Kanaha Pond Goes Native: The Kanaha Pond Wildlife Sanctuary, near the Kahului, Maui, airport, is getting a face lift. Out are the kiawe, Christmas berry, and date palm trees. In are `ilima, `akulikuli, `ohelo kai, and pohuehue.
The floral refurbishment is the first installment of a four-year effort to bring native species back to the 235-acre wetland. Each year, between 80 and 100 acres of the sanctuary will see non-native trees felled and chipped in place, preparing the way for replantings of native species. According to Fern Duvall II, a wildlife biologist with the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, long-term management goals for the sanctuary “involve holistic ecosystem restoration to transform [the sanctuary] from a site dominated with many non-native wetland weeds to one with a vigorous, functioning native Hawaiian wetland vegetation community” that will better support resident populations of the endangered `ae`o (Hawaiian stilt), `ala eke`oke`o (Hawaiian coot) and koloa maoli (Hawaiian duck). Assisting with the effort will be volunteers from the Native Hawaiian Plant Society. Funds for the project are being provided by a grant to the DLNR from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service.
A Push for GM Papayas: The state Department of Agriculture has awarded $100,000 to the Hawai`i Papaya Industry Association to help it dismantle Japan’s regulatory roadblocks to the import of genetically engineered modified papayas. The DOA’s request to the state’s chief procurement officer for approval of the grant, submitted in late December, says that the state, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Hawai`i Papaya Industry Association “are already fully engaged in efforts to deregulate the market for Hawai`i Biotech (BT) papayas.”
Sixty percent of the grant will support the work of a team at the USDA Agricultural Research Service, which Japan has asked to provide “molecular experimentation and information on the Hawai`i BT papayas,” the DOA said in its application for approval of a sole-source contract. The remainder will go to supporting the Hawai`i Papaya Genome Project at the University of Hawai`i, which is “to provide the scientific [evidence] required to support the application [to export] the ‘Rainbow’ papaya into Japan and other countries.”
The award represents just half of what the DOA had originally sought in support of the project. Attached to the material provided to the procurement office is a memo from Governor Lingle to Sandra Kunimoto, DOA administrator, in which Lingle denies Kunimoto’s request for $200,000 in support of winning Japan’s approval for import of transgenic papayas, saying that the request to allot the remaining $100,000 “is deferred until a decision is made to allow importation of transgenic papaya into Japan.”
A Whodunit Where the Real Crime is the Book: In Restless Waters, a recent installment in Jessica Speart’s series of police procedurals, her heroine, Fish and Wildlife Service enforcement agent Rachel Porter, comes to Hawai`i. Here she kicks you-know-what, putting to shame not only her peers in FWS and the doofuses at the state Departments of Agriculture and Land (and the Honolulu PD), but, even more, the corrupt agents at the National Marine Fisheries Service. Singlehandedly, and against the clear instructions of her corpulent, doughnut-eating boss, she busts wide open a criminal enterprise involving the sale of shark fins, the planting of exotic lizards in the wild for later capture and resale, and a black market in Viagra, among other things.
The book is rife with howlers and Speart’s writing is so earnest and didactic, it is hard not to be accused of parody in quoting it.
When Speart describes the ecological damage from longline fishing, for instance, she betrays her innocence of any real understanding of the issue: “Each boat sets lines laden with thousands of baited hooks. These nets extend for up to sixty miles… The long flippers of endangered sea turtles become entangled in them, as do dolphins and marine mammals.” Lest the reader forgive the reference to longline nets as a one-time slip-up, Speart repeats it a page later: “I’d recently heard rumors that highly endangered black-footed and short-tailed albatross were being caught in longliner nets.”
The real mystery is – who allowed the crime of publishing this book to happen?
Department of Corrections: Due to a typographical error, our January story on Kawai Nui marsh stated that the big flood of Coconut Grove occurred in 1997. The flood occurred in 1987.
In last month’s story by Patricia Tummons on HECO’s decision to burn biofuels, the last two lines of the article were left out. The last paragraph, a quote by Tad Patzek, should have read: “But if we’re going to be insane, we’re somewhat less insane if we convert biomass directly instead of going through the long route of using fossil fuel and other resources to arrive at fuel that we then burn. That’s actually insanity squared.”
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 17, Number 9 March 2007
Leave a Reply