On June 8, the state Board of Land and Natural Resources is scheduled to hear a proposal from its forestry staff to have a private company log about 9,000 acres of plantation timber in Waiakea, an area a short hop southwest of Hilo.
The proposal, four years in the making, would see stands of eucalyptus, Queensland maple, Australian red cedar, and a few other exotic hardwoods planted since the 1960s be logged by a company based in the Pacific Northwest. The state Department of Land and Natural Resources touts the plan as one that would bring jobs and add value to an industry that often is regarded as extractive and of little benefit to local economies.
Key to the proposal is the construction of a multi-million dollar mill that would peel long curls of veneer from eucalyptus and Queensland maple logs as they were spun on huge lathes. The resulting high-value product, say the company owners, would command a high price on the world market. Eucalyptus veneer has industrial value, while the Queensland maple, with a typically lovely grain, would be used in cabinetry, furniture, flooring, and the like.
The DLNR’s Division of Forestry and Wildlife (DOFAW) and the company say the plan would create hundreds of jobs, add millions of dollars to the state’s treasury over the initial 10-year period of the license, and give a much needed economic boost to the ailing economy of East Hawai`i. Opponents say it could wreak environmental havoc on the endangered hoary bat, Hawai`i’s only native land mammal, and on untold numbers of native invertebrates, the uncelebrated but still vitally important members of Hawai`i’s natural ecosystems. What’s more, opponents also say the economic benefits anticipated would vanish in the face of higher costs taxpayers will have to pay for roads and port improvements needed to support the enterprise.
– Tradewinds Proposal
On one point, the state and the opponents of the Waiakea plan are in agreement: the project is the camel’s nose under the tent for development of a much larger-scale logging industry on the Big Island. By the state’s own admission, the Waiakea timber resources are insufficient to justify construction of the manufacturing facilities (chipping plant, sawmill, veneer mill) that will be built to process them. Because of this, opponents say that more thoughtful review and complete disclosure is required than what is contained in the thin, 36-page cursory environmental assessment the state has prepared so far.
A Plan Unfulfilled
Four decades ago, the state had big plans for timber. Then-Governor Jack Quinn proposed, and the Land Board approved, a 10-year plan, estimated to cost $12.5 million (in 1962 dollars), to plant exotic trees on 30,000 acres of forested state land.
The plan, devised with the help of the U.S. Forest Service, was supposed to lead to local production of lumber that would displace the hundreds of millions of board feet that Hawai`i imported to feed its construction projects. Indeed, some of the project’s champions claimed, Hawai`i would have a surplus that it could export.
As with many visions of grandeur, the reality was something less. Many tens of thousands of acres statewide – on Hawai`i, Maui, Lana`i, Moloka`i, Maui, O`ahu, and Kaua`i — were planted with trees thought to have commercial value. Hundreds of miles of road were cut. In the Waiakea area, for example, a tidy grid of roads carved the planted forest into 40-acre tracts. And though no civil servant has kept careful count of the dollars spent, acres planted, or roads cleared, the state doubtless used up a large fraction of that $12.5 million in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s developing plantation timber stands.
But contrary to expectations, there has been no displacement of the volume of lumber Hawai`i imports. Apart from chipping operations in Waiakea in the 1980s, which brought in a few hundred thousand dollars, the state’s exotic timber stands have been a net drain on the public treasury – to say nothing of the loss of native forests bulldozed to clear land for the plantation trees.
For most of the time since they were planted, the state’s timber stands have been left alone, or, as the environmental assessment prepared for the logging puts it, “were allowed to grow without any timber stand improvement (TSI) activity.” In the undisturbed years of silence, an understory of native ferns and other plants crept in and bats and native insects took up residence in the new habitat.
Sugar Substitute
That all began to change in the mid-1990s, when sugar plantations started falling like dominoes along the windward coast of the Big Island. Down they came, from Hamakua to Ka`u. And as they fell, unemployment rolls climbed.
The DLNR and several sister agencies, including the Department of Agriculture, what was then known as the Office of State Planning, and the Department of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism embarked on a planning process intended to bring employment to the hardest hit regions and, at the same time, find a productive use for the state lands vacated by the plantations.
A New Zealand consultant was brought in to analyze the lands’ potential for plantation forestry. Eventually, this prompted the state to solicit proposals from companies interested in using some 4,800 acres of former cane land in Hamakua for cultivation of eucalyptus trees destined for pulp mills.
By November 1997, when a proposal to lease the lands to Oji, a Japanese paper-products company, came before the Land Board, sentiment against it among Hamakua residents was white-hot. Using Hawai`i lands for low-value wood chips would neither create jobs nor be healthy for the environment, they said. Although members of the Land Board had earlier entered into a letter of intent with Oji, it rejected the lease when confronted with the overwhelming opposition.
A Learning Experience
But even as the Land Board voted to deny the Oji lease, its Division of Forestry and Wildlife Staff had embarked on a process intended to light a fire, figuratively at least, in the state’s existing plantation forests.
The spark was lit earlier that year by Don Bryan of a company called TimFor, with offices in Seattle and Portland. In an interview with Environment Hawai`i, Bryan said his interest in stands of exotic trees in Hawai`i came about as a result of his curiosity, as a forester, in growth rates of trees in different environments. He had read about Hawai`i’s plantations and then traveled to the state to look at them and “see what the possibilities were.”
“We looked at various possibilities to become involved in growing in Hawai`i,” he said. “Over a period of a couple of years, we came to the conclusion that more trees weren’t necessary. What was needed was higher and better use of them. So we started to explore how that might work out. We discovered that the eucalyptus doesn’t saw well but it has favorable traits as a veneer. And the more time that we spent on the project, the more we understood what those favorable characteristics were.”
With the blessings of DOFAW, in August 1997 another Bryan-affiliated company, Timber Exchange, took 33 trees, representing five different species, from the Waiakea Timber Management Area (WTMA). At the company’s mills in the Pacific Northwest, the logs were worked into veneer, sawn lumber, and plywood.
At roughly the same time, the Hawai`i Forestry and Communities Initiative (HFIC) was conducting its own research into the timber at Waiakea. The inventory, HFIC’s Mike Robinson says, was something that had been planned for a while for all state timber stands. From June to October 1997, HFIC, an agency supported by the state and the federal governments and established to promote commercial forestry in Hawai`i, mapped the 12,000-plus acres in the timber management area and estimated the volumes of commercial lumber they might yield. Robinson estimates that the inventory cost about $8.42 an acre, or more than $100,000 for the Waiakea tracts.
Within a month of the survey’s completion, Bryan had made a proposal to lease up to 10,000 acres in the Waiakea forest. A November 17, 1997, memo from Mike Buck, DOFAW administrator, to Jon Giffin, head of DOFAW on the Big Island, makes mention of the offer. “I do not favor a land leasing option for our public forest reserves at this time,” Buck told Giffin. “Our first step should be an overall general management plan for the Waiakea tree planting area… I would then like to brief the [Land] Board on our plans and develop a process to encourage the growing commercial forest industry.” Taking note of “our present Hamakua experiences” (the uproar over the proposed Oji lease), Buck wrote: “We would like to list and develop management measures that will address community issues and concerns.”
By April 1998, DOFAW was well along the way in developing a forest management plan for the Waiakea lands. A law approved in 1997 (Section 183-16.5 of Hawai`i Revised Statutes) requires the Land Board to approve such a plan before any trees on public lands are logged. In September the work was done and the Land Board endorsed the Waiakea plan. Two months later it authorized DOFAW to advertise for proposals to conduct logging operations in Waiakea.
Two Tracks
DOFAW’s request for proposals generated three expressions of interest. A panel made up of two representatives from the DLNR (including one from DOFAW) and one from the Department of Business and Economic Development evaluated the proposals, eventually deciding on Tradewinds Forest Products, a partnership of two companies, one of which (The Timber Exchange) was headed by Bryan. Tradewinds’ proposal spelled out an ambitious plan to process timber from state-owned as well as private lands: “The new company intends to establish a significant wood products industry on the Island of Hawai`i in cooperation with the state and private landowners,” it said. “Upon acceptance of our proposal, Tradewinds Forest Products will utilize the Waiakea Timber Management Area as the catalyst for developing a world class veneer and plywood manufacturing facility on the island of Hawai`i.” A small sawmill would also be built on the site of the 7-acre plant, which Bryan says will likely be on a lower cane haul road in Hamakua, near O`okala, on land owned by Kamehameha Schools.
A by-product would be wood chips for export to pulp processors. Wood used in the chips would come from the waste left over from manufacture of high-value products as well as from “trees of low value.” Anything left over would be used to fire a 5 megawatt power plant needed to operate the veneer and plywood plant.
Tradewinds outlined its strategy for developing the industries anticipated in the proposal: “Over the course of several years, Tradewinds plans to: 1) build and operate a log chipping mill and port facility; 2) build and operate a power generating plant; 3) build and operate a small log sawmill; and 4) build and operate a veneer mill and plywood layup plant.” Last month, however, Bryan told Environment Hawai`i, “We don’t plan to have the chipping facility built before the veneer mill.” Tradewinds will do chipping on Kamehameha Schools’ Hamakua land planted by PruTimber, he said, but “we will probably do that chipping with a portable chipper.” Under no circumstances would chipping be done on-site in state lands, he said.
One of the conditions in the request for proposals was that “the selected proposer will be responsible for payment of all costs and expenses in connection with the project, including, but not limited to, costs associated with securing necessary entitlement and environmental documentationÉ” But Tradewinds’ proposal did not conform: “Any required environmental impact studies or endangered species surveys will be completed by DOFAW at its expense. Surveys for endangered species will be conducted by State employees or contractors.”
In a sense, the discrepancy between the state’s conditions and those offered by Tradewinds was moot. A month before Tradewinds’ proposal was submitted in April 1999, the state had itself published a draft environmental assessment, prepared in-house by DOFAW staff.
The document did not reflect the results of recent surveys for plants and animals that might be federally protected. The discussion of flora and fauna in the Waiakea area consisted of general statements and references to work done by other agencies and individuals.
Most native forest birds are absent from the area, except at the upper elevational limit of 3,000 feet, the EA noted. The endangered Hawaiian hawk, or `io (Buteo solitarius) has been seen in the Waiakea area, but, the EA went on to say, “densities are low in the non-native timber units and É no breeding takes place there.”
Bats
The tiny Hawaiian hoary bat, Lasiurus cinerius semotus, almost certainly roost in the Waiakea Timber Management Area, and therein, perhaps, lay the most serious obstacle to the logging proposal. By their nature, bats are difficult to locate – whether flying or roosting. In comments submitted on the draft Environmental Assessment, University of Hawai`i zoology graduate student Theresa Menard, whose dissertation subject is the Hawaiian bat, disagreed with DOFAW’s proposed finding that the logging project would have no significant impact on the endangered animal.
– Theresa Menard, bat expert
“Timber harvesting in a roost area is likely to disturb hoary bats because hoary bats roost in trees, not caves,” Menard wrote. “Although tree-roosting bats generally have alternate roost trees and roost areas to move between, during the breeding season (June and July), mother bats are quite site-faithful to an individual tree. Mother hoary bats do not carry their young with them in flight as they forage, rather the young cling to one tree until they are capable of flight on their own at about 4 weeks of age. Pups do not finish nursing until they are 6 weeks old. Disturbance in the roost area during the breeding season could easily be fatal to both the mother and young. For example, if their roost tree is cut, the pre-volant young could be crushed when the tree hits the ground. Although the mother bat will probably attempt to carry her young if they are disturbed at the roost, the move is risky because mother hoary bats have difficulty flying while carrying their young. She will most likely fall to the ground with her young still attached, where they are all likely to die from exposure or predation.”
Menard went on to acknowledge the “great mystery” of whether the Waiakea Timber Management Area is indeed a bat breeding site. “Although as the draft EA states, ‘there are no records of bats breeding in the area,’ this is not surprising because obtaining data on this elusive animal is difficult. In fact, I know of only one instance in which a mother and her pups were found togetherÉ I strongly suspect that bats are indeed breeding in the É area because the site is forested and temperatures in the area are conducive to breeding (i.e., pups do not risk freezing to death as they would further upslope.”‘
DOFAW biologists had looked for bats while the EA was in preparation in the winter of 1997-98. None was found. Menard was not surprised. At low elevation study sites, she wrote, the period of least activity is winter.
Menard went on to criticize the agency’s proposed method of dealing with bats, which was to set up a no-harvest zone, 500 feet in diameter, around each site where a roosting tree is found. “While this is well intentioned,” she wrote, “the likelihood that a bat will be found at the roost is slim. I have never encountered a bat at the roost.” Even when Menard and another biologist had radio-tracked a bat back to its roost tree, she noted, “we were unable to locate it. These bats are tiny and cryptic. Waiting for a roost site to be discovered and then suspending operations in the area of roost tree is not a practical approach to managing bat habitat, rather it is better to simply suspend harvesting during the months when the bats are at their most vulnerable (i.e., during the breeding season in June and July.)”
In months since her comments, Menard has done more bat tracking. “I saw bats flying over the timber management area at dusk,” she told Environment Hawai`i. “Dusk detections indicate bats are roosting in the area.” More conclusive evidence could be obtained by radio tracking, she added, “but DOFAW doesn’t have the money to do that.”
In an effort to address Menard’s concerns, DOFAW’s Giffin pointed out that “not all trees in an area will be harvested. Within a 40-acre patch cut, for instance, a number of trees will be left for wildlife and aestheticsÉ Also, the logging contractee and workers will be trained and educated about the Hawaiian hoary bat. If they see a bat fall to the ground, they must cease operations call DOFAW immediatelyÉ When and if bats are proven to breed in the WTMA, we agree that harvesting activities will cease during their breeding seasonÉ We will continue with visual and sonic detection during all seasons, especially in new prospective harvest areas.”
The final environmental assessment included the measures Giffin outlined to Menard. Recently, DOFAW staff has begun a training program to detect bats in anticipation of the start of the Waiakea logging.
Bugs in the Plan
The draft environmental assessment dealt glancingly with the issue of the presence in the Waiakea area of native invertebrates. Frank Howarth, an entomologist with the Bishop Museum who had been retained to conduct an invertebrate survey for an environmental impact statement being prepared for an expansion of Kulani prison (a plan since dropped), commented on the problem:
“It seems incongruous that the proposed correctional facility, which would cover approximately 320 acres of the [Waiakea Timber Management Area], required a full EIS study, while the EA for the proposed project, which would clear some 11,700 acres of land in the same area, requests a finding of no significant impact. There will be significant environmental impacts on native Hawaiian species and ecosystems.” Howarth went on to say he could not release to DOFAW the findings of his survey made for the state Department of Accounting and General Services, for the prison expansion – and in a show of the extent of interagency cooperation in Hawai`i’s government, DAGS also refused to provide DOFAW information it had gathered on the area. Still, Howarth said, “the data in that document can be used in the revision of the WTMA EA.”
(The Kulani prison expansion was dropped before the EIS was published and DAGS continues to deny the public access to all work associated with its preparation.)
Howarth noted that even in tree plantations, tree ferns are present. “One of the conclusions of the Hawai`i Subprogram of the International Biology Project,” he wrote, which was a multi-year and multidisciplinary study of Hawaiian rainforests on windward Kilauea and Mauna Loa, “was that the structure of the native rainforest was maintained by the tree fern layer. That is, if the tree fern layer were removed, many forest species would decline, but if the fern layer remained intact, native tree species could re-establish.”
Although Howarth’s comments were submitted past the period for public comment, the final EA includes a longer discussion of invertebrates than appeared in the draft: “Native arthropod abundance and species diversity is surprisingly high in the WTMAÉ Timber harvesting will have a short-term negative impact on native invertebrate speciesÉ. [P]opulations will stabilize as harvested areas are replanted.”
Last but by no means least in DOFAW’s hierarchy came the discussion of feral pigs and other game species. The creation of open fields, growth of new plants, and establishment of edges between vegetation types all would benefit the production of game animals, including pheasants, pigs, and wild turkeys. “DOFAW plans to maintain a sustainable feral pig population within the WTMA,” the final EA states. “Feral pig habitat is of considerable importance to a number of Hawai`i residentsÉ DOFAW must insure that the concerns and rights of the hunting groups and other recreationists are also addressed.”
Segmentation
The Hawai`i Audubon Society did not weigh in during the comment period on the draft environmental assessment, but it did raise a series of concerns a year later in a long letter to the state Environmental Council. Chief among them was the issue of segmentation. This refers to the attempt to avoid full disclosure of all environmental impacts related to a given project by breaking the project up into a series of nominally independent, discrete elements. Under the state’s environmental disclosure law, Chapter 343 of Hawai`i Revised Statutes, segmentation is strictly forbidden.
The Waiakea forestry project was part of a larger plan to develop a forestry industry in Hawai`i, the society’s president, Wendy Johnson, wrote in a letter June 12, 2000, to the state Environmental Council. She noted that the state itself acknowledged in the environmental assessment that its goal was “to assist in the creation of a sustainable forest industry.” Also, Johnson wrote, the state was aware that the Waiakea forest resources alone would not be sufficient to keep a sawmill operating as a commercially viable entity. This, she said, “affirms the connection to a larger undertaking” whose cumulative impacts were improperly ignored by DOFAW. She asked the Council, whose limited legal mandate consists mostly of developing rules for implementing Chapter 343, to urge DOFAW to withdraw the environmental assessment and work on preparation of a more complete environmental impact statement.
At the time of Johnson’s letter, however, the opportunity for legal challenge to the environmental assessment’s adequacy had been closed for a year. The most council chair William Petti could do was to recommend she take up the society’s concerns with DOFAW administrator Buck.
While legal options may have been few, Johnson’s concerns have some legitimacy. Since the airing of Tradewinds proposal, the need for new infrastructure to support logging in the Waiakea area has become more apparent. Stainback Highway, which for most of its run is owned by the state, must be improved to forest industry standards for “mainline” roads. Port facilities at Kawaihae and Hilo would need to be built to allow for storage and conveyance of chips to waiting ships and barges. If a market for the chips is found in Asia, probably Kawaihae Harbor would have to be dredged to allow for deep-water hulls of cargo ships. (If the markets are in North America, chips may be shipped by barges, which can now be accommodated at both ports, according to Tradewinds’ Bryan.)
Decision Time
April 12, Maundy Thursday, was to have been the day of reckoning for the Tradewinds license. That day’s agenda for the Land Board meeting in Hilo included two items of major public interest. One involved management of the 21,000-acre Pu`uwa`awa`a ranch. The second was the Tradewinds license, which, in the two years since publication of the Waiakea Timber Management Area environmental assessment, had become a lightning rod for criticism from a group called Friends of Hamakua, concerned over the cumulative impacts of a burgeoning forestry industry on the Big Island. The group was formed some four years ago in opposition to the state’s proposed lease of Hamakua land to Oji and has been active since on a range of environmental and land planning issues.
Because of prolonged discussion of Pu`uwa`awa`a, it was 3:30 in the afternoon by the time the Land Board took up discussion of the Tradewinds license. Of perhaps a hundred people who had come to the small meeting room in the Hilo state building to testify in opposition to the license, a few dozen remained. And of those, only a handful were able to testify before Kaua`i board member Lynn McCrory had to leave at 4:30 to catch a plane.
Most of the time for public testimony was used up by Jim Anthony, director of the Hawai`i La`ie-ikawai Association, a foundation that has provided assistance to the Friends of Hamakua. Anthony accused DOFAW administrator Mike Buck of withholding important documents from the Land Board. He alluded to a “40-page document” that detailed agreements on conditions between DOFAW and Tradewinds, telling the board that, “I have also been told on good authority, that this is to be kept confidential until after some decision is made by the board.”
Anthony brought up other issues, including the public trust doctrine, the sufficiency of the environmental assessment, and the state’s diligence in investigating the proposed license holder.
Linda Lyerly, a leader of Friends of Hamakua, submitted written testimony opposing the deal. Most of it criticized aspects of the proposed license dealing with bonds, insurance, and payment terms. In her conclusion, though, she, too, raised concerns over the larger-scale impacts that development of a timber industry would have: “if the State continues to pursue this agreement with Tradewinds there [should] be an EIS [environmental impact statement] required because of the magnitude of this industry with its corresponding impacts upon our island that are yet unknown.” Her group had collected more than 1,400 signatures on a petition requesting just such an EIS.
As strong as the opposition is, the proposal also has many defenders. Among them is Robinson of the Hawai`i Forestry and Communities Initiative. Among the most important issues for him is that in consuming imported forest products, Hawai`i has been exploiting resources in other countries where environmental oversight is not as strong. “This is an important time for forestry in the state and the world,” he said in an interview. “We all need to be practicing good stewardship and not deferring to some poor country that doesn’t have the oversight we have.”
Bryan, representing Tradewinds, also was present at the April 12 meeting, where he distributed a statement he titled “The Environmental Case For Plantation Forestry.”
“There are two more reasons, from an environmental standpoint, that tree plantations should be established and maintained on the Island of Hawai`i,” he wrote. “Both have to do with the almost magical rate of growth. First, these plantations are so effective at producing oxygen and storing carbon, that polluting companies will pay growers to get ‘carbon credits.’ Second, an acre of tropical trees at Hamakua grows wood 20 times as fast as the world average for natural forest. This means that harvesting one acre of plantation-grown eucalyptus will eliminate the need to harvest 20 acres of natural forest elsewhere.” (Peter Simmons, land manager for Kamehameha Schools on the Big Island, told Environment Hawai`i that his organization had been “exploring” the idea of selling carbon credits “for quite a long time. “It’s a soft market now,” he said.)
The Bigger Picture
Although the Land Board is considering issuing Tradewinds a license to take trees from the Waiakea area only, Bryan’s statement refers to the Hamakua area. There, Tradewinds has entered into an agreement with PruTimber to log approximately 16,000 acres of eucalyptus on former cane lands owned now by Kamehameha Schools. Most of these logs will be chipped and exported. PruTimber also has several additional tens of thousands of acres of eucalyptus plantings on private land from Kohala in the north to Ka`u in the south.
– Mike Robinson, forester
But the state, too, has additional plantation timber stands in east Hawai`i, which it intends to offer for sale. Last year, it drafted a forest management plan for its Hamakua Timber Management Area. This area of some 4,000 acres (less, if land that some claim belongs to Kalopa State Park is not included) was planted by the Civilian Conservation Corps back in the 1930s and contains stands of mature eucalyptus, some as large as 4 feet in diameter.
Three hearings were held on the draft plan for Hamakua, with most testimony being opposed to the plan. Since then, there has been no progress on preparing a final management plan for submittal to the Land Board. Says DOFAW’s Carl Masaki: “We shelved that project because we wanted to see Waiakea move first. We couldn’t handle two major wars at the same time.”
“If we do go back to Hamakua,” he added, “we will have additional public information meetings.”
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 11, Number 12 June 2001
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