Late last year, with an injunction cutting off vehicular access across any part of the historic, state-owned Haleakal\u0101 trail set to take effect on January 1, attorneys representing Public Access Trails Hawai`i and founder David Henderson Brown offered to negotiate with attorneys representing the Department of Land and Natural Resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
PATH successfully sued the department years ago to improve public access to the trail, but the injunction, the state claimed, threatened to hamper resource management by the DLNR and others. So on November 21, PATH attorney Nathan Jacobs reached out to deputy attorney general Miranda Steed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAt this time, PATH is not inclined to stipulate to extend the stay [of the injunction] past January 1, 2026. That said, if the parties are making positive, continuous progress toward a mutually agreeable resolution, our client is willing to revisit that position,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Steed replied on December 1, asking what kinds of resolution PATH and Brown were seeking. \u201c[A]re you looking to resolve the whole case, or just a portion, such as access under the injunction?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jacobs replied the same day, \u201cIn accordance with the court\u2019s guidance that a mutually-agreed-to outcome would be better for all parties than the remedies available to the court, PATH would not want to limit the scope of negotiations. PATH would also welcome [Haleakal\u0101 Ranch Company] participation in the interest of achieving a global resolution that incorporates their equities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After no reply came, Jacobs sent another email on December 17 asking for negotiations \u201cat the state\u2019s earliest convenience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two days later, Steed replied in an 11:19 a.m. email that a recent survey of the trail \u2014 required as part of a stipulation last year to say the injunction \u2014 \u201cdepicts the trail intersecting with some of the roads (mostly dirt roads) that run mauka from Olinda Gate on ranch property. Because any disruption in access can have devastating effects on state projects, particularly Birds Not Mosquitoes, we are filing a motion to modify the order to allow incidental vehicular use of the trail by DLNR and its agents. We are asking for similar relief that was given to the County [Department of Water Supply] and [Maui Electric Company] and previously included in the court\u2019s stay of the order last spring that PATH did not object to. If PATH is agreeable to modifying the order to allow DLNR and its agents vehicular access to the trail where it intersects with the road, I can draft a stipulation that modifies the order and withdraws the motion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By 3:20 p.m., she had filed the motion in 2nd<\/sup> Circuit Court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She asked the court \u201cto remove the prohibitions against incidental uses of the subject trail for purposes other than hiking, walking, or running by DLNR and its agents where the trail crosses existing roads.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n On December 24, attorney Michael Biechler, who also represents PATH and Brown, filed an application for a hearing on the motion. In it, Biechler argued that a hearing was necessary on the state\u2019s motion to allow for the cross-examination of Scott Fretz, chief of the Maui branch of the DLNR\u2019s Division of Forestry and Wildlife (DOFAW), whose declaration about the kinds of resource management activities \u2014 including critical invasive mosquito control efforts \u2014 could be impeded by the injunction accompanied the state\u2019s motion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cState defendants had ample opportunity to elicit much of the testimony that declarant Fretz now provides during trial in which he was a witness and elected not to do so. Now, because state defendants\u2019 motion is styled as a non-hearing motion, plaintiffs are placed in a situation where they are expected\/required to respond to these new and uninspected allegations without the aid of discovery or even so much as a chance to ask the witness about those statements \u2013 ostensibly on the possibility that if plaintiffs do not adequately refute the statements in Fretz\u2019s sworn written testimony, then the result of the entire trial and three years of litigations will be undone. The prejudice to plaintiffs in allowing testimony of this nature, and of the import that state defendants claim it has, without allowing plaintiffs and the court to further inspect that testimony, is manifest. Plaintiffs need the opportunity and the court would benefit from cross examination of Fretz,\u201d Biechler wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On December 26, 2nd<\/sup> Circuit Judge Peter T. Cahill granted the request for a hearing, scheduling it for March 27.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Steed then filed a motion on December 29 seeking to move up the hearing. (Numbers refer to docket entries.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen the stay [775] of the Order for Injunctive Relief [640] ends on January 1, 2026, DLNR and its agents will be unable to make the necessary daily incidental vehicular to carry out the Birds, Not Mosquitoes project,\u201d she stated, noting that the state had only received the results of the survey \u2014 which showed that the trail crossed roads used by DOFAW and others for natural resource management activities \u2014 on December 15.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Judge Cahill, however, denied her motion the next day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Questions to the DLNR about if and how the injunction has affected the Birds, Not Mosquitos project were not answered by press time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Biechler argues that the department can still access the forest without crossing the trail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In an email, he stated that DLNR deputy attorney general Danica Patel \u201crepresented to me, during a discussion where DLNR again conveyed that they refuse to conduct settlement discussions, that it would cost \u2018several million\u2019 dollars to use helicopters to access the DOFAW bird conservation activities in the area if they could not drive on the Haleakal\u0101 Trail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTheoretically,\u201d he added in a phone interview, \u201cthey could go just to the left of the trail. If the ranch builds a road just ten feet to the left [of where the trail intersects the ranch road used by DOFAW]. The ranch could do it in a heartbeat. \u2026 It doesn\u2019t make sense to spend $1 million on helicopters.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He said his clients would be agreeable to modifying the orders if the DLNR would mark the trail using fence posts with reflectors, but that the state has refused to discuss the possibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The trail markings that were installed during the DLNR-sponsored survey late last year \u201care not<\/em> trail markings, and in fact are already being lost to damage, destruction, and\/or the elements, with no less than three of them already unable to be readily located (one was a paint marking on a rock in the middle of the road, one was a pin that is in the road and now covered or removed to the point where it could not be located by PATH supporters knowledgeable about the location of the pin when installed),\u201d his email stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He said that the surveyor was not required to install the kind of trail markings a member of the public, or even Haleakal\u0101 Ranch, might want (fences post with reflectors).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, he added, \u201cI think what the court wants, my client wants, is for them [DLNR] to make it into a trail. Make sure it\u2019s graded. It doesn\u2019t need it to be on the Na Ala Hele trail system.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He noted that at the 2024 trial that preceded the injunction, Fretz testified about potential trail construction costs: For an existing trail, the cost to bring it to DOFAW standards would be minimal; a new trail would cost $130,000 per mile. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “At 3.3 miles, the Haleakal\u0101 Trail would cost, at most, $430,000 to construct (as an existing trail, DLNR appears to agree that the work would be exempt from HRS 343 based on a list of pre-approved exempt management actions DLNR identified in 2020),\u201d Biechler stated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He added that while PATH has offered in the past to help DLNR manage the trail, \u201cI think they\u2019re hostile to the idea.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He argues that DOFAW has done \u201cthe minimum amount\u201d of what\u2019s required under the injunction to inform the public about the location and potential dangers of the trail by posting signage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whatever the final trail markings look like, Biechler says that the fact that the new survey shows the trail head beginning just inside Haleakal\u0101 Ranch property, rather than at its Olinda gate, is an \u201cinteresting conundrum\u201d that needs to be resolved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The 2016 final judgment in the trial over the trail recognized that the survey at the time \u201cwas very clear the trail starts at the top of Olinda road at the gate,\u201d he said. Now, he wonders, is the new survey off by 60 feet or did they move the gate?<\/p>\n\n\n\n For now, hikers access the trail through a puka in the ranch\u2019s gate, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014 Teresa Dawson<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Late last year, with an injunction cutting off vehicular access across any part of the historic, state-owned Haleakalā trail set to take effect on January 1, attorneys representing Public Access Trails Hawai`i and founder David Henderson Brown offered to negotiate … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,547],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-17004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dlnr","category-february-2026","tag-teresa-dawson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17004","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=17004"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17020,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17004\/revisions\/17020"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}