You know, there was one time when Officer Holley (Dept. Land and Natural Resources) and I went to a certain part of this state forest in Puna. We were looking for the old Hawaiian Awa to put the micro chips inside. The thing was that there was some hunters that were held at gun point and tied up, this was done by the awa poachers. We went in very cautiously and we were armed, this was a tense situation at the time.
There were a lot of awa theft, thankfully we never came across the gun toting awa poachers.
Aloha.
Chris