Eleven years after they were first found on Hawaiçi Island, coqui frogs have infested more than 60,000 acres, thwarting a multimillion-dollar effort to prevent their spread.

The greatest infestations are in Puna and Hilo, although pockets of coqui have become established in Kona, said Raymond McGuire, state coqui control coordinator.
For roughly the past year, McGuire and his colleagues have been driving Big Island roads, listening for the frogs' piercing chirp. The surveyors use a Global Positioning System, or GPS, to mark where they hear the frogs.
Based on this survey, McGuire estimates at least 60,000 acres are infested with coqui, which is about 2.3 percent of the Big Island's land mass.
That estimate is limited to roadsides, however, and does not include public forests or private land located far from roads, he said, calling the figure an "underestimate."
"It would be fairly safe to assume that most of the forested areas in lower Puna are infested with coqui," McGuire said. There also are small, scattered populations living in areas higher than 2,500-foot elevation, he said.
"As the coqui expands into higher elevation ranges, the frogs will come into contact with more pristine native forests, and we're hoping to keep them out of these valuable areas," McGuire said. "Once they become established in our native forests, we face the possibility of losing such native invertebrates as the happy-faced spiders or the endangered picture wing flies."
Some of those forested tracts are within Hawaiçi Volcanoes National Park, which is on the front lines in the effort to prevent coqui from establishing new areas.
"We've been fortunate because we're at the beginning steps of coqui coming into the park," said Rhonda Loh, chief of natural resources for the park.
For the past four or five years, the park has battled the frog using volunteer help and paying for a part-time coqui coordinator, she said.
"I think we're pretty good at holding our ground and not getting a large population established in the park," Loh said, adding that the area's relatively cold weather limits the frogs' appearance to spring and summer.
But motorists attracted by the park's beauty and active lava flows are unknowingly helping spread coqui.
"It's mostly we see them in parking lot areas," Loh said. "They come off people's vehicles, so that's where we see them."
Park rangers are on the lookout for hitchhiking coqui.
"Where we see frogs, we do follow up, catching them where we can," Loh said of the nocturnal, quarter-size coqui.
Taxpayer money to fight the spread of coqui frogs, however, is quietly going away as all levels of government struggle to finance core services.
"There is still some coqui eradication going on, but that's the existing budget. The new budget doesn't have any money for coqui eradication," Hunter Bishop, public relations specialist for Mayor Billy Kenoi, said of Kenoi's proposed spending package for the fiscal year that starts July 1.
What had been a $300,000 yearly allocation is now being diverted for other uses. "That was one of the areas we decided to cut," Bishop said.
In 2006, then-Mayor Harry Kim identified coqui infestations as one of four Big Island crises that included the drug crystal methamphetamine or "ice," housing and health care. A reporting hotline was established, classes were held and even an international coqui conference was convened in February 2008.
Still, the frogs kept coming.
Hawaiçi County has fought coqui frogs for five years, spending $2.6 million on the effort, slightly less than half of which was state money, Bishop said.
During the coming fiscal year, the county will receive limited state money to fight coqui frogs, he said.
When it runs out, the county will have to terminate its two-person coqui crew and decide how to make its sprayers available to the public, he said.
"This was always a state project," Bishop said. "The state pulled back and sort of left us with the bag. We don't have the resources to do it."
State resources also are running out.
McGuire said $100,000 is available next budget year to pay his salary, a computer mapping person and two "control operation technicians."
The state Department of Land and Natural Resources will continue to fight coqui frogs, he said.
Others are less optimistic.
Roger Imoto, Hawaiçi Island manager for the DLNR's Forestry and Wildlife Division, said coqui-control efforts are "minimal because the funding has been cut."
Does that mean the Big Island's war on the coqui is over?
"It definitely is. That's for sure because the funding is going away," Imoto said. "It's kind of sad."
The federal government also is playing a less-active role in fighting coqui frogs.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services used to operate an answering service so people could report coqui populations or request use of a sprayer to soak the frogs with citric acid, which can kill them.
However, a call placed to the number Friday was answered by a recorded message announcing that the sprayer-loan program ended April 10 and will not return "until further notice." The message included an apology for the program's termination and directed callers to the county's hotline, which is still operable, "if you need coqui assistance."
But after three years of awarding grants to buy citric acid, Hawaii County stopped that program nearly a year ago.
"We ran out of funds," Karen Shiroma, manager of the county's coqui eradication program, told the Tribune-Herald last July.
Although she still holds her title, Shiroma now works in the county's Finance Department.