Board Talk
State Parks Division to Investigate Future of Cabins at Koke’e, Kaua’i In three years, all of the state leases for the old cabins in Koke’e will end. Whether they will continue to be leased for 20-year terms, be turned into … Continued
Turtle Bycatch Continues to Frustrate Council Efforts to Reopen Swordfish Fishery
The setting was appropriate for a gathering of Honolulu’s fishing community. Fisherman’s Wharf restaurant at Kewalo Basin, just down the road from the fish auction house, is a half-century-old landmark on the Kaka’ako waterfront. Not for its diners the romantic … Continued
At Pila'a, Kaua'i, A Reshaped Landscape Sparks Litigation
“Whatever I did with that property was my business. I didn’t ask if I could cut a tree down.” So stated James Pflueger in a February 2003 deposition regarding a dispute over the sale of roughly 400 acres at Pila’a, … Continued
Lowland 'Amakihi Gain Ground In Battle Against Mosquito-Borne Disease
The locked gate on the private, unpaved road in lower Puna is unremarkable. Like hundreds of others that lead to the area’s papaya orchards and scattered houselots, it effectively bars access to all but those privileged with padlock keys or … Continued
From the Editor's Desk
Unsustainable Losses of Leatherbacks After a run of a hundred million or so years, the Pacific leatherback turtle, Dermochelys coriacea, is looking death in the eye. Over the last couple of decades, exponential declines in numbers of nesting female leatherbacks … Continued
ARCHIVES OF THE HAWAIIAN FOREST
Hamakua Homesteaders, Plantations Conspire Against Forest In celebrating 2003 as the Year of the Hawaiian Forest, Environment Hawai’i is reprinting historical records that depict changes in the islands’ forested landscape over the last two centuries. This month’s selection is taken … Continued
Maui Beetle 'Lost' for 107 Years Is Rediscovered Near Kaupo Gap
The group of scientists at Paliku cabin along the eastern rim of Maui’s Haleakala crater in May 2001 could not help but draw stares from the backpackers sharing the campground. After sundown, at a time when most campers would be … Continued
Hawai`i Aquatic Biologists Seek Help Fending Off Marine Invasions
For a few days last November, a contingent of local scientists did their best to dazzle a visiting federal task force with the many and varied threats Hawai`i is facing as a result of increasing pressure from aquatic alien plants … Continued
Poachers Take Timber Valued at $1 Million
A logging operation that spilled onto state land in South Kona – accidentally, according to the loggers’ attorney – ended up taking from state land timber worth more than a million dollars. But when the Board of Land and Natural … Continued
Book Reviews: Debunking the Myth of the Marlboro Man
Welfare Ranching: The Subsidized Destruction of the American West. Edited by George Wuerthner and Mollie Matteson. Published in 2002 by the Foundation for Deep Ecology; distributed by Island Press. xv + 345 pages. Introduction by Douglas R. Tompkins. $75 cloth. … Continued