Board Talk

Nature Conservancy Withdraws from Honouliuli

The Nature Conservancy of Hawai`i has decided to refocus its management efforts on intact native habitats. And because its 3,600-acre Honouliuli preserve contains a mix of native and non-native habitat, TNCH asked the state Department of Land and Natural Resources for permission to end its forest stewardship agreement with the state.

Under the agreement, which TNCH entered into in 2002, the conservancy committed to managing the area for 30 years, but it was eligible for matching funds from the state for just 10 years. Early withdrawal is allowed, provided that the contractor repays all forest stewardship program funds received in the most recent three-year period, plus a penalty equal to 2 percent of the total contract penalty. The conservancy’s total payback amount for this contract was $132,426.

Late last year, however, the conservancy’s Mark Fox and Suzanne Case both asked DLNR staff if that penalty could be avoided. The agreement allows for termination without penalty if the preserve is transferred or sold to a government agency committed to forest stewardship. Since TNCH is working with the Trust for Public Land, the DLNR, Kamehameha Schools, and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to purchase the land from The James Campbell Company and perhaps transfer it to the DLNR or OHA, Fox and Case asked whether the “Sale to Government Agency” condition could be invoked.

According to reports to the Board of Land and Natural Resources, the DLNR’s Division of Forestry and Wildlife recommended against a penalty waiver since, “while the preserve is for sale, it is unknown when it will sell and exactly who will be the title owner.” What’s more, the reports state, the reason for terminating the agreement was not tied to any sale to a government agency, but was because of the conservancy’s shift in management priorities.

At the Land Board’s May 9 meeting, Fox said that the conservancy was prepared to pay back the $132,000, but asked that the money go towards management or purchase of Honouliuli. DOFAW administrator Paul Conry said that while some of that money might make its way back to the area via various division programs, he would not recommend earmarking all of the funds for Honouliuli.

Although TNCH does not plan to manage the area any longer, it indicated it might consider retaining its long-term lease of the property, which would offer some protection if a new landowner not interested in preservation buys it. If it chose to sell the lease, TNCH would give any revenue from that sale to somehow put it back into Honouliuli preserve, Fox told the Land Board.

Fox added that many of the conservancy’s Honouliuli staff have joined the Army’s environmental program, which is conducting a lot of restoration work at Honouliuli under its Makua Mitigation Plan, which the Army must complete as a condition of continued live-fire training in West O`ahu’s Makua Valley. Fox said that the Army plans to spend $350,000 on management of the preserve this fiscal year. The money is used for ungulate and weed control efforts, rare plant and snail monitoring, rat baiting, and native species outplanting, among other things.

“[E]ven if you approve the cancellation of this contract, we’ll be there for a period of time and the Army very much wants to, and in fact, needs to be there doing management because as I understand it, this may be one of the only, if not the only locations that they can do native species outplanting under their Makua Mitigation Plan,” he said.

Given TNCH’s new focus, Land Board member Tim Johns asked Fox, “Should [the agreement termination] bring into question The Nature Conservancy’s commitment to any of the other preserves that it has in the state?”

“No,” Fox said, noting that the Honouliuli preserve was its only preserve receiving money from the forest stewardship program. TNCH’s other preserves are enrolled in the state’s Natural Area Partnership Program, he said.

The Land Board has approved five projects to receive a total of $4.7 million in funding from the Legacy Land Conservation Program, including a controversial proposal by the Moloka`i Land Trust to purchase the 200-acre Kawaikapu Ranch. Board member Tim Johns recused himself from voting on the projects because he sits on an advisory board for the Trust for Public Land, which could receive some of the money if any of the five projects fall through.

The approved projects include:

• $737,300 for the Wai`anae Community Re-development Corporation (MA`O Organic Farm) to buy 11 acres in Lualualei Valley;
• $1.5 million for the County of Hawai`i to acquire 551 acres at Kawa, which would result in the preservation of nearly 800 acres along the Ka`u coastline;
• $700,000 for the Kaua`i Public Land Trust to acquire 20.5 acres at Kahili Beach as part if the Kilauea Coastal Preserve;
• $994,724 to the Maui Coastal Land Trust to buy from Kaupo Ranch, Ltd. 128 acres at Nu`u along the island’s southeast shore; and
• $767,976 for Ke `Aupuni Lokahi, Inc. (Molokai Enterprise Community) to acquire 196.40 acres at Kawaikapu in east Molokai, to be held by the Molokai Land Trust.

Should any of these acquisitions fail, the money allotted to them would be used to fund lower ranking projects approved by the Legacy Land Conservation Commission, including a request by the Trust for Public Land for $1 million to assist in purchasing the Honouliuli Preserve. The total cost for that project is estimated to be $6.3-6.8 million. A DOFAW report indicates that the title to the property would be held by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

At its May 9 meeting, the Land Board received both written and oral testimony from members of the Moloka`i community for and against the Kawaikapu project. Some of the disputes seemed to stem from personal rivalries related to the now failed La`au Point development on Moloka`i. Testimony from Ke `Aupuni Lokahi board member Bridget Mowat, however, suggested that the organization’s board never voted to authorize a request for Legacy Land funds. As a result, the Land Board included a condition in its approval that the non-profits receiving Legacy Land funds provide “evidence of the authority of the awardee’s representative to sign the grant agreement…”

Although her organization stood to gain if the project did not get funded, TPL Hawaiian Island Program Director Lea Hong testified in support of the Kawaikapu purchase, as did Moloka`i Land Trust board members Colette Machado and Edwin Masaki.

The DLNR’s Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands has jurisdiction over the state’s submerged lands and any significant use of lands in that category would normally require some kind of review and/or approval by the office. It appears, however, that research activities within the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument have been overlooked in this respect.

In the permit applications for the monument, applicants must indicate what kinds of activities they will be doing there and have the option to check a box for, “Drilling into, dredging, or otherwise altering the submerged lands other than by anchoring a vessel; or constructing, placing, or abandoning any structure, material, or other matter on the submerged lands.”

Earlier this year, when Marti Townsend of KAHEA: The Hawaiian-Environmental Alliance raised concerns that the permits allow for too broad a range of potentially detrimental activities, DLNR Division of Aquatic Resources administrator Dan Polhemus assured her that anything that might alter submerged lands would require a Conservation District Use Permit.

While the Land Board has approved a number of permits for activities that include the use of state submerged lands, no corresponding CDUPs have been approved or even applied for. And at the Land Board’s May 9 meeting, Polhemus said that after talking with OCCL administrator Sam Lemmo, it appears that permittees only need site plan approval from the OCCL rather than a CDUP. Polhemus added that he believes an overall site plan approval was given by the office two years ago.

Even so, Land Board member Tim Johns asked Polhemus to look into the land use issue and board chair Laura Thielen added that the DAR needs to have a formal meeting with the OCCL on the issue. While the DLNR’s DAR and DOFAW have been included in the review process for monument permit applications, the OCCL has not.

Last year, after a long debate about whether it should allow the killing of one revered species to save another, the Land Board begrudgingly gave permission to researcher George Antonelis to kill several Galapagos sharks that were preying on endangered monk seal pups at French Frigate Shoals in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument. Unfortunately for the pups, the sharks proved too wily for the researchers, who didn’t manage to kill any over the past year.

Because the handful of sharks continues to attack monk seal pups at FFS, Antonelis proposed this year using non-lethal deterrents, including a boat anchored in nearshore water, magnets at strategic access points, an electro-magnetic system that emits a low-level electrical field, and an underwater speaker system to broadcast boat noise. On April 25, the Land Board unanimously approved a permit for Antonelis’ work.

— Teresa Dawson

Volume 18, Number 12 June 2008