This edition of Environment Hawai`i is a case history of the management of a substantial property owned by the state but run like a medieval fiefdom. It would take a corps of researchers far greater than ours to determine if this case typifies the way the Department of Land and Natural Resources handles all public lands. (Let us pray that it is everywhere else more responsible.) In any event, the land of Pu`uwa`awa`a is so remarkable that what has been allowed to happen there merits its own story.
Saddam, Meet Caspar
Sadly, what is remarkable today about Pu`uwa`awa`a may be its history alone. The flora and fauna that once set it apart are all but vanished. Remnant stands of dryland native forest, proposed for Natural Area Reserve status as recently as 1985, were consumed in 1986 in a blaze that almost certainly was arson. A nesting area used by `alala in 1982 was destroyed in 1983 by koa logging. The ancient cinder cone itself — whose age of 400,000 years, give or take, makes venerable Hualalai look like a youngster — has been diminished by quarrying. It, too, is unusual, being one of Hawai`i’s few sources of trachyte, used in making cement.
Not all the fault can be placed at the doorstep of the lessee, F. Newell Bohnett. The ubiquitous fountain grass, which turns the landscape into a tinder box, invaded well before Bohnett. The `alala was listed as endangered years before Bohnett’s logging began. A report of a botanist reviewing the charred remains of the native dryland forest stated: “recent burn events have merely served to accelerate a decline process which was already operative, compressing into days a sequence which should ordinarily have taken decades.”
Still, allowing Bohnett to ranch Pu`uwa`awa`a may be likened to entrusting the welfare of a beloved invalid, whose best hope for recovery depends on tender care and aggressive medical treatment, to Jack the Ripper. One long-time DLNR employee described Bohnett as the Saddam of the Big Island. If Bohnett is Saddam, the DLNR’s Division of Land Management has been Caspar Milquetoast. The combination has been ruinous.
The Perks Of Pu`uwa`awa`a
To some people, a recitation of the problems at Pu`uwa`awa`a is history best left buried. Bohnett’s new ranch manager is said to cooperate willingly with department efforts to build exclosures around what remains of the endangered plant population.
But the past should not be so easily discarded. Bohnett continues to enjoy the profits and the perquisites that come with owning the largest single public land lease in the state. He will continue to enjoy those amenities until the year 2000. And, unless the Division of Land Management changes its operation substantially, he will enjoy those amenities at bargain-basement rental rates.
When Pu`uwa`awa`a Ranch was leased in 1960, rental was 28 cents per acre per year. Responding to public outrage, the DLM negotiated in 1984 a new rental rate of about $1.20 per acre, retroactive to 1980. In August 1990, the rental came up for negotiation again. No agreement has been reached on a new rate.
Under terms of the lease, the rent for the last 10 years of the lease should be based on the highest of several calculations. Three have to do with the cattle carrying capacity and market prices for beef. One is the previous (1980-1990) annual rental. The last is the “current rate of return for similar properties” based upon “an appraisal made by a qualified appraiser at the then highest and best use.”
With houses in the adjoining Pu`u Lani gentleman farmer estates selling for more than $1 million each, it is absurd to think that land rental values on Pu`uwa`awa`a Ranch for the “highest and best use” are anywhere near the range of $1.20 an acre. Even as pasturage, that is low. Nearby state land is leased to Palani Ranch for $1.74 an acre — and that lease is to expire later this year. Richard Smart (Parker Ranch) pays the state an average of $5.80 per acre per year for pasture in Waimea. (The sugar industry, which is even more beleaguered than Bohnett’s oft-invoked “endangered rancher,” pays more yet. Hamakua Sugar, for example, pays on average $8 an acre for its state-leased lands.)
A Modest Proposal
Although the sole purpose to which Pu`uwa`awa`a Ranch land is to be put is pasturage, Bohnett obviously has used leased lands to enhance the resale value of his adjoining property. The road he carved across Conservation District land in 1974 (ostensibly to improve pasturage, and without benefit of a Conservation District permit) paved the way for the pipes that now carry water to the Pu`u Lani subdivision carved out of his fee-simple land at Pu`uanahulu. In an advertisement for the “Sandalwood Collection of Luxury Homes” at Pu`u Lani (“from $1,350,000”), the statement is made that buyers “are assured of a continuous rural environment and unobstructed views by the surrounding 25,000 acre Pu`uwa`wa`a Ranch and 100,000 acre forest reserve.” (So that even more people may enjoy the “continuous rural environment,” Bohnett recently applied to the county for Pu`u Lani Phase II subdivision.) Keeping Pu`uwa`awa`a undeveloped is obviously of far greater value to Bohnett than any cattle he may raise on the site. (If Bohnett had only considered endangered trees a selling point for his property, they might have had a better chance of survival.)
All this is a long way of saying the state should charge what the market will bear. As it stands, the $24,180 annual rental that Bohnett now pays is insufficient to cover the state’s costs in administering and monitoring the lease. There is no reason why the state, as landlord, should not share in the same profits that Bohnett, as tenant, is raking in by keeping the land rural. When the rent is renegotiated, the public should expect a modest increase in the annual rental — say, the cost of an acre or two in Pu`u Lani.
Learning From Mistakes
The land of Pu`uwa`awa`a and the public who owns it have been poorly served by the people responsible for its management. While bygones may have to be bygones so far as past violations are concerned, the public should insist on better service in the future from the Division of Land Management.
More is at stake than the niceties of complying with lease terms. In the case of reservoirs, the state has an interest in knowing how they have been constructed; indeed, public safety at some future date may depend on it. Submittal of as-built plans and specifications for all improvements should be demanded as a condition of lease renewal.
Also, Bohnett should be sent a clear message that no lease condition is unimportant — including the one requiring liability coverage, a performance bond, and an annual report. (The lease also stipulates that “the lessee shall … permit the lessor and its authorized agents and employees to have free access to all of its books of account, contracts and papers relating to the business or businesses carried on by it or in respect of the premises hereby demised.” If Bohnett won’t prepare his own report, the state should do it for him.)
The Pu`uwa`awa`a Ranch lease and other large leases of state land would be a ripe subject for investigation by the Legislative Auditor. We would urge the Legislature to ask for that. Even better would be passage of an amendment to the state’s Chapter 171, relating to public lands. The Department of Land and Natural Resources has proposed a minor change to the section dealing with enforcement of lease terms. A further amendment to give citizens the right to sue the Board of Land and Natural Resources to enforce lease terms would be most welcome.
Over the last 20 years, citizens have proven to be far more diligent than DLNR officials in the monitoring of environmental decline at Pu`uwa`awa`a. It may be that DLNR officials are simply overworked. If so, all the more reason for having the state be able to benefit, through citizen suits, from the hard work and research provided by respected and, in many case, scientifically expert corps of conservation-minded citizens.
Stumblebums or Worse
Questions raised in this issue cannot be answered by the pat reply to any charge of poor performance — that of a lack of staff or a lack of funds or both. It is undoubtedly true that the Division of Land Management and other DLNR divisions have lacked the warm bodies needed to ensure compliance with this lease, as well as other leases. Anymore, this is almost a given. (Nevermind the fact that if the DLM pursued the art of the deal a little more aggressively, much of the money problem would be alleviated.)
In any event, it was not lack of staff that led former Board Chairman Susumu Ono to allow Bohnett to pay off his $400,000 debt to the state on scandalously easy terms. It has not been lack of staff that resulted in Conservation District violations being shrugged off in 1974 and again in 1987. It was not for want of staff that the fines charged Bohnett for illegal koa logging were risible.
The DLNR may need more people, but it also needs better people: people in top management positions who believe that the public should benefit every bit as much from its lands as do the private parties who lease them; who acknowledge an intrinsic, if intangible, value in preserving Hawai`i’s environment; who are unimpressed by big shots in gold Rolls Royces and the slick attorneys they hire.
Over the years, private conservation groups, especially the Conservation Council for Hawai`i and the Hawai`i Audubon Society, have been following Bohnett’s actions closely. They have not been shy about sharing their knowledge with the Board and DLNR staff. At no time has the Board been able to hide behind a shield of ignorance.
With half of Hawai`i’s land owned by the state, and with the largest agricultural leases expiring within the next decade or two, we can ill afford to have our lands managed by stumblebums or worse.
A Vanishing Glimpse
In 1945, Edward C. Wingate, superintendent of the Hawai`i National Park, wrote: “the longer I live here, the more apparent it becomes that much of what is fine and of worldwide value in the Hawaiian scene and way of life is being increasingly dissipated and lost. … However, we learn as time goes on, and it is not too late yet to assure the future of a reasonable glimpse of the Hawai`i that existed before we began, for better or worse, to alter and develop it.”
In 1945, it might have been possible to assure the future that glimpse of what once was at Pu`uwa`awa`a. In 1975, that might still have been within reach. In 1991, absent a miraculous change of heart among state officials and a powerful, and costly, restoration effort, the future’s glimpse of Pu`uwa`awa`a’s past glories will come from textbooks and museums.
Volume 1, Number 9 March 1991
Leave a Reply