Editorial: To Save Endangered Birds, State Must Shift Course

posted in: Editorial, March 2004 | 0

The ostrich is not native to Hawai’i, but it has taken a firm foothold here, in the ranks of the state bureaucrats charged with managing the recovery of the islands’ dwindling numbers of endangered forest birds.

That’s the only possible conclusion one can come to after a review of the recovery plans prepared by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for 22 species of Hawaiian birds found nowhere else in the world. One inescapable reason for their decline is disturbance of their preferred habitat – by alterations in the landscape, deforestation, introduction of competing species of non-native birds, grazing and predatory mammals, and devastating disease.

Addressing these requires a costly, enormous, and long-lasting commitment by the owners of the lands where these forest birds might range. In some cases, large tracts of land that are still or might be suitable forest bird habitat are owned by private entities, such as Kamehameha Schools and The Nature Conservancy of Hawai’i. In other areas, including national parks and federal wildlife refuges, the responsibility for restoring habitat falls to the federal government, which is already constrained by federal laws to pay serious attention to endangered species.

But the key player is the state. A glance through the list of parcels published in the recovery plans that identifies where forest birds might hope to expand their range (a vital element in their recovery) shows most of those lands are owned by the state and controlled either by the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands or the Department of Land and Natural Resources.

So, what is the state’s commitment to restoring these lands?

A Law Ignored

The short answer: not much. When one stacks the list of actions needed against the much shorter list of those that are already tagged for funds or even considered for funds, the prospects for forest-bird recovery would seem to be pretty grim.

Some of the parcels that the forest bird recovery plans identify as possible habitat are managed already by the state as Natural Area Reserves, which is about as good as it gets when it comes to the state’s management of areas for natural resource protection. Yet on average, the state has been spending roughly $10 a year for each acre of land in the Natural Area Reserve System. You don’t need to be a biologist to know this doesn’t buy a lot of protection. And when NARS funds have to be used to repair fences (such as that recently destroyed at Pu’u O Umi NAR) damaged by people who evidently think the state is too committed to conservation, the amount available for new undertakings shrinks even more.

State-owned lands set aside as forest reserves account for another substantial fraction of potential forest bird habitat. Most of these areas, however, are regarded by the folks at the Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Division of Forestry and Wildlife as little more than hunting reserves. Efforts in the past to force the state to manage these more aggressively for bird conservation – most notably, the federal court order requiring removal of sheep from Mauna Kea – have been met with screams of protest from a vocal and politically influential (if small) bloc of hunters. Or consider the Piha Tract, a narrow strip of state-owned forest reserve land that rips through the center of the intensively managed Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge, on the eastern slope of Mauna Kea. Filled with the tree-smothering banana poka vine, it’s heaven for pigs – and for those hunting them. From the standpoint of the wildlife refuge, though, the Piha Tract is an Achilles’ heel that is constantly undermining efforts of federal wildlife managers to combat invasive plants and animals. In terms of boundary fencing alone, the state’s bow to the pressure of hunters to keep Piha Tract open to them has needlessly cost federal taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars. The state could dedicate this land to the federal government for inclusion in the Hakalau refuge, but no one at DOFAW or anywhere else in state government will talk seriously about this option, apparently out of fear of sending already choleric hunters into apoplectic fits.

Much of the land identified in the recovery plans as potential bird habitat lies in the state Agricultural District. As a first step toward converting this land into areas that might attract native species, these agricultural parcels should be placed into the Conservation District. And the state already has a law that provides for this.

The Hawai’i Land Use Law (Chapter 205 of Hawai’i Revised Statutes) anticipates the transfer of lands from ag to Conservation for just such purposes: “Conservation districts,” the law reads, “shall include areas necessary for … conserving indigenous or endemic plants, fish, and wildlife.”

And in the all-too-likely event that the land use boundaries existing at the time the law took effect more than four decades ago needed to be revised in light of new knowledge of conservation needs (just the kind of information provided by the forest bird recovery plans), the law provides for review of the appropriateness of land classifications every five years. “The office of planning,” reads Section 205-18, “shall undertake a review of the classification and districting of all lands in the State, within five years from December 31, 1985, and every fifth year thereafter…. The office may initiate state land use boundary amendments which it deems appropriate to conform to these plans” (emphasis added).

The last comprehensive boundary review was completed in 1992 and, presciently, recommended shifting from ag to conservation many of the lands identified in the forest bird recovery plans. Unfortunately, most of the changes proposed then have still not been brought before the Land Use Commission for approval. Nor has there been any effort since then to conduct the five-year boundary reviews mandated by law. According to Mary Lou Kobayashi, acting head of the ever-shrinking Office of Planning, said, “We don’t have the funding or the manpower to initiate” such a review.

One of the few bright lights in this bleak scenario is the effort of the Department of Hawaiian Homelands. It has already begun work on a forest bird corridor linking Hakalau refuge to upland forest reserve lands. On Maui, it has at long last removed cattle from the uplands of Kahikinui. Taking these lands out of destructive pasture uses and re-establishing them as forest bird habitat is only laudable.

Why Bother?

Like a canary in a coalmine, Hawai’i’s forest birds give us a measure of the health of the ecosystem we share with them. If it fails to support them, eventually it will fail to support us, too. Sustainable management of natural resources has become a popular catchword of late, but if we focus on sustaining just the human component and ignore those species at the margin of our consciousness, it is only a question of time before the margins close in around us and we find ourselves inhabiting a biologically and physically impoverished world.

More people, both in and out of government, need to understand what is at stake when the state leases out, on a cents-per-acre basis, pasture lands that could be converted to bird habitat. They need to be told what the long-term consequences are for precious, irreplaceable native species when the state bows to pressure from hunters to allow the destruction of forests so they can pursue a sport that, frankly, makes no sense whatsoever in fragile island ecosystems.

What is to be done?

  • As a first step in the gaining of wisdom, we suggest that the Fish and Wildlife Service and state non-game wildlife biologists sponsor an endangered bird summit for elected and appointed officials, but also open to the public.
  • As a second step, the Department of Land and Natural Resources should make good on its years-old promises to inventory state lands and plan for their future best use.
  • Finally, the Office of Planning should be given the resources it needs to carry out its legislative mandate. Anything less makes a mockery of the laws that are a critical element in the state’s most fundamental obligation to protect its imperiled plants and animals.

Whether Hawai’i’s endangered birds join the ranks of their extinct cousins is a question that depends on actions taken now – this month, this year, this decade – by those who have been entrusted with responsibility for managing Hawai’i’s forest lands. If their feet are not held to the fire by good and caring people, shame on us all.

— Patricia Tummons

Volume 14, Number 9 March 2004

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