Since human settlement began on Lana’i centuries ago, water has been in short supply. According to Kenneth Emory’s authoritative account, The Island of Lana’i – A Survey of Native Culture,1 “in the days before sheep, goats, cattle and horses were grazing on the plateau lands, dew could be collected from the thick shrubbery by whipping the moisture into large bowls or squeezing the dripping bush-tops into the vessels. Oiled tapa was also spread on the ground to collect the dew. Water accumulating in natural depressions in rock or in cup marks was husbanded carefully.”
“On the southeast, east, and north coast,” Emory continues, “brackish wells supplied enough water” for small settlements.
In 1922, when Emory was writing, “the most permanent water is to be had in the great gulch of Maunalei, where there is a perennial stream.” A year later, the stream water was diverted to provide water to Lana’i Ranch operations “and, eventually, Lana’i City and the pineapple plantation.”
As Emory suggests, the introduction of livestock to Lana’i had a dramatic impact on the island’s water resources. Goats and sheep were introduced to the island in large numbers in the 1860s by Walter Murray Gibson, whose Lana’i Ranch ultimately failed. Cattle were introduced in 1911. Pigs were brought to the island in the 1880s and, after initial stocks died out, were reintroduced in 1911. Axis deer were released in 1920; mouflon in the 1930s; and pronghorn antelope in 1959.
A Vanishing Watershed
Tucked in the rain shadow of Maui and Moloka’i, Lana’i has never had abundant rainfall. When its native dryland forests were devastated by the livestock, the island was subjected to unprecedented erosion. According to Lawrence Gay, whose family once owned most of the island, overgrazing by livestock “cleaned out the under brushes and grasses to bare soil, and erosion set in. No attempts were made to check the ever-increasing goat population, which wiped out the greatest part of the forest along the windward slopes of the island. It was a common sight to see clouds of red dirt being blown out ten miles to sea from the cliff-bound shores of the ahupua’a of Ka’a.”2
An early manager of the Lana’i Company, which purchased the island from the Gays in 1910, was George C. Munro. Munro completed the fence around the summit area to keep out goats and sheep. He eliminated feral pigs. Finally, he reforested large areas of the island with non-native species, many of which have thrived to the detriment of native plants.3
Munro’s fence rotted away by the 1960s, and goats once again inhabited the summit area. They were eradicated by 1981, but were quickly replaced by axis deer. Today, mouflon sheep and axis deer continue to pose threats to the forested slopes of Lana’i’s shrinking watershed. (The pronghorn antelope failed to thrive. Within a few years of their introduction, none were to be found on the island.)
According to Lana’i-born Robert Hobdy, Maui forest manager for the Department of Land and Natural Resources, over the last 40 years, “The forest line has receded about a mile on the rugged windward slopes of the summit ridge.”4
As the forest recedes, so, too, does the area vital to the recharge of the island’s stores of fresh water.
1 Originally published as Bishop Museum Bulletin No. 12 in 1924; later reprinted in 1969 by Bishop Museum Press, Honolulu. See pages 46-47 in 1969 reprint.
2 Lawrence Kainoahou Gay, True Stories of the Island of Lana`i (Honolulu, 1965).
3 For a fuller discussion of Munro’s efforts, see Rober Hobdy, “Lana`i – A Case Study: The Loss of Biodiversity on a Small Hawaiian Island.” Pacific Science, 47:3 (1993), pp. 206-207.
4 Hobdy made the observation in a letter May 11, 1993, responding to a request for information from Brian Miskae, Maui County planning director.
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 4, Number 8 February 1994