Editorial

posted in: Editorial, June 2001 | 0

A Flawed Timber License Doesn’t Merit Board Approval

What is the state to do?

Forty years ago, native forests, described as degraded by professional foresters, were bulldozed and replanted with varieties of exotic trees in the hope Hawai`i would some day be free of the need to import lumber products. Since then, of course, attitudes toward native forests have changed – although it was not until 1997 that the Legislature forbade the bulldozing of state-owned native forests.

But what should be done with the now-mature exotic trees that were, from the outset, intended to be logged?

The Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Division of Forestry and Wildlife has proposed to the Land Board a plan to log about 9,000 acres of one such planted timber stand, in the Waiakea area of the Big Island, just a few miles outside of Hilo. In principle, it’s not a bad idea. But what we’ve seen so far of DOFAW’s thoughtfulness and thoroughness in its environmental disclosure and its legal and business acumen in pulling together a contract to allow the work is enough to suggest the state should hold off on any plans for logging in any of its several planted timber stands.

Consider this: state law requires the Land Board to approve a forest management plan before any forest can be logged. The Waiakea plan was approved in 1998. Yet the proposed license to allow Tradewinds to log the area makes absolutely no mention of this board-approved plan. Instead, Tradewinds is to submit its own forest management plan, which is subject to approval not by the Land Board, but only by the DOFAW administrator, with no public review beforehand. In other words, absent a major change in the proposed license, the Waiakea Timber Management Area will not be logged under terms of a board-approved plan – a circumstance that calls into question the very legality of the activity.

The Perils of Partnership

In this issue, we outline some of the problems associated with the proposed license to Tradewinds. How did these come about?

At root, the problems result from the fact that all along, the state has been more of a promoter of a forest industry than has been healthy, from a strictly business perspective. In all of the Division of Forestry and Wildlife, there seems to have been no clear-eyed, hard-nosed examination of the terms and conditions of the license.

Why? Is the state afraid that doing anything other than caving into the wishes of a potential contractor will frighten away all comers? No respectable business person is so eager to seal a deal that the need to protect his or her assets is overlooked. And yet this is exactly what the state did when, for example, it skated over the need for a much more thorough environmental study of the area to be logged than has been provided to date. Publicly owned assets – including native species such as bats and insects – may be at risk should the logging be conducted as planned, and yet DOFAW has done nothing to ensure their protection. It has been guided instead only by an unbecoming and imprudent boosterism – an attitude that has blinded it to the defects of its beloved as well as to the virtues of all those it shuns in her pursuit.

Moreover, the legal checks on agency action that are supposed to be provided by the Department of Attorney General seem to be missing in action, when it comes to the Waiakea proposal. If any deputy AG did look over the proposed license, it does not speak well for the diligence, competence – or both — of that office.

What Is To Be Done?

On June 8, the state Board of Land and Natural Resources is scheduled to vote on the Waiakea license. At the very least, it should defer action until a more proper review of the license, in light of state law, is done, with the deputy attorney general charged with the task reporting back to the board at an open meeting. If the board really wanted to assure the public that logging will be conducted on state land in a manner that protects the full range of the public’s natural resources, it would require its Division of Forestry and Wildlife to prepare a supplemental draft environmental assessment, if not a full environmental impact statement, using the surveys done at taxpayer expense for the Department of Public Safety.

In one sense, DOFAW is right: the Waiakea timber license will be a model for future licenses for logging, not just on the Big Island, but Kaua`i, Moloka`i, and Maui as well. If this first step is not done right, DOFAW can expect public outcry and controversy over any future logging plans to only grow.

And Mike Buck thought Oji was bad

Volume 11, Number 12 June 2001

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