Poems and Pinions: One of the heaviest, most serious tomes in any reputable library of a Hawaiʻi conservation biologist is Alien Plant Invasions in Native Ecosystems of Hawaiʻi, edited by Charles Stone, Cliff Smith, and Tim Tunison.
And now that same Chuck Stone has authored one of the lighter volumes on the conservationist’s bookshelf: Birds in Hawaiʻi Today: Poetry & Prose, with photographs by renowned photographer Jack Jeffrey.
But it’s intended not only – or even mainly – for the conservationist. As Stone writes in the preface, the target readers are non-scientists “curious about the biology, conservation, and status of birds in Hawaiʻi,” whether they live in the islands or elsewhere.
Stone advises his book isn’t a detailed guide. Nonetheless, readers of the poems he has written for 20 species, both native and introduced, are chock-full of information on the birds’ histories and habits. Essays on each of the various types of birds – such as sea birds, water birds, forest birds – introduce the main sections of the book, with short write-ups on each bird in each category.
The quatrain poems are long, running from 14 to 20 verses. Shakespeare it isn’t, but there’s still a lot of emotion packed into them. The ode to the ʻiʻiwi, for example, mourns their vulnerability to avian pox and malaria, with the incidence of disease increasing with the warming climate:
Luckily, ʻiʻiwi adapt
To captive breeding and release.
New populations may begin
From birds bred for resistant genes.
Like ʻamakihi, some ʻiʻiwi
Could develop immunity.
But that might take substantial time –
For ʻiʻiwi, an eternity….
EPA Oversight Questioned: The Office of Inspector General for the Environmental Protection Agency has launched an investigation into the agency’s oversight of programs that the EPA has delegated to the state. Specifically, the OIG states, “our objective is to determine, by analyzing the sequence of events that led to drinking water contamination at the Red Hill Site … whether the EPA’s oversight of relevant authorized state programs effectively has addressed the potential for contamination at the site.”
The investigation was opened following a preliminary inquiry by the OIG of the regional EPA administration’s response to the contamination. That inquiry included “interviews, data gathering, and analysis of issues such as adherence to policies and procedures for underground storage tank leak detection, drinking water quality monitoring, and oil spill reporting.”
The investigation was announced on March 21. No final report has been released.
A Clarification: Environment Hawaiʻi has seen no evidence that the principals of Waikoloa Mauka/Waikoloa Highlands were in any way involved in the apparent kickback scheme that Alan Rudo and other co-defendants are accused of orchestrating. No reports in Environment Hawaiʻi about what federal prosecutors have described as the “Waikoloa Scheme” should be taken to suggest that Waikoloa Highlands principals were anything other than its victims.
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