At the time of Western contact, more than 40 species of tree snails (genus Achatinella) populated O’ahu, although the range of any one species extended usually no more than a few miles. The variety of members in the Achatinella family provides a spectacular example of evolutionary radiation, equal to that of the better known Hawaiian honey creeper and the picture-wing drosophilid fruit flies.1
Most of the 40-plus Achatinella species survived into the 20th century; but their survival into the 21st is far from a sure thing. Already all but about 16 species are thought to have become extinct. Destruction of habitat, shell collecting, and introduction of predatory species – especially rats and another, more rapacious species of snail, Euglandina rosea have made sightings of the once-common tiny tree snails now rare. In 1981, the Fish and Wildlife Service placed the entire genus of Achatinella on the federal endangered species list – an unusual action that underscores the snails’ dramatic decline.
Achatinella mustelina whose range once spanned the Wai’anae mountains, is one of the survivors. Today, the greatest concentration of A. mustelina is found in and around Makua Valley.
For most of the time the Army has occupied the valley, it has not paid special attention to the need to protect the stands of native forest that once covered the upper valley slopes and which are vital to the snail’s life cycle. For many years, in fact, the Army used the back of the valley as an impact area for everything from sea-launched rockets to aerial bombs.
Apart from direct hits, other Army activities elsewhere in Makua Valley threatened the snail’s survival by increasing the risk of fire. Fire not only can kill the snails directly, but it can destroy their habitat. In addition, fires are thought to drive rats to higher elevations in the valley, where they feast on the snails.
Concerns over the destruction wrought by Army-set fires go back more than two decades. A fire in August of 1970 led to a decade of efforts by the state Department of Land and Natural Resources to get the Army to improve its fire-fighting ability. According to a fire report prepared by the DLNR’s Division of Forestry staff, the Army allowed the fire to burn unchecked and did not notify the state of the fire until the next day, when the area of the burn was nearly two miles long and more than 1,000 acres had already been charred.
Stalling Tactics
For four years, the Army put off the state. In 1974, in fact, it expanded the scope of its activities there with an operation called “Platoon Live Fire.” If anything, the operation, described by the Army later as a “revitalization” of the area as a training range, increased the risk of fire: at an October 1974 demonstration of “Platoon Live Fire” exercises to which Herbert Kikukawa, DLNR’s district forester for O’ahu was invited to attend, Kikukawa observed “few small fires caused either by explosive projectiles or tracer ammunition.” Because of the moisture in the grass, the fires did not spread, Kikukawa wrote – although a month later, a large fire did sweep across Kahanahaiki Valley.
Following that fire, Kikukawa wrote the Army that it must devise a method to keep fires under control. With the fires unchecked, Kikukawa noted, “the entire valley floor has been convened from a dryland forest to a dense stand of highly flammable grass. The upper valley forested slopes, which contain many native plants, some of which are said to be rare or endangered, are now in the grass conversion process. Repeated fires, if allowed to spread unchecked, will certainly convert the once forested Makua Valley into a grassland.”
A team of foresters and botanists, including John Obata with the University of Hawai’i, surveyed the area a few weeks after another major fire had occurred in March 1975. “The valley floor seems to be burned over several times a year,” Obata wrote. “One can see the meager forest tree cover receding with each large fire in Makua Valley.”
Obata concluded: “It is imperative that every measure be taken into account to protect the out-of-the-way areas which harbor some of our most unique and endangered flora. It is also imperative that the military be made aware of the serious consequences derived through negligence by some of their activities. The military command should be made accountable to take some preventative and corrective measures under their jurisdiction.”
In April 1975, the Army finally sat down with state personnel to discuss the problem. The Army stated it could not use helicopters with buckets to douse flames over the impact area “because of the hazard of exploding ordnance” while Army pilots said “they would not fly at the foothills because of hazardous wind currents, etc.” Given that, “all present agreed that some sort of firebreak around the impact area was needed,” Kikukawa reported.
All the Army would commit to, however, was a firebreak around the grassed-over area in Kahanahaiki. That was accomplished by the next year, although as Marion Kelly reports, it was a mixed blessing. “Some unfortunate results occurred in the process of building this firebreak road. Primarily among these are the destruction of full-grown trees in a forested area, destruction of natural stream beds, and damage to Hawaiian and historic structures within the lower valley. Such negative results could probably have been avoided, and assessments of impact made ahead of time, if others knowledgeable regarding the valley’s resources had been consulted.”2
Feds to the Rescue?
In 1981, after the snails were placed on the federal endangered species list, the Army conducted what it called an “informal” consultation with the Fish and Wildlife Service to determine whether its activities at Makua Valley could have an impact on A. mustelina. The federal Endangered Species Act requires all federal agencies, military included, to conduct such consultation if its activities may jeopardize one or more endangered species. The Fish and Wildlife Service at the time issued an opinion of “no jeopardy;”
In 1982, the Army commissioned Bishop Museum to undertake a field survey of Achatinella mustelina. The survey was performed and reported by Michael G. Hadfield and Carl C. Christensen.3 On October 29, 1983, the survey party reached an area in the southernmost portion of Makua Valley; known at one time to have been populated by A. mustelina. This time, it was found to be devoid of any Achatinella snails, living or dead. Christensen and Hadfield noted evidence of recent burns in the forest at the rear of the valley. “These burns had destroyed several acres each at elevations at least as high as 1,200 feet,” they wrote.
Burns at even higher elevations were observed on January 29, 1983. On this occasion, live A. mustelina were seen between 1,600 and 1,800 feet along the major target ridge of Makua Valley. “Rocket fragments were found embedded in trees harboring living Achatinella and a recent fire had burned into the lower reaches of the forest in this survey area; evidence of fire was observed at elevations to 1,350 feet.”
Despite the fires and the spread of introduced plant species, the survey team determined that the snail was “Generally and in places abundantly distributed along the ridges forming the eastern rim of Kahanahaiki Valley and the northeastern rim of Makua Valley; a particularly rich population exists in the region at the head of the Makua-Kahanahaiki division ridge and in the ‘flat’ at the head of Kahanahaiki Valley.”
“Explosions from impact of ordnance and fires generated by these explosions pose major threats to the continued existence” of the snail in the Makua Military Reservation, the authors wrote. “Fires in locations inhabited by Achatinella will result in death of individual snails and in the probable permanent extirpation of impacted populations. Burned-over forest lands are likely to be invaded by exotic plants, and even after regrowth of their vegetation such regions would be unlikely to support living Achatinella. These circumstances, plus the sedentary habits of these snails, indicate that affected regions are unlikely ever to be successfully recolonized by native tree snails.”
Hadfield and Christensen gave the Army five recommendations for protecting Achatinella mustelina. Surely the most important were (as a decade before) that the Army develop a comprehensive fire protection plan and that the limits of the high explosive impact area “be modified to exclude areas known or believed to be inhabited” by the snail.
No Relief
For the next four years, the fires showed no letup in either frequency or size. In the spring of 1988, however, Michael Hadfield asked the Fish and Wildlife Service to revisit the matter of fire protection efforts. The broken shells of A. mustelina that Hadfield was finding in the field caused him to suspect that the fires were prompting greater numbers of rats to enter snail habitat.
Prompted by Hadfield’s letter, Ernest Kosaka, field supervisor for environmental services of the FWS’ Pacific Island Office, wrote the Army in June of 1988. The Army’s fires at Makua Valley, he wrote, “threaten not only the endangered O’ahu tree snails, but also up to eleven species of plants currently under consideration for listing as endangered.” As others had before him, Kosaka pointed out the Army’s difficulty in responding to fires promptly; on occasion, he noted, it had taken up to four hours to get approvals needed to send out helicopter support.
Kosaka reminded the Army of the recommendations made by Hadfield and Christensen – especially the relocation of target areas away from snail habitat. While he determined that there was no proven link between the fires and the increased predation of snails by rats, he did ask the Army’s assistance in rat control efforts.
“We look forward to reviewing your analysis of the implementation of the recommendations of the 1984 report,” Kosaka concluded. In July 1988, the Army, through Col. Harold V. Floody, Jr., commanding officer of the U.S. Army Support Command Hawai’i, responded. The Army was undertaking the improvements in the firebreak road, was using “controlled burns” and herbicides to control the grass that fueled the fires, restricted training activities on days of high fire risk, and had one helicopter and water bucket on site, with more available from Barber’s Point. The recommendations of Hadfield and Christensen that the impact areas be modified to exclude snail habitat remained unaddressed, however.
Out of Control
On June 23, 1988, military and civilian firefighters battled flames started by tracer ammunition. Newspaper reports stated about 300 acres were burned. The ammunition had been fired during exercises involving Indian soldiers, under U.S. Army supervision. Stephen E. Miller, a graduate student at the University of Hawai’i studying with Hadfield, wrote the Fish and Wildlife Service on July 14, 1988, stating that the Army had difficulty controlling the brush fire. “Eventually, the Army had to call on the Wai’anae Fire Station, Navy firefighters from Lualualei, additional soldiers, and three helicopters in order to get the fire under control.”
On August 9, another blaze was set by Army activities at Makua Valley. This one was described in a letter from Bill Hambaro to the editor of the Star-Bulletin of August 15: “On August 9, the quiet solitude and beauty of O’ahu’s remote Makua Valley was rudely shattered by the roar of military helicopters. They began to launch air to surface rockets that thundered into the lush valley. In minutes, the floor of the valley was awash in flames. I watched in horror over the next couple of hours as a huge fire ensued. Fanned by onshore breezes, the flames raced up the valley; leaving a blackened wasteland in its wake. No attempt was made to extinguish the inferno….
“No valley in the Western Sierra is more beautiful. No sane American would stand this happening in the Blue Ridge Mountains or Yosemite National Park. Yet the abuse of this once-pristine valley goes unnoticed. What has military defense got to do with wantonly destroying a unique ecosystem on the most crowded island in the mid-Pacific? Damn!”
August 27, 1988: another fire at Makua Valley consumed 40 to 50 acres of brush. Cause: gunfire during military exercises.
Still No Consultation
The Army continued to resist the admittedly weak efforts of the Fish and Wildlife Service to undertake the formal consultation process required by the Endangered Species Act whenever a federal agency’s actions may affect a listed plant or animal. In a rather arch letter to Kosaka, dated September 19, 1988, Floody, USACH commander, wrote: “There does not appear to be a need for formal consultation at this time…. However, I consider the assistance your office can provide an asset to be called upon should the need arise. You can be confident that we intend to ensure that our activities will not jeopardize the continued existence of the O’ahu tree snail.”
Floody’s assurances may have swayed the Fish and Wildlife Service. They did not carry much weight with the Conservation Council for Hawai’i, several of whose members were frustrated with both the Army and the FWS. On October 6, 1988, Michael Sherwood, an attorney with the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, wrote the Army on behalf of CCH. If the Army did not “immediately cease and desist from all firing of live missiles or other ordnance from helicopters anywhere in Makua Valley, and from any other military training activities that involve the use of live ordnance and which have the potential to start fires,” the matter would be taken to federal court, he said.
An ‘Abundance of Caution’
Sherwood’s letter seemed to do the trick. Toward the end of November, the Army’s Floody, commanding officer of USACH, was writing the Fish and Wildlife Service. The letter was said to be simply “part of our ongoing informal consultation process,” with specific reference to the Company Combined Arms Assault Course (CCAAC) a training program that had begun nearly a year earlier – and the ordnance treatment area.
Floody acknowledged that CCAAC training did cause fires from time to time, but the fires were well within the firebreak roads and were far from snail habitat. “Fires occurring on the CCAAC have not and do not result in any uncontrolled range fires that threaten the snails.”
However, the letter also served as notice that helicopter gunnery training long thought to be one of the chief culprits in setting fires – had been suspended. “Prior to taking action to reinstate aerial gunnery on MMR in the future, we will undergo formal consultation with you.” The Army had finally “determined that aerial gunnery may affect the listed species,” Floody wrote. “In particular, it is the firing of 2.75 inch rockets, 7.62 [mm] miniguns, and ordnance that may affect the species; however, in an abundance of caution, we have suspended all helicopter gunnery.”
Once again, the Fish and Wildlife Service yielded to the Army’s wishes on the ‘informal consultation’ concerning CCAAC activities and ordnance demolition. On November 30, 1988, Kosaka of the FWS responded to Floody, indicating that the service concurred with the Army’s finding that CCAAC and ordnance demolition posed no threat to snails. But, Kosaka added, “our concurrence is based largely on your determination that ordnance from helicopters is the cause of the fires that have threatened the snails. Should this not be the case, formal consultation will be required.”
Vain Efforts
The ink was hardly dry on Kosaka’s letter when yet another fire broke out at Makua Valley. Stephen Miller was the party bringing it to the attention of the Fish and Wildlife Service. In his letter of December 12, 1988, he wrote:
“On Sunday, December 11, I drove up to Makua Valley and noted that a major fire had burned along the north slope of Kahanahaiki Valley (the north, makai sector of Makua Military Reservation). The fire burned an area at least one Kilometer wide and swept up the slopes to the ridge line. The area burned looked to be about 700 or 800 acres, and is indicative of the Army’s continued inability to control fires in Makua Military Reservation.” He noted that the Army had claimed, in its November 21, 1988 letter to the FWS, that it would confine targets to areas within the firebreak. “Obviously;” Miller wrote, “this was not the case.”
Miller ended with a plea to the Fish and Wildlife Service to get on with the process of formal consultation with the Army on all aspects of Army activities.
Not waiting for the FWS to response, Michael Sherwood, of the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, acted on Miller’s complaint. On December 21, Sherwood strongly urged the Fish and Wildlife Service “to do its legal duty and require formal consultation with the Army now on this continuing problem.”
And, at long last, on January 10, 1989, the Fish and Wildlife Service did just that, notifying the Army that consultation would be required.
Still No Jeopardy
The consultation process was divided into five parts, with each part, or phase, referring to a set of activities whose impact upon the snails would be decided before the Army resumed those activities. Phase I concerned the firing of small arms tracer ammunition. From July of 1987 to November of 1988, the Army said, tracer ammunition had caused seven fires at Makua Military Reservation. One fire, in fact, had been unintentionally set by live-fire demonstrations conducted during opening ceremonies of the CCAAC. But, the Army insisted, although two fires escaped the valley floor, none of these fires threatened the tree snails or their habitat. The Army claimed no jeopardy; the Fish and Wildlife Service agreed; firing of tracer ammunition resumed before the end of April 1989.
Phase II activities involved the firing of munitions having a flat trajectory; demolition training exercises; and the destruction of “unusable ammunition and explosives,” or EOD activities (explosives-ordinance demolition). The munitions were anti-tank missiles and rockets, including TOWs and M47 Dragons. Both of these were described as having “no burning” motors so that there would be “no sparks or burning propellant” escaping from the missiles during flight. “No fires have been caused by any of these weapon systems at MMR,” the Army stated. (On July 12, 1989, less than three months after the FWS gave the Army the go-ahead to resume firing of these weapons, a fire broke out that was attributed to a Dragon missile. A fire a month later was started by a TOW.)
Bringing on the Big Guns
More than a year passed between the conclusion of Phase II consultation and the start of Phase IV consultation, which occurred on July 31, 1990. (The Army has yet to begin consultation on Phase III activities, involving the use of flares and star clusters.)
Phase IV activities involve the use of grenade launchers, mortars, and howitzers. The Army determined no jeopardy to the snail; the FWS agreed.
Phase V consultation concerned the resumption of helicopter gunnery; particularly the launching of TOW missiles and the firing of machine guns and grenade launchers from helicopter mounted systems. On April 25, 1991, the Fish and Wildlife Service noted that this was high-risk activity; but in light of the Army’s improved fire-control efforts, it gave the Army the thumbs-up on aerial gunnery training, including the use of the 7.62mm miniguns, 40 mm machine-gun ordnance, and the inert version of the TOW missile. Helicopter firing, suspended since December 1988, resumed in May 1991.
Despite the strict conditions placed on Army activities (training to be suspended in periods of high fire hazard; helicopters and buckets at the ready at all times; constant monitoring for fires throughout the valley; among other things), fires have continued to climb up the valley walls.
Long, Hot Summer of ’92
July 1992 was an especially notable month. The Army, without consulting in advance with the Fish and Wildlife Service, deliberately set fires in Makua Valley. The intention, it claimed, was to clear vegetation needed to expose unexploded munitions, which in turn would allow construction of what the Army claimed would be new fuel break roads. The expanded roads would themselves allow for an enlargement of the impact area within which the Army would conduct training exercises.
When the Fish and Wildlife Service learned of the fires, in August of 1992, it issued a strong reprimand to the Army. By letter dated August 21, Robert P. Smith, field supervisor for the FWS Pacific Island Office, informed the Army that the intentional burning “did not conform to our previous agreements and understandings regarding prescribed burns.”
Smith concluded with a request that the Army reinitiate consultation on the impact of the so-called “controlled” burns, with the Army preparing a new biological assessment.
More than a month later, Major General Robert L. Ord, III, commanding officer of the U.S. Army, Hawai’i and commander of the 25th Infantry Division (Light), responded to Smith. The Army was suspending all burning, road construction and other activities outside the existing fuel break, Ord wrote, pending completion of consultation. The Army had also begun work on the biological assessment the FWS had requested, Ord said.
The Army has contracted with the Nature Conservancy of Hawai’i to undertake at least a part of the biological survey. To determine the presence of endangered Achatinella in the burned-over areas. Hadfield and Miller were hired in August of 1992. The survey was limited to the burned over areas, with the team allowed to go into forested areas only once, and then only for half an hour. Not surprisingly, no snails were found.
1 See M.G. Hadfield, “Achatinella mustelina: The Significance of its Northern Wai`anae Habitats and Recommendations for its Conservation,” unpublished manuscript, September 1992.
2 Marion Kelly, “Makua Valley, O`ahu, Historical Research,” unpublished manuscript, 1977, pp.53055.
3“Field Survey of Endangered O`ahu Tree Snails (Genus Achatinella) on the Makua Military Reservation,” manuscript, Bernice P. Bishop Museum Division of Malacology (April 1984).
Volume 3, Number 5 November 1992