Pu`uwa`awa`a Council Deadline Nears; Foundation Withdraws Financial Support
April 15 is more than the deadline for filing your federal taxes; it’s also the deadline for applying for a position on the Department of Land and Natural Resources’ advisory council for Pu`uwa`awa`a.
The DLNR’s Division of Forestry and Wildlife was directed to establish the council by the Board of Land and Natural Resources, when the board, at its January 25 meeting, apparently gave up trying to work with a private group that had sought to manage the 140,000-acre state-owned ahupua`a on the west side of the Big Island. The ahupua`a, or land division, was once home to an extensive and rare dryland forest. Ranching and browsing by other ungulates hunted for game has destroyed much of the native flora and fauna. Still, nearly three dozen endangered plants are still found in the district.
The Land Board instructed DOFAW to come up with its own management plan for Pu`uwa`awa`a by August 2002, with input from an advisory council. On February 28, DOFAW issued a press release requesting nominations for membership.
“Five major areas of expertise have been identified as desirable to have represented on the Ahupua`a Advisory Council,” the news release said. A total of nine members will be selected – three each for natural resource management and public use” (including hunting and hiking) and one individual for each of the other areas, which are range management (“expertise in ranching, ranching systems, and interactions with other open range animals such as sheep, goats, and pigs”), business management (“expertise in business planning and projections, finances and budgeting, fund raising and ecotourism”), and cultural knowledge (“expertise in both archaeological and current Hawaiian protocol and cultural resources relevant to Pu`uwa`awa`a and the surrounding area”). Jon Giffin, head of DOFAW for the Big Island, said that DOFAW chief Mike Buck came up with the categories to be represented, and that a departmental management team decided on the extent to which each would be represented.
Application forms are available from the Hilo DOFAW office (808 974-4221) or on the web at: [url]http://www.state.hi.us/dlnr/chair/pio/HtmlNR/02-14.htm[/url]. According to the DLNR’s chief wildlife biologist, Paul Conry, all meetings of the council will be open to the public, under the state’s Sunshine Law.
An Opportunity Lost
But the $64,000 question is: will there be any money available to the state to carry out any of the projects that the advisory council might bless (supposing, for the moment, that a council with such diverse and conflicted membership could ever agree on anything)?
Unless the state suddenly finds some hidden cache, the answer is probably not. One of the advantages to the Ka `Ahahui proposal was that private foundations had committed to backing its management plan, which was intended to put a high premium on the recovery of native plants in the area.
– Foundation officer
A program officer with one of the foundations told Environment Hawai`i that, immediately following the Land Board’s vote, “we exercised our option É to turn our grant funds for the ahupua`a work there over to the Hawai`i Community Foundation for other projectsÉ Our support is no longer available to the `Ohana or the `Ahahui.” (The Pu`uanahulu `Ohana is a group closely allied with Ka `Ahahui.)
Governor Appoints New Board Members
Come July, the Board of Land and Natural Resources will have two new members. Governor Ben Cayetano has nominated Virginia Goldstein to replace Fred Holschuh as the Big Island representative. Goldstein was planning director of Hawai`i County during the administration of former Mayor Steve Yamashiro.
Toby Martyn has been tapped to fill the board’s seventh seat, which has been vacant since the Legislature added it last session. Martyn is vice president of investments with the Honolulu office of A.G. Edwards & Sons, Inc.
At-large board member Tim Johns has also been nominated for reappointment. Johns, a former Land Board chairman, is chief executive officer of the Damon Estate.
All nominations are subject to confirmation by the state Senate.
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Special Funds
A common refrain of DLNR managers is that they have no money. A review of reports to the 2002 Legislature on special funds reveals that some funds are anemic indeed, while some divisions seem to have significant caches available.
Take the Boating Special Fund. In a recent briefing to the Land Board on the Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation’s five-year plan, the division reported it would collect about $3.9 million a year from commercial and recreational boating fees. All of that money would be used for sorely needed improvements to the state’s dilapidated small harbors and to pay down a general bond debt. Briefing documents suggested no surplus and assumed a beginning balance of zero.
Yet a report to the Legislature on the Boating Special Fund discloses a beginning cash balance of $1.8 million for 2001 and revenues of almost $9.7 million. Where did that come from? Nowhere in its five-year plan spreadsheets are these number reflected. Acting DOBOR director Mason Young could not be reached for comment by press time.
While the Boating Special Fund is confounding, funds aimed at protecting natural resources are depressing. The Endangered Species Fund has $875 to help prepare and implement habitat conservation plans and safe harbor agreements and to provide incentives for private protection of endangered species. The report admits, “Additional funds would need to be secured before this program can be implemented.”
The Preservation of Endangered Plants Fund is also small, but not quite as low, with $3,685 (a donation from the Hawai`i Credit Union League). This fund, which supports fencing off areas for endangered plants, had no expenditures last year.
The Water Resources Management Fund had far more substantial funds in 2001, the first year of its existence. The fund received $88,438 last year, the bulk coming from fines paid by violators of the State Water Code. All of that money goes into the fund, which is to be used for a broad range of water resource protection activities including monitoring programs, research, education, and data collection.
Linnel Nishioka, director of the Commission on Water Resource Management, explained that $25,000 of that money has been pledged for the first year of a three-year, $600,000 study with U.S. Geological Survey for east Maui streams, a project intended to lead to the establishment of instream flow standards. Nishioka says that the DLNR’s Land Division, the Maui County Board of Water Supply, and Alexander & Baldwin will also contribute funds.
The commission has no plans for the remaining $63,438, she said, but says that, “with all the budget cutting, this helps cushion the cuts,” totaling $21,000. She also doesn’t expect the fund to have as much revenue in the future. In years past, the commission imposed fines totaling only about $5,000 a year. Stepped up enforcement last year (the first in which fines went into the fund) yielded more income, but Nishioka says she expects that fines will decline once people start making an effort to comply with the Water Code.
“There is a limited amount of [well] drillers. We’re hoping the amount of repeat violations would go down,” she says. “I’d like to add that our fund can take donations from the public.”
Another notable fund is the Natural Area Reserves Fund, which supports the Natural Area Partnership Program, consisting of public-private partnerships for conservation of private lands with high natural resource value. At the end of the 2001 fiscal year, this fund had a surplus of nearly $4.8 million, even after expenditures of $1.4 million.
While the fund is called the Natural Area Reserves Fund, that money is not designated for the state’s Natural Area Reserves System (NARS), which includes the state’s rarest and most pristine ecosystems. Two years ago, the NARS program struggled without a stable source of funding, while the all of the money in the fund went toward partnerships with private, conservation-minded landowners and Forest Stewardship programs.
That has since changed, says Randy Kennedy, NARS director. The fund, which receives a portion of conveyance taxes, has been opened up in recent years to other uses, according to Kennedy, and now supports the Youth Conservation Corps and watershed programs, which can indirectly benefit components of the state’s Natural Area Reserves System.
The reason the fund has so much money right now is that a lot of people are selling their houses, resulting in “good tax conveyance years,” Kennedy says. “Usually, the fund is lower than that.”
– Randy Kennedy, NARS director
Because the fund has such a large surplus, Kennedy’s office has asked that a spending cap on that fund be lifted so it can be used to provide matching state dollars for federal grants. That will allow $1.5 million of NAR Fund money to be used each year to provide a match for federal funds for the next two years. The average match is two federal dollars for one state dollar, Kennedy says.
– Linnel Nishioka, Water Commission director
“That’s a very good use,” he says. “After three years the fund will be back to what it used to be, not very much money.” Some of the federal grants specifically target NARS, but most are for conservation and watershed protection, which still benefits NARS because most are located in watersheds, Kennedy says.
Non-Performance
The Comprehensive Review of State Land Leases Fund was established in 1996 to hire a consultant to review state leases. Someone was apparently hired, and the 2002 report to the Legislature for this fund shows that the DLNR set aside $15,178 for the work. But the facts that the fund began 2001 with an encumbrance of $15,178 and by the end of the year that money was never paid out suggests that the work was not completed for two years.
— Teresa Dawson and Patricia Tummons
Volume 12, Number 10 April 2002