The rainforest that spreads across the eastern flank of Mauna Loa is unlike any other. Where the Amazon’s sweep seems uniform, the Big Island’s native rainforest is a mosaic. The pieces are biologically distinct from each other because they were laid down over successive lava flows. It’s a forest only a volcano could make.
The state Natural Area Reserve at Pu’u Maka’ala, on the island of Hawai’i, is a big piece of that mosaic. Fallen tree limbs and mossy plants cover a jumble of lava rock, crevices and lava tubes. While most of the biodiversity in the Amazon is in the tree canopy, the diversity here lies on the forest floor.
“It’s all coated with various sorts of lichens and liverworts and algae and mosses and ferns and flowering plants,” explains Rick Warshauer, a botanist with the U.S Geological Survey’s Biological Resources Division.
Many plants native to Hawai’i are found at Pu’u Maka’ala: the colorful ‘ama’u (Sadleria fern), the unusual ha ha (Cyanea spp.) with their leaves bunching atop bare stalks, `ie`ie vines (Freycinetia arborea), hapu’u tree ferns (Cibotium spp.), the ubiquitous ‘ohi’a (Metrosideros polymorpha),and scores more. In the branches above, the calls of an ‘oma’o compete with a singing ‘elepaio.
Pu’u Maka’ala is one of the crown jewels of Hawai’i’s Natural Area Reserves System, established by law in 1971. So precious and rare were these areas that they were designated to receive the highest level of protection the state could offer.
“The law envisioned protecting these as portions of the ‘aina – the living landscape,” says Warshauer “The geology, the biology, the climate, all are together.”
But the state that offers protection can also take it away. In the mid-1980s, Wao Kele O Puna – the rainforest of Puna – became the first Natural Area Reserve to peel off from the system, when the state swapped it for land owned by Campbell Estate to allow the estate to pursue development of a geothermal field. Yet in that case, it could be argued, the Natural Area Reserves system suffered no net loss, since the land once owned by Campbell Estate became the Kahauale’a Natural Area Reserve.
Now, the state is proposing once more to pry a jewel from the crown. This time, there will be no offsetting gain. The loss of a portion of Pu’u Maka’ala will be final.
To date, the commission overseeing management of the state’s Natural Area Reserves has twice considered the proposal – and twice deferred any action. According to NARS Commission Chair Linda Pratt, the matter will be taken up again at the next commission meeting. No firm date has been set, but it probably will take place in December or January.
For the first 17 years, the Natural Area Re–serves System consisted of “virtual” reserves – little more than lines on a map. An unpaid commission made up of individuals from academic institutions, state government, and private groups weighed nominations for the reserves. The first reserve to be designated was ‘Ahihi-Kina’u on Maui, in 1973. Most of the others were added during the 1980s; the last, Kanalo on Maui, was designated in 1991, making a total of 19 reserves encompassing 109,165 acres.
According to the current commission executive secretary, Betsy Gagne, paying the Nature Conservancy of Hawai’i to recom–mend reserve boundaries consumed most of NARS’ small budget for the first decade and a half. Not until the late 1980s did the Legislature give funds to the Department of Land and Natural Resources to hire staff to manage the natural areas.
And not until 1997 was a formal management policy adopted for the reserves. According to that policy, the system is “intended to preserve and protect, in perpetuity, examples of Hawai’i’s unique terrestrial and aquatic natural resources” so that they remain “unmodified as possible.” In addition, says the policy, within the natural areas, the DLNR’s “highest priority is conservation of natural resources. Only if an activity can be carried out in a way that it does not unduly damage the resource, will it be allowed.”
Erasures
The unprecedented proposal to reduce the size of one of the reserves – Pu’u Maka’ala on the Big Island – was first considered by the commission at its May 7, 1999 meeting in Hilo. The 12,106-acre reserve sits on the eastern slope of Mauna Loa, bounded by Stainback Highway, the Upper Waiakea and Ola’a state forest reserves, and the ‘Ola’a unit of Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park.
At the meeting, Big Island NARS manager William Stormont reported on the staff initiated proposal, which would remove 4,000 acres from the reserve. Much of the makai section of the reserve is “beat up,” Stormont said – or, as he phrased it in his formal report, it has been “degraded to the point where active management for ecosystem integrity is not warranted.”
The area proposed for removal no longer represents a major, natural, relatively un–modified ecosystem,” and thus no longer meets the regulatory criteria for a NAR, Stormont wrote. It has been so trashed by pigs and weeds that it no longer holds significant potential for scientific study, teaching, or preservation of distinctive biota, he said – thus failing to meet another NARS criterion.
Finally, Stormont argued, cutting the reserve by one-third will have “no negative impacts” on the remaining, high-quality areas in the more mauka portion of Pu’u Maka’ala.
In a 1978 report to the Board of Land and Natural Resources, the Pu’u Maka’ala tract, then a candidate Natural Area Reserve, was described as mostly an ‘ohi’a rainforest ecosystem. “There is a rich assortment of native plants (some 48 species including trees, ferns, shrubs and ground species) and associated native insects, from flies and butterflies to crawling forms,” the report stated. The south–western section also contained a koa -‘ohi’a rainforest. At the time, the report said, the ‘ohi’a forest was under going large-scale changes due to die-back, an event in which entire stands of trees enter into simultaneous decline. A montane wet grassland ecosystem was also found in the Pu’u Maka’ala tract, the report said.
Most of the acreage was in its natural state, undisturbed by logging, grazing or other uses. But even then, one biologist noted “there has been some disturbance by feral pigs.”
In 1981, the parcel was approved by the Board of Land and Natural Resources for designation as a Natural Area Reserve. Almost eight years passed before a management plan was completed in 1989 – eight years in which the state undertook no meaningful effort to protect the natural resources at Pu’u Maka’ala.
Despite the neglect, the 1989 plan describes Pu’u Maka’ala as “an important conservation parcel. It provides a link between the lower elevation… Ola’a Tract [a part of Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park] and the higher elevation ‘ohi’a- koa forests of Kilauea, Kulani, and Upper Waiakea, protecting the transition between the ‘ohi’a and koa forests.” It noted that several small areas had been planted with tropical ash in the 1960s, as part of the state’s efforts to establish a timber industry. But most of the reserve -11,200 acres, or 92 percent – consisted of ‘ohi’a hapu’u mon–tane wet forest.
The area contained “some of the Big Island’s best wet native forest and unique geologic features,” the plan noted, and was home to nine endangered plant species and four endan–gered birds. In addition, it boasted “a high diversity of representative native insects, spiders and snails” in three different natural communities.
Growing Dim
The plan then noted with alarm the degradation the ecosystem had suffered over the previous ten years. “Because of its size, intensive management of key areas within the reserve are proposed and prioritized based on the biological resources they contain and the threats to those resources. Pigs constitute the most severe threat as their rooting and wal–lowing destroy native plants and the ground cover on the forest floor. Such damage limits effective regeneration of native plants, and creates conditions favorable for mosquitoes and certain non-native weeds.”
In addition, the plan says, “Weed invasion in the die-back areas is severe, reducing effective native species.”
The “Ihope Road Zone” of the reserve – the portion now proposed for removal – was heavily infested with weeds, especially palm grass and strawberry guava, and showing signs of heavy pig impact, the plan noted. While the unit was deemed a low priority for management, it was nonetheless “important as it provides a buffer zone for the reserve and encompasses older ‘ohi’a stands undergoing regeneration.”
The plan proposed building a 20-mile network of barrier fences to control movement of pigs and weeds, with public hunting to be encouraged as a means of keeping pig numbers low, supplemented by snaring in some areas, if needed. To achieve this, a six-year program with a budget averaging about $200,000 a year was proposed. It never came.
In 1992, the Nature Conservancy of Hawai’i, under contract to the state, prepared an updated management plan for Pu’u Maka’ala. The plan laid out methods for monitoring pig damage and recommended long-term monitoring of native birds. The plan noted some weed infestation and, much like the DLNR’s own 1989 management plan, called for 20 miles of fencing and “aggressive snaring and hunting” of pigs.
This didn’t happen. According to Stormont, who was assigned to manage Big Island Natural Area Reserves in 1990, “opposition to fencing and feral pig control was strong from the local hunting community, and the broader community of those sympathetic to the hunters’ interest, including legislators.”
During the 1990s, fences in several Big Island Natural Area Reserves were vandalized or torn down, including one in Pu’u Maka’ala. Hunters stated that fences limited their access to pigs and that fencing was a step toward eradicating pigs as a game animal.
Perhaps the most publicized anti-fencing incident was the 1993 destruction of one-and-–a-half miles of fencing inside the Pu’u O ‘Umi NAR in the Kohala mountains of Hawai’i Island. The state Division of Forestry and Wildlife, which had put up the fence, took it down in an effort to appease disgruntled hunters. “That empowered the hunters,” says Marjorie Ziegler, resource analyst with Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund in Honolulu.
By 1994, only five-and-a-half miles of fencing had been put up at Pu’u Maka’ala, a far cry from the 20-plus miles that had been recommended in management plans.
Budget constraints have been cited as one of the main impediments to more aggressive management. “Our budget has shrunk every year,” says Randall Kennedy, natural resource program manager at DOFAW, whose responsibilities include managing the Natural Area Reserves System. From a high of just over a million dollars in 1991, the budget for all nine–teen reserves is now $683,000. Kennedy says about ten percent of that will go to helping out other divisions of DOFAW slated for cutbacks.
The latest NARS budget this year for the Big Island, with eight natural area reserves, is $130,000 for operating expenses and $160,000 for salaries, says Stormont. Performing the work on Pu’u Maka’ala laid out in the 1989 management plan would bust his budget for the entire island – and then some, he says.
Budget constraints may have played a role in the state’s approach to Pu’u Maka’ala – but so have political considerations.
According to the staff proposal to reclassify Pu’u Maka’ala, the Upper Puna Volcano Regional Forest Management Advisory Council questioned the value of keeping all 15,106 acres in the reserve. The council was born out of a Natural Areas Working Group (NAWG) that was itself formed after the Pu’u O ‘Umi fence was destroyed.
But the real pressure to whittle down the Natural Area Reserves System appears to have come from the office of Governor Benjamin Cayetano. In a letter dated October 8, 1998 to Michael Wilson, then-chief of the Department of Land and Natural Resources, Cayetano wrote that hunters on the Big Island had complained about NARS land-use decisions. “We discussed with the hunters during our May 1998 field trip on the Big Island,” the governor wrote, “I hereby direct that the following be accomplished immediately. De–classification of areas presently in NARS that are not suitable for NARS classification.” (The letter is reprinted in its entirety in the October 1999 issue of Environment Hawai’i.)
In recent interviews, Stormont acknowledged that the impetus to declassify the 4,000-acre section – almost four percent of the statewide NARS – did not originate with the scientific community, but with hunters and their supporters.
“Yes, it’s political,” Stormont says of the subsequent declassification proposal. “We are trying to show we are responsive to community desire,” which Stormont sees as being largely opposed to fences within or around Natural Area Reserves.
A Dangerous Precedent
At the NARS Commission’s May meeting, members of the public challenged Stormont’s proposal. Warshauer of the U.S. Geological Survey reported that the area in question still supports a diversity of native plants. Its weediness he attributed to a lack of fencing, which allowed pigs to create conditions conducive to weed propagation.
“Whacking off a part of NAR” is not an effective way to send a message that better management is needed, said Warshauer.
Offering a contrary view was Steve Araujo, president of the Hawai’i Hunting Advisory Council. Araujo supported the withdrawal, arguing that native plants can regenerate even with the presence of pigs – indeed, that pigs aid in such regeneration. (Araujo’s view is not supported by field conditions or peer-reviewed scientific articles.)
Other members of the public as well as commission members cautioned that using the incursion of weeds to justify the removal of NAR acreage could set a dangerous precedent, given the extent to which weeds have invaded other NARs.
At the end of the discussion, the commission deferred a decision until more could be learned about the status of weed cover in Pu’u Maka’ala.
Round Two
Deciding whether to pare down a NAR for the first time in the program’s history has proven to be a nettlesome task. The NARS Commis–sion met again on September 21 in Honolulu and spent most of the meeting discussing the fate of Pu’u Maka’ala.
Since its May meeting, commission chair Pratt, a botanist with the U.S. Geological Survey, Warshauer, and NARS staff members walked four transects in the disputed section of Pu’u Maka’ala. Pratt described the analysis as “semi-quantitative” and handicapped some–what by difficulty in getting to some areas. Invasive palm grass was in found in every transect and in almost every subplot within those transects. In some cases, it covered half the subplot.
Strawberry guava was rampant as well, as well as several other invaders. Native plants were in “fairly low numbers,” she said, although the abundance of native ferns was “fairly respectable.” The survey team also found four species of rare native plants.
“There has been an enormous influx of palm grass over the past 25 years,” Pratt concluded. “I can’t explain how it happened so rapidly except that this area went into extreme ‘ohi’a die-back” and lost a lot of canopy. Pigs may have been the chief culprit, Pratt said. Not only do they spread seeds but they also tear up ground cover, making it easier for weeds to take hold. But people also played a part, Pratt noted, as did the wind.
While several endangered species have been reported in the Pu’u Maka’ala area, just one was seen on the walk-through, Pratt told Environment Hawai’i -and that was a “probable” spotting of ‘ohawai, or Cyanea tritomantha. “But just because we didn’t see more doesn’t mean we can say they’re not there,” Pratt said.
Commission member Charles Lamoureux of the Lyon Arboretum on O’ahu argued that even in its degraded state, the area could be kept as a “buffer” between unprotected lowlands and more pristine forest at higher elevations. And if it were cut from the reserve, he continued, he would like to cut some kind of deal before doing this, such as fencing the rest of Pu’u Maka’ala.
Commissioner Donald Reeser, superintendent of Haleakala National Park on Maui, suggested that the area be fenced, purged of pigs and brought back to native health.
Pratt is not optimistic about the chances of restoring the forest anytime soon. “Given existing technologies, it’s not going to be restored to a low-weed cover, high quality native forest – now,” she said in an interview. “But that might change in the future.” Were the 4,000-acre tract to be removed from the NARS jurisdiction, that possibility of future restoration would also be diminished, she noted. “My personal feeling is that people should be looking to the future. If the area were to be cleared, that would be a mistake. We’d have more edge disturbance and would lose control over the buffer.”
Cutting Losses
To Stormont, the effort required to manage the disputed area is not worth the expense. “I have far higher priorities” at other sites, he said, both inside Pu’u Maka’ala and elsewhere. Stormont is putting in a new fence to protect a healthier section of native forest in Pu’u Maka’ala, and another fence is going into a section of the Manuka NAR on the Big Island.
“If we are going to put money into active management of animal and weed control, it’s going to be at the higher elevations.”
The only observer from the public at the September meeting, Marjorie Ziegler of Earthjustice, challenged the removal: “You can’t not fence and not manage and then say when the areas get degraded, ‘Pull them out.’”
Ziegler suggested that the DLNR – and not NARS staff – negotiate with hunters to designate new game management areas on state forest reserves or other state lands, in return for improving or adding new natural area reserves.
Commissioner Mike Kido agreed. “The big picture,” he said, “is how to deal with hunting issues across the state, not just at Pu’u Maka’ala.”
Entomologist Steve Montgomery, another NARS commissioner, asked to defer a vote while the commission investigated the possi–bility that some form of bio-control – a plant pest, for example – could be used to get rid of the palm grass.
Commissioner Reginald David, an ornithological consultant on the Big Island, raised a wild card toward the end of the commission’s deliberations. David noted that studies for a pending environmental impact statement for development of expanded prison facilities at Kulani, near Pu’u Maka’ala, have discovered a high number of insects, with perhaps 75 percent of them classified as native Hawaiian. So far, Pu’u Maka’ala’s invertebrate populations have remained little studied.
Once more, at its September meeting, the commission voted to defer a decision on declassifying the 4,000-acre tract pending further research. The next meeting will take place December or January. Commission chair Pratt wouldn’t predict whether a vote would be taken then, but she did say that the matter would certainly be on the agenda.
— Christopher Joyce
Volume 10, Number 5 November 1999
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