Horses on Sliding Sands trail. Drownings in ‘Ohe‘o Gulch. The continued spectre of an expanded Kahului airport throwing down the welcome mat to hosts of invading species. Traffic jams at sunrise. And, not least, the delicate problem of how to deal with the call of nature when you’re in the middle of a wilderness area and miles away from the nearest toilet.
These are a few of the issues that routinely cross the desk of Don Reeser, superintendent of Haleakala National Park. In a nutshell, they all center on how to preserve and protect a 30,000-acre wilderness area that hosts some 1.6 million visitors a year.
Giddyap!
Headlines in recent months have centered on the lawsuit by survivors of a drowning victim at the park’s ‘Ohe‘o Gulch, resulting in the award of damages of $2.3 million. But to many of the park’s most frequent visitors, the more pressing issues are those that they claim threaten to undermine the park service’s mandate to protect Haleakala “by such means as will leave [it] unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”
One of the chief concerns is the proliferation of horse rides down Sliding Sands trail. What used to be a lightly packed and barely visible trail down the sandy slope to the floor of the crater has now been tamped down by up to 48 mounted visitors a day, not including visitors who have their own horses and rangers using the park’s own stable of horses.
The result? A path that is at times more trench than trail, wetted down with horse urine and mucked up with manure. The flies, the smell, and the mire detract from the hikers’ experience of the park. Often, to avoid the worst areas, hikers will walk off the beaten path, thereby widening the trail and enlarging the impact of human activity.
“We have received more complaints from visitors about horse manure on the trails than about any other thing,” Reeser said in a recent interview with the editor of [i]Environment Hawai‘i.[/i] The park has issued licenses to three operators, each of which is allowed to bring in up to 12 riders twice a day. One operator has yet to use his license, but the two others are active on a daily basis. Sliding Sands is the only trail open to commercial horse tours.
“The good news is, we’ve been talking for some time about trying to get commercial users to put money into cleaning up the manure and maintaining the trail,” Reeser continued. “Beginning January 1, they’ll pay $5 a horse. We figure that, based on their use, that will about pay for a half-time employee to clean up and help maintain the trail.”
A Wilderness Experience
Horses are not the only ones to relieve themselves in the crater. With hundreds of people hiking down Sliding Sands trail each day, human waste is a growing problem. Ribbons of toilet paper stream from the odd tree or rock. Archaeological sites, providing a certain amount of cover, become de facto toilets. Not long ago, a park employee studying petrels reached her hand into one of the birds’ burrows to check for a chick. Instead, she found human excrement.
To address the problem, the park has floated a proposal to build a composting toilet along the Sliding Sands trail. “We have some money available … to try to do something about human waste at Sliding Sands and Split Rock,” Reeser said. (Split Rock is a natural feature that provides the first real screen at the bottom of the trail.)
The initial feedback to a brochure containing an artist’s rendering of what the toilet might look like has not been favorable. The Friends of Haleakala, a non-profit, independent group that supports the park, indicated it wanted to have the park prepare an environmental assessment at the very least, Reeser said. “And, you know, it is a wilderness area, and the toilet is intrusive.”
Siting the toilet is also problematic. For it to do any good, he noted, it has to be built before Split Rock, and that means it is also in the areas with the least natural shelter. Reeser indicated he had himself been caught off-guard by the artist’s conception, which shows a giant, elevated outhouse connected to the trail by a bridge. “I was sort of hoping for something that would look like a rock,” he said.
In any case, “it’s kind of been put on the back burner” for now, he said. In the mean time, he said, “part of the responsibility of the person we’re going to hire” with money from the commercial horse trail operators “will be to clean up human waste, too. So whether or not the toilet is built is still up for discussion…. We’ll have hearings on it and listen to the kupuna, the community.”
Ecosystem Protection
Reeser is proud of his staff’s accomplishments in managing the park’s ecosystem. “We took the pigs out of Kipahulu, the goats out of the crater. And we’ve seen fantastic recovery of the flora. We have the best ecosystems in the state,” he said.
The park is ever watchful for invasive species, though. Miconia, kahili ginger, clidemia, Australian tree ferns, guava, and pampas grass are just a few of the weeds that threaten to get a foothold in the park. “We’re working with the Maui Invasive Species Committee, the state, and the East Maui Watershed Partnership” to address the problem, Reeser said, adding: “I feel things are going better.”
One of the impediments to large-scale environmental management is a mix of land ownership, especially on Haleakala’s southern slopes. Several years ago, land that the park had hoped to acquire was purchased instead by a private party, Andy Graham. Reeser said he was encouraged, though, that Graham has begun planting koa and is evidently sincere about restoring native ecosystems. Immediately west of Graham’s land is a 4,000-acre parcel owned by Campbell Estate. “Campbell Estate has to sell the land, which would be a key piece of the leeward Haleakala restoration project,” Reeser said.
A representative from The Conservation Fund, a non-profit organization that helps place sensitive natural areas under protection, visited Maui recently and looked at the Campbell land. If the park could acquire this through the intercession of the fund, Reeser said, it could extend its reach down to the Nu‘u pond, a coastal area rich in archaeological and natural values. For years, conservationists have wanted to see Nu‘u protected, but unless the pond area becomes contiguous with park property, the park cannot acquire it.
A Shuttle Service
Congestion at the crater rim is a near-daily occurrence. Thousands of visitors to Maui want to view the sun creep above Haleakala’s summit, despite the cold, despite the thin air, and despite the traffic jams. People often pull their cars off the road anywhere they can, even if it is dangerous or damaging to the park’s resources. Increasing the space available for parking lots is not an option. “The main problem is that we did our general plan in 1995 and it pretty much stated in there that we’re not going to enlarge the parking lots,” Reeser said. “If you enlarge the parking lots, two years later you’ve got to enlarge them again. You’ve got to draw the line somewhere.”
An alternative the park is examining now involves transporting visitors in vans that take them from parking areas at lower elevations to the summit. “The Department of Transportation has given us funds for a transportation study,” Reeser said.
On the Horizon
The park general plan is being updated by Belt Collins. Reeser expects it to be available for public comment early in the year.
The Federal Aviation Administration was charged by Congress in 2000, when it passed the Air Tour Management Act, to develop plans for use of the airspace over the park. Reeser said that he’s been working with the FAA for the last year and a half. “In January, we’ll have a sit-down with the FAA and develop alternatives,” he said. At present, tour helicopters are restricted to flying over Kipahulu and pay the park $25 for each flyover. “Last year the park got $400,000 from helicopters,” Reeser said, of which the park gets to keep 80 percent.
The proposed expansion of the Kahului runway has been opposed by Reeser and the park for years out of fear that additional flights into Maui would bring invasive species to the park’s doorstep. Although the expansion seems to be on hold for now, Reeser said, “we’re still concerned about it.” A plan to build an enclosed cargo inspection facility and to beef up inspectors at the airport has yet to be put into effect.
On top of that, now there’s the proposal for a superferry that would give Hawai‘i residents the chance to bring their cars and their pets along on interisland trips. “It’s not that we’re opposed to the superferry,” Reeser said, “but they need good inspections. Folks on Maui have enough problems. Our stance is, we want to keep pests out of Maui, rather than wait until they’re in the national park.”
–Patricia Tummons
Volume 15, Number 7 January 2005
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