“Perhaps thar’s gold in them thar hills,” The Maui News proposed in a January 19, 1952 article following the government auction of a pasture lease at Ukumehame. Bidding for use of the roughly 5,000 acres of arid land in south Maui was hot and heavy; the winning bid of $6,750 a year was more than twice the previous lease’s rent.
In the 1950s, and going back for a century, the land at Ukumehame was coveted. In the late 1800s, Hawaiians and foreigners were writing letters to the government seeking use of its prime ranch lands. Today, Ukumehame is vacant, the last of the ranchers having pulled out not quite a decade ago, when both the land and the grazing stock were dead or dying.
The land may still have a future, albeit a strictly economic one. Plans to build a wind farm on the ridge line have been brewing for the last few years. If these plans move forward, the state stands to reap in an annual rent the equal or more of any pasture lease.
While Ukumehame may yet again bring revenue to the state, its inherent wealth has been played out. More than a century of over-grazing has left the land unable to support much of anything anymore. If not for its constant wind, the state’s land at Ukumehame would be a wasteland.
It was not always so. John Dominis, F. Hutchison, and P. Morton McKee, doing business as West Maui Sugar Association, had one of the first pasture leases at Ukumehame in 1872. J.H. Richardson, H.H. Cornwell, and the Olowalu Company followed. The Olowalu lease, issued in 1908, required the company to build and maintain boundary fences of a forest reserve (if one were to be established), control fires, and exclude stock from the forest reserve. The company was not to “commit or knowingly permit or suffer any waste to be done upon the said premisesÉ.” But over the years, under different lessees, that’s exactly what would happen.
What Forest Reserve?
In the 1920s, the government was in the process of designating lands as forest reserves to protect valuable watershed areas from grazing animals. At the time, Harold W. Rice was the tenant of record at Ukumehame. In a January 10, 1928 letter to Charles T. Bailey, Commissioner of Public Lands, Rice discouraged designating the land abutting his lease as a forest reserve. “I believe most people that have given it any thought would realize how ridiculous it is to put pili country in the forest reserve as the only way it can be forested is by spreading of algaroba trees [kiawe, or mesquite] over this area.”
The forest reserve was established anyway, but was not exactly respected by the ranchers. In July 1947, Colin Lennox, president of the Board of Agriculture and Forestry, reported to Lester Marks, Commissioner of Public Lands, that Rice was not maintaining proper forest boundary fences required by his lease. Rice had “practically no fence and it is our understanding that the lessee is loath to rebuild this fence because the lease is nearly finished.”
A few years later, on January 14, 1952, Rice lost the leased land (still unfenced at its upper boundary) to Edmund “Eddie” Rogers.
“Bidding for this lease was very active,” an auction report states. “Mr. Frank Munoz [a realtor] offered the first bid of $2,500. Mr. H.W. Rice made the next bid and between the two, the price was bid up to $4,900. Mr. Rice then retired in favor of Mr. Edmund Rogers, who bid against Mr. Munoz, raising the bids from $50 to $100 at a time.”
Although Rogers won the lease, he was never able to make a go of it, garnering a slew of rental delinquency notices throughout the 1950s and 1960s. And rent wasn’t Rogers’ only problem. In 1959, his cattle had been found grazing in forest reserve land in the Hanaula area above Ukumehame. The ranger who discovered the cattle also noted that fences were in need of repair and were down in places and that gates that should have been closed at all times had been left open.
Rogers’ inability to make a profit led to Maui Factors assuming the lease in 1965. Despite new management, old problems remained. Between 1968 and 1972, the number of cattle found grazing in the forest reserve grew from 11 to 20.
“As a result, the forest land is in a very poor condition and soil erosion has become a serious problem on the land. Erosion scars and eroded surfaces are very prominent in the forest area. The Forestry Division has indicated that they will be installing locks in the gates separating the boundaries of your general lease and the forest reserve line,” state land agent James Shaw wrote in 1972.
In 1973, the lease was transferred to Perreira Ranch, and according to DLNR records, there were “still 16-20 head of cattle in the forest reserve lands.” The DLNR had attempted to drive them out but had removed no more than nine on its most successful attempt.
Blood From A Stone
The forest wasn’t the only thing suffering at the hands of ranchers. By 1978, Perreira Ranch was being accused of cruelty to animals, as many of its cattle were dying for lack of food or water. In the 1990s, scrutiny of the operation reached its pinnacle with letters and news articles detailing the plight of the ranch’s starving cattle. Investigations ensued.
Between January 3 and 7, 1994, University of Hawai`i agronomist Burt Smith surveyed the Perreira Ranch property and found the water distribution system to be in “an advanced state of disrepair,” according to a report he prepared later that month.
In addition to the proliferation of “undesirable grasses” (an indication of deteriorating conditions), “The amount of bare ground increases with decreasing elevation, reaching a high of some 48 percent on the makai boundary on the Wailuku side of Manawainui GulchÉ Bare ground is an indicator of both immediate grazing as well as prolonged over use.” Smith concluded, “There is no doubt in my mind that this area has been, and is, rapidly deteriorating under the herd and grazing management strategies and policies that have been operation over the years.”
Smith offered several recommendations on how the land could be better managed through proper water trough and cattle placement, reduction in the number of head of cattle, and fence construction, among other things. Those recommendations, made in the midst of a legal action against the ranch, were never realized since the ranch operator, Annette Niles, was convicted in December 1994 of animal cruelty. On January 27, 1995, the state Board of Land and Natural Resources cancelled the lease.
Four years later, a faulty electrical line sparked a fire on the land. An October 8, 1998 article in the Honolulu Advertiser quoted Land Division administrator Dean Uchida as saying the Department of Land and Natural Resources was letting the grass at Ukumehame grow back in an effort to recover from over grazing and prevent erosion, even though the alien grass provided fuel for the blaze.
On April 14, 2000, the Land Board granted Zond Pacific, then a subsidiary of Enron, a Conservation District Use Permit to build a 20-megawatt wind farm on a ridge in Ukumehame. That permit has expired and Enron has sold its wind division (and Zond along with it) to General Electric. But according to Gary Martin of the DLNR’s Land Division, GE is still interested in a wind farm at Ukumehame. Zond is out of the picture, replaced by a company called Hawi Wind Energy. Martin adds that Hawai`i Wind Energy, which built a wind farm at South Point on the Big Island, is also interested in the site. At a minimum, under the Zond scheme, Martin says, the state would have received annual rent of about $53,000 plus a small percentage of the company’s revenue.
As for the pasture area, Martin says, there hasn’t been much interest among ranchers in obtaining a lease on the area.
— Teresa Dawson
Volume 13, Number 5 November 2002
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