For Hoʻokipa: On August 6, the state Bureau of Conveyances recorded a Unit Deed transferring ownership of Unit 1 of the Marconi Point Condominiums from Yue-Sai Kan to the North Shore Community Land Trust.
For years, the trust has been restoring a conservation easement owned by the Turtle Bay Resort that abuts Unit 1.
The 4.7-acre oceanfront parcel on Oʻahu’s North Shore is where a nesting Laysan albatross known as Hoʻokipa was killed by one of Kan’s landscapers last year. As part of a settlement agreement approved by the Board of Land and Natural Resources on April 26 to resolve violations Department of Land and Natural Resources staff brought against Kan for that incident, as well as unauthorized fence building in the Conservation District and land clearing that decimated valuable native yellow-faced bee habitat, Kan committed to donating the lot to the land trust.
She paid $3.6 million for the property in 2021, but was never able to build a farm dwelling and faced violations from the Honolulu Department of Planning and Permitting for unauthorized improvements.
Give Aloha, Please: 77036. That’s Environment Hawaiʻi’s registration number for Foodland’s Give Aloha program this month. The annual drive, which ends September 30, allows shoppers to donate to local charities at checkout. Foodland will match donations of up to $249.
If you forget our number, just look us up on the list of charities at each checkout station.
Aquarium Ruling: On August 28, the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court issued a 4-1 ruling supporting findings by the Environmental Court that the final environmental impact statement produced by the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council for the West Hawaiʻi commercial aquarium fishery was adequate.
“The Court’s ruling in Kaupiko v. BLNR effectively ends a de facto ban on commercial collection that has been in place since an earlier Supreme Court decision in 2017 mandated public disclosure and analysis of the aquarium pet trade’s effects,” the law firm Earthjustice stated in a press release. The firm represents the plaintiffs.
In her dissent, Justice Sabrina McKenna found that the EIS lacked “any discussion of the significant differences in fish abundance in open areas versus protected areas. Further,
the RFEIS fails to provide any meaningful comparison between open areas and protected areas to disclose the cumulative impacts of aquarium collection required under HEPA. To the contrary, the RFEIS selectively uses open area population data from 2017 and 2018 to evaluate its proposed catch quotas.”
She added that the document fails to meet Hawaiʻi Environmental Policy Act’s requirement to include mitigation measures.
“[I]f BLNR begins issuing commercial aquarium permits in West Hawaiʻi, I hope the [Division of Aquatic Resources] will carefully monitor fish populations to determine whether annual permits should be renewed or whether catch quotas need to be modified,” she concluded.
As Earthjustice stated in its press release, on August 23, the Board of Land and Natural Resources “was poised to approve terms and conditions for eventual permits, but the Board’s decision was contested by West Hawai‘i community members, effectively halting any Board decision on permits until the contested proceeding is resolved.”
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