Lena Schnell held the Sony Walkman and amplified speaker above her head and broadcast the call of the `elepaio through the forest in Kipuka `Alala on the northern slope of Mauna Loa.
Schnell, a biologist at the U.S. Army Pohakuloa Training Area (PTA) on the Big Island, was trying to attract `elepaio ( Chasiempis sandwichensis ) as part of a study of the native bird, which appears to be declining in the training area.
The song was loud and high-pitched, a series of variations on the theme of “ee-eeVEE.” After five minutes, Schnell turned it off. But instead of a return call came an altogether different sound: the low roar of explosions as jet fighters dropped laser-guided bombs a few miles to the east over the PTA’s impact area.
“I haven’t heard any ‘elepaio since I came back out on this plot a few weeks ago,” she said, more concerned about how alien animals were affecting the bird than about the distant bombs. “I’m starting to get nervous.”
Schnell is one of several civilian biologists working in the Environmental Office at PTA, a 109,000-acre training facility. Employed by the Research Corporation of the University of Hawai`i, these scientists conduct basic and applied research aimed at finding ways to improve the prospects of the many rare and endangered species inhabiting the area. They also advise the Army on ways to live up to federal environmental standards.
Their work is important in part because despite years of bombing, artillery shelling, and other live-fire exercises, and despite the presence of a wide range of destructive alien animals, the PTA still contains some of the best remaining dry forest in the Hawaiian Islands. The ecologically rich area is critical habitat for more than a dozen listed plants, including the critically endangered Silene lanceolata.
The biologists’ work also is important because of the Army’s questionable record as an environmental steward. Under the Endangered Species Act, the Army must conserve listed species. But several notable cases in the 1980s and ’90s suggested the Army felt it had other priorities. Among the cases was the Army’s construction of a $30 million Multipurpose Range Complex (MPRC) in Kipuka `Alala with environmental assessments that the Army itself later acknowledged as inadequate. As a result of a lawsuit, the Army can use the MPRC only after it completes an environmental impact statement and undertakes mitigation for the damage inflicted by construction of the range – steps that the Army has not yet taken. A lawsuit stopped the Army from using the training complex.
One hot, dry day in June, Schnell led two field assistants and a journalist through the rolling landscape of Training Area 23 in the western section of PTA. The biologists were conducting a day’s work on several research projects.
Groups of sheep, goats, and non-native game birds periodically came into view on the drive along New Bobcat Trail. On hikes to experimental sites, across `a`a lava and through thick stands of mamane-naio (Sophora chrysophylla/Myoporum sandwichense) forest, sheep scat was frequently observed. In many stands, sheep and goats, two species of introduced ungulates that are found in the area, had eaten all the leaves off the mamane trees up to six feet off the ground. Pig wallows often pitted the ground.
“They stand up on their hind legs and eat,” Schnell explained. “Also, you can tell the ungulates have been here because the soils are pretty disturbed.”
Between two worlds
The journey provided a window on the field work of Army biologists, but it also illustrated the two worlds they find themselves caught between – military training and environmental protection. These worlds often seem in conflict.
That conflict, for example, is reflected in the signs posted at regular intervals along New Bobcat Trail. On one side of the road they read: “Live fire, dud and impact area.” On the other side they say: “Rare plant habitat, no training access.”
That conflict seems to make the Army biologists pariahs, or at least second-class citizens, on their own base. Early in the day, when Schnell reported to the Range Control Office to seek permission to travel into Training Area 23 to work on her experiments, she got a cold reception.
“The environmentalists are here,” one base official shouted to another as Schnell entered the office. His tone of voice and choice of words reflected a view that the biologists are opponents. But that’s not how Schnell sees her role.
“We have responsibilities to be good stewards for the land,” she said later, using “we” to represent the Army. “We definitely try to promote endangered species, their health, their vigor, their numbers.” Routinely, biologists cordon off areas with rare plants if a training exercise is planned nearby. But they are well aware that the PTA’s primary mission is preparing soldiers for combat, she said.
The result of trying to serve both worlds is that the scientists get criticism from each.
“The conservation groups and [U.S.] Fish and Wildlife [Service] are always thinking, ‘You’re not doing enough,’ ” Schnell said. “And then you have the military on the other side pushing you, and groups like the hunting groups – ‘You’re doing too much.’ ”
Outside the box
At Kipuka `Alala, as the researchers hoisted backpacks on their shoulders to hike to some experiment sites, Schnell turned back to the journalist and said, “Just a quick reminder: if you see something metal, don’t step on it, don’t kick it, and don’t try to pick it up.”
That’s because “something metal” could be “duds,” or unexploded ordnance – munitions including bombs, artillery shells, and rockets that didn’t explode when dropped or fired over the last five decades of training at PTA.
The group was going to hike, as Schnell put it, “outside the box.” That meant it would be moving through an area outside the rectangular boundaries of the 1,500-acre MPRC. Personnel from the Army’s Explosive Ordnance Division (EOD) had inspected and declared the MPRC cleared of such ordnance, and they had done so for the experimental area outside the box where Schnell was about to head. But the risk of coming across unexploded ordnance still existed.
This is not a risk most field biologists normally encounter, but Schnell took it in stride. “Day to day I don’t really think about it too much when I’m out here, mostly because I’m really familiar with the areas I’m working in,” she said. “But when I do go into an area where I haven’t been before, it’s always in the forefront of my mind. And I’m always watching where my feet are going.”
Despite the risk, the biologists in the Environmental Office bristle over restrictions on their access to certain biologically critical sites, such as Kipuka Kalawamauna. A 1,864-acre section of this kipuka, thick with endangered plants, was enclosed with an ungulate-exclusion fence. But before it was closed and the ungulates inside the fence could be removed, bombs were found inside and the PTA Safety Office banned the biologists who had been working there from entering the area.
Hunting by helicopter and on foot with EOD escorts has met with limited success, partly because ungulates easily hide in lava tubes. To entice the remaining animals in the enclosure outside, the biologists developed one-way gates in the fence and then tempt the animals through them with bait on the other side. This, they say, has been effective in getting animals out and keeping them out. As evidence of their success, the wood on one such gate had been chewed from the outside, suggesting a pig had left the fenced area and was unable to return.
But the gates probably don’t work for pigs that live in the middle of the fenced area. Nor do they work for sheep and goats, although the biologists are trying to develop other gates and techniques that will work on those ungulates.
Until that occurs, the biologists know the ungulates are inside the fence, with the endangered plants. They acknowledge that they’re not experts on unexploded ordnance, but they don’t agree with the Safety Office designation of this and other critical sites as “high hazard,” Schnell said. The Environmental Office wants the Safety Office and Range Control Office to do “a realistic risk assessment” of the area.
“These are areas where the military has trained very lightly, or not at all,” she said. “So they’re very pristine, native ecosystems. The main reason we want to get out on these pieces of land is to monitor for native and endangered species and to do management work for them. É The Army’s goal is to have no extinctions on its land, and some of our species are really close to that.”
For example, the Hawaiian Schiedea (Schiedea hawaiiensis) has one plant left in the wild – in PTA.
`Elepaio, rats, and cats
Shortly after noon, Schnell broadcast the `elepaio call again. She had done so at several other sites, but no `elepaio had responded. This time, before the full five-minute playback ended, one of Schnell’s field assistants, Dave Faucette, spotted a bird.
“There he is,” Faucette said, pointing to the east through the forest. A small `elepaio flitted from branch to branch toward Schnell, Faucette, and Debbie Scott, the other field assistant. It settled in a mamane tree in front of them.
“Can you read the band?” Schnell asked, peering through binoculars. “Ah, he’s unbanded.”
Beginning in 1996, Schnell had banded dozens of `elepaio in study of its population in PTA. Many of the birds banded in 1996 were missing from their territories in 1998. Schnell and others suspected rats were preying on the nests, so this April they began a rodent-baiting study.
Grain-impregnated wax placed in one area demonstrated that rodents were extremely active. Poison-laced blocks in another area caused a steady decline in rat activity. This baiting technique may help not only `elepaio, but also the endangered palila (Loxioides bailleui) , which biologists plan to reintroduce to Kipuka `Alala as part of the mitigation plan for the Saddle Road realignment.
Through the day the biologists also checked traps in a study started that week of the kipuka’s wild cat population. It’s possible the cats are taking `elepaio, but Schnell thinks it more likely that the food source for the cats is the ample supply of rodents and non-native game birds.
“My main concern right now,” she said, “is that I’m removing the rodents from this one area, and once you remove all the rodents here, effectively taking away the main prey base for the cats, I don’t want them to prey switch over to my birds.”
One trap contained a cat, which half growled and half hissed as she approached. Back at the Environmental Office at the end of the day, Schnell handed it off to technicians from the U.S. Department of Agriculture who were authorized to dispatch the animal with a .22-caliber pistol.
Later, she would examine the cat’s stomach contents, which were placed in a freezer.
By press time, Schnell had not yet had the chance to look at the stomach. But when she does finally get around to the post-mortem, she’s hoping to find a rat inside.
— William Allen
Volume 11, Number 4 October 2000
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