years.
In years to come, will we have to tell our children that we had a way to save the birds but we didn’t do it? ‘A‘ole mosquitoes! Save the birds!
J. B. Friday
Hilo