New & Noteworthy

posted in: July 2008 | 0

Kona Conservation: On June 6, the state Department of Land and Natural Resources announced that it had accepted a $1.968 million dollar grant from the U.S. Forest Legacy Program to help complete the purchase of a perpetual conservation easement over 9,000 acres of forest land known as Kealakekua Heritage Ranch. Once the easement is in place, the DLNR will have protected a total of 16,000 acres in Kona through the Forest Legacy Program, making Hawai`i’s one of the most successful programs in the nation. (The other protected lands include 4,022 acres that are part of The Nature Conservancy’s Kona Hema Preserve and 3,128 acres of McCandless Ranch.)

A DLNR press release on the purchase states that Kealakekua Heritage Ranch, owned by the Pace family, had at one time been slated for intense development: an Arnold Palmer golf course and 500 new houses. That development was to have taken place on the lower portion of the property, with the upper 8,100 acres protected under a Hawai`i County rezoning ordinance that prevented any subdivision there for 40 years from the date development on the lower portion began.

“The Pace family, however, had a different vision,” Greg Hendrickson, ranch manager, said in the press release. “The family is committed to protecting this land from the kind of development planned for it prior to their purchase, and is instead interested in maintaining this Ranch as working lands.”

Hendrickson told Environment Hawai`i last year no golf course and only 150 houses would be built on the developable portion of the property (See our November 2007 issue). According to the press release, the 9,000 acres has been valued at approximately $24 million, more than twice what the family paid for the property in 2004, despite the fact that its development rights for the lower portion wre “in limbo” acording to county officials.

In exchange for giving up its development rights for the easement area, the Paces will receive two Forest Legacy grants totaling $4 million and potential tax benefits from donating the remaining value of the land ($20 million).

The easement purchase, which must still receive final approval from the Board of Land and Natural Resources, is expected to be completed in January. The first 4,000 acres of the 9,000-acre parcel were funded for protection (anticipated to be completed in late 2008) last year through a $2 million grant from the program, which is administered in Hawai`i by the DLNR. The additinal $2 million grant received in June will go toward the purchase of the remaining 5,000 acres.

Watershed Atlases: Some of the state’s best stream researchers have recently released one of the most comprephensive sets of data on Hawai`i watersheds ever compiled.

As efforts to establish or amend stream flow standards throughout the islands have increased in recent years, so has the demand for accurate and comprehensive scientific data on the natural resources that rely on those streams. Earlier this year, the state Commission on Water Resource Management released five reports on East Maui watershed that compile a wealth of scientific, legal, and historical information. And in April, the state Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Division of Aquatic Resources, in collaboration with the Bishop Museum, released the printed versions of five atlases (one each for Hawai`i, Maui, Kaua`i, O`ahu, and Moloka`i) covering 436 watersheds throughout the state.

The authors include Darrel Kuamo`o, Glenn Higashi, Robert Nishimoto, and Daniel Polhemus of the Division of Aquatic Resources, and retired DAR administrator William Devick, as well as Lousiana State University’s J. Michael Fitzsimons and the Bishop Museum’s James Parham and Eko Lapp.

The atlases include species data from a variety of researchers and publications including the Hawai`i Stream Assessment, stream surveys and stocking data by the former Hawai`i Division of Fish and Game, DAR surveys, and Bishop Museum collections.

In addition to compiling natural resource data by watershed, the atlases rank each watershed according to their watershed and biotic elements.

Although the website for the atlases (hawaiiwatershedatlas.com) is still under construction, hard copies or CDs of the repots, which are several hundred pages long and total more than 2,000 pages, are available in a limited basis. Call the DAR at 587-0100 for more information.

Volume 19, Number 1 July 2008

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