It was a hard-fought battle right up to the finish, but on February 15, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service finally won a court order giving it a legal overland easement to a 5,300-acre parcel in South Kona it bought in 1997 for use as a wildlife refuge.<\/p>\n
A year ago, the service thought the long and difficult fight for access had come to an end, when the land\u2019s former owners told U.S. District Judge Susan Oki Mollway that they agreed to include an easement over land they owned as part of a settlement of litigation they had brought against the government. But after months of negotiation, the two former owners \u2013 Nohea Santimer and Moani Zablan \u2014 refused to sign any agreement, forcing the government to return to federal court and ask the judge to force them to.<\/p>\n
And in February, Mollway did just that, in an order that reads at times as though her patience had been pushed to the limit by the plaintiffs. Recapping the first settlement hear ing, Mollway said, the \u201cplaintiffs interjected more than once to clarify the settlement terms. At one point, a dispute over the location of an easement led the court to call a short recess, after which the parties placed a mark on a map to indicate the location of the easement. The map was then placed in the record.\u201d The judge then questioned the plain tiffs, asking if they agreed to the settlement. On the record, each of them indicated their agreement.<\/p>\n
Yet by summer, the plaintiffs had a new attorney (Michael Gibson) and were raising new issues, the judge wrote. \u201cUltimately, Plain tiffs informed the court that the parties were \u2018too far apart\u2019 to reach an agreement in writ ing,\u201d which resulted in the Fish and Wildlife Service filing a motion to compel settlement.<\/p>\n
Finally, on the afternoon of March 7, Zablan and Santimer signed the documents.<\/p>\n
Dick Wass, manager of the Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Sanctuary, which includes the land in South Kona, was among several Fish and Wildlife Service staffers expressing relief at the conclusion of litigation. No sooner was the ink dry on the agreement than Wass was planning a site visit \u2013 by truck instead of helicopter, which was the only means the service had of reaching the land almost since the day it was purchased.<\/p>\n
In a phone interview, he spelled out his hopes for the parcel. \u201cThe first thing we want to do is fence the north boundary,\u201d he said. That boundary separates the government land from land that continues to be owned and ranched by Santimer and Zablan. The settle ment agreement calls for the fence to be built within a reasonable time, subject to availabil ity of funds. Wass estimates the cost for that portion of the fence alone will be nearly $300,000.<\/p>\n
Several years ago, the Packard Foundation donated $1 million to the Hakalau refuge for a perimeter fence around all 5,300 acres of the South Kona unit. That money had to be returned when the lack of access precluded the service from undertaking any construction projects, including fence-building.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re hopeful we can get that money back,\u201d he said. \u201cWe took it in good faith, and are hoping they\u2019ll restore the funds.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the immediate future, Wass antici pates much of the work his staff will be doing will involve removing wild cattle and useless junk left behind by the former owners. Santimer and Zablan have 90 days \u201cto remove whatever they want from the refuge,\u201d Wass said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there are a few cows that are easy to get out, maybe they\u2019ll take them,\u201d he said. \u201cOur job will be to get out all the rusty wheels and trash they\u2019ve left behind.\u201d<\/p>\n
For background on the lawsuit, see the Oct. and Nov. 2003 and October 2004 issues of Environment Hawai\u2018i<\/em>.<\/p>\n — Patricia Tummons<\/p>\n Volume 15, Number 10 April 2005<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was a hard-fought battle right up to the finish, but on February 15, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service finally won a court order giving it a legal overland easement to a 5,300-acre parcel in South Kona it bought … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-april-2005"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1478\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}