The DLNR: Silent Accomplice in Heinous Crimes
For 15 years, the Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Division of Forestry and Wildlife pleaded with the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands for DHHL to make its tenant at Kahikinui, Stephen Perreira, keep his cattle out of the mauka forest reserve.
It was to no avail. Some people, including Rene Sylva, an expert on native Hawaiian plants, believe that Perreira’s cattle roaming in the forest reserve contributed to the extinction of a lobelioid plant, Cyanea obtusa. Another Kahikinui plant, called nehe in Hawaiian (Lipochaeta kamolensis), was recently placed on the federal endangered species list.
We mention this because, as well publicized as the Perreiras’ brutish treatment of their cattle has been, the effects of their particularly repugnant style of ranching have had lasting environmental consequences that are every bit as devastating, if not as well known.
Stephen Perreira and his daughter, Annette Niles, have been the Bonnie and Clyde of Ma`alaea. Just as the infamous bank-robbers made only withdrawals, so, too, have Perreira and Niles robbed the land of its wealth, giving it nothing but insults in return.
In all this they had an accomplice: the state of Hawai`i. At Kahikinui, it was the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands. At Ma`alaea, since the 1960s, it has been the Department of Land and Natural Resources.
Poor Stewards
In December 1993, Mason Young, administrator of the DLNR’s Division of Land Management, attempted to explain to an outraged Maui resident why it was that the department had awarded a lease to the Perreira ranch. Perreira and Niles were, he said, the qualified high bidders at the public auction of the lease, held in February 1993. The state had no reason not to go with them, Young said.
(Worth mention at this point is the $56,500-a-year rent that Perreira bid. By every reasonable reckoning, it is far in excess of any revenue a ranching operation at Ma`alaea could hope to generate. Why Perreira bid so high is anyone’s guess. His previous rent, on a month-to-month revocable permit for the same land, was on the order of $10,000 a year. Perhaps the answer lies in the letter of Meyer Ueoka to the DLNR in May of 1994, where it seems the Perreiras were wanting to cash in on the “eco-tourist” fad by setting up a dude ranch of sorts at Ma`alaea.)
But by July 1994, Young was suggesting to the Perreiras that they needed to increase their “level of knowledge and skills” as ranchers, and that the DLNR felt it “advisable” that they attend a pasture and management school on the mainland.
In other words, after nearly 30 years of leasing or renting the Ma`alaea land to a ranch run by the Perreiras, the Division of Land Management found them to be unskilled and in need of formal training. The fact that it took so very long for the DLM and higher-up officials at the DLNR to realize what the public had known for decades says as much about the DLNR as it does about the Perreiras.
Aiding, Abetting
Yet another indictment of the Division of Land Management may be found in the way it has dealt with the matter of the Perreiras’ ill-treatment of the cattle. In all the files made available to Environment Hawai`i, there is not one letter from the Division of Land Management, not one memo, not one phone-call record — in short, not the least shred of evidence to suggest that the DLM ever brought up the matter of the cattle-abuse allegations with the Perreiras.
Of course, the files are replete with information on the abuse. There are reams of letters from angry citizens, dozens of faxes of clippings from The Maui News and other publications reporting the sorrowful events.
But the correspondence that the DLM had with the Perreiras provides a strange counterpoint to the correspondence it had with the irate citizens. To read the former, one gets no clue at all that the DLM was engulfed in a maelstrom of righteous public outrage and repulsion that arose out of the reports of animal cruelty.
Admirable delicacy? No, abominable cowardice.
Only when the political price of clinging to the Perreiras became too clear did the Division of Land Management take the unprecedented step of finding them in default of their lease for failure to live up to the lease’s performance standards. Try as we might, we cannot think of another instance where any state lessee not in arrears on lease rent was given the boot for failure to perform as promised.
In the end, the Perreiras chose to cancel their lease rather than have the DLNR find them in default.
What Next?
The DLM’s Maui district land agent, Phil Ohta, points out that with no cattle on the land, the Ma`alaea area is a fire waiting to happen. Some cattle grazing may be useful to keep down the fuel load, as Ohta suggests. However, before the state puts the land up for lease auction again, it should consider alternative management strategies.
For starters, we would suggest that the Department of Land and Natural Resources approach the state Department of Agriculture, the University of Hawai`i, and the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service (formerly known as the Soil Conservation Service), to explore the possibility of using the land as a showcase for state-of-the-art range management techniques.
Before this idea is shouted down as too costly, consider this: As things stand, without expensive improvements (fencing, water lines, seeding, and the like), the land cannot be used for any profitable or humane ranching operation. For this reason, it will be virtually impossible for the state to lease the land and, at the same time, require the lessee to install the needed improvements.
In the past, the alternative to leasing has been to rent the land on a month-to-month revocable permit. This approach has serious drawbacks. There is little incentive for the tenant to approach the land with an eye to its long-term stewardship, and even less for the tenant to finance the necessary improvements.
If, however, the state simply walks away from the land, it will indeed, as Ohta suggests, become a fire hazard. In that case, the state will inevitably be faced with the high cost of fighting fires in this remote and arid region. And even if this cost is regarded as tolerable, the resulting erosion and despoliation of coastal waters from the runoff surely are not.
By comparison, the alternative of the state bearing the cost of proper land management seems a bargain indeed.
Somebody Sleeping, Eh?
It’s hard to beat Bernie Lam Ho’s eloquent comment on the state’s failure to defend its land along Kane`ohe Bay. The fact that a court sided with the state against the claim of the Zeller family to land that it had illegally induced to accrete does not mean that the state’s job is over. Far from it.
For starters, the Zellers still have not cleared the land, as the Board of Land and Natural Resources has required them to do. Next, there’s the matter, brought to the board’s attention by Lam Ho, of the dozens of other encroachments on state land in the same area.
When can the public expect to see its agents aggressively boot out the squatters?
Perhaps the new Land Board chairman, Mike Wilson, will give the Division of Land Management some clear guidance on this point. Good luck, Mike.
Mahalo
Thanks are owed to the Punahou School Save the Earth Club, to Mary Cooke, to the Sierra Club Foundation, and to William Merwin for their recent generous contributions to Environment Hawai`i.
Volume 5, Number 7 January 1995
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