Diana King, center director for the Waimea Valley Audubon Center, confirmed that conservation manager Lance La Pierre and two volunteers shot the birds one day last week in response to problems with a peafowl population that has grown to "several dozen."

King said the decision was made to "trim" the population, not to eliminate the showy, but non-native, birds.

"In the case of the peacocks, they eat the plants in the collections, some of them harass people while they're eating. There have been cases of kids being pecked or clawed," she said.

Animal Rights Hawai'i president Cathy Goeggel said she was shocked the Audubon society would choose to hunt the birds down. "The animals can't really get away; they should be ashamed of themselves," she said.

Goeggel wondered why the birds weren't trapped or why the managers didn't look to other methods of population control, such as shaking the eggs of nesting birds so that the chicks wouldn't hatch.

King said there is no intention of eliminating the peacocks. She said La Pierre did consult with people in the conservation community before killing them. The conservation manager considered the matter carefully, she said. "He prayed and he meditated beforehand and afterward. This wasn't for sport or for entertainment or because somebody had a bad day."

La Pierre was on vacation yesterday and unavailable to comment on other measures he had considered, King said.

Makawao resident Christie Eggers said she was appalled when she heard about the peacock shooting from a friend.

While she understands the birds "can be a menace," she thought that an organization known for protecting birds would have found a more humane way to remove some of the problem fowl from the valley.

"They turned it into kind of a hunting expedition," Eggers said. "These are birds that are fed every day by the workers there."

The National Audubon Society took over the North Shore park in June 2003.

King said yesterday that the center will look into other ways to control the peafowl population in the future, including evaluating if any more birds will be killed. "We certainly will make sure to do our homework better next time around," she said.

Mark Ono, district supervisor for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services agency in Hawai'i, said he had not been consulted on the peacock problem at Waimea, but had been called in last year when residents of Makaha Valley had considered killing half a flock of peacocks that had become a nuisance to people who lived in the community.

"Bows and arrows obviously are not our eradication method of choice," Ono said.