A Decade-long Standoff Over Access to Wild Birds

posted in: April 1991 | 0

McCandless Ranch is vast, extending from the coast land south of Kailua-Kona to well up the slopes of Mauna Loa. Altogether, it covers more than 90,000 acres — nearly 150 square miles – and includes land owned in fee by descendants of the original owner (the McCandless heirs) and land leased from the Bishop Estate and from the state of Hawai`i.

For more than a decade, Cynthia Marks Salley, one of the ranch owners and their spokeswoman on this subject, has refused steadfastly to grant permission for any proper census of `alala on her land. The `alala have chosen to make the ranch their home, she claims, because everywhere else, scientists badgered the birds into oblivion. She won’t let that happen to “my” birds.

`Alala are uncommonly sensitive to disturbance in the breeding season. Early studies of `alala were intrusive and resulted in nest abandonment on several occasions. But, precisely because Salley has not granted scientists access to the ranch in recent years, her claim that `alala on ranch land are thriving cannot be verified.

The land that the ranch leases from the state is a 1,258-acre narrow wedge known as the Waiea Tract. For decades, it has been rented to the ranch on a month-to-month revocable permit. (As of March 1, 1989, monthly rental was $188.)

The state needs no permission from Salley to conduct research on the Waiea Tract. Consequently, the Department of Land and Natural Resources has been pressured by conservation groups to place state biologists on the tract, there to count birds and, if possible, remove one or two `alala to add to the captive flock. Any overland passage to the Waiea Tract, however, entails travel over private ranch land. This, also, Salley refuses to allow.

‘Hoping for Cooperation’

In 1989, the state planned a survey and perhaps a capture of `alala on the Waiea Tract in a way that circumvented Salley. Biologists were to be helicoptered into the area. At the last minute, Land Board Chairman William Paty called the trip off.

An article by Jan TenBruggencate in the Honolulu Advertiser of May 5, 1989, said Paty had done so after speaking with Salley. Paty was quoted as saying: “She points out in effect, ‘you want to raid my flock and you don’t have a successful program of your own.’ Very honestly, it was a judgment call on my part, hoping for cooperation in the future.”

In an article by Peter Wagner in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin of June 22, 1989, Paty was reported to have said that the expedition was canceled so as not to interfere with the wild birds’ breeding season. In fact, however, Paty had been told by Fern Duvall, the aviculturist in charge of the `alala at Olinda, that his own visit to the Waiea Tract earlier had indicated the wild `alala were not breeding at the time.

Sheila Conant, an ornithologist at the University of Hawai`i, provided yet another account in a letter to the editor of the Star-Bulletin, responding to Wagner’s article. She sent a copy of the full letter to Paty, which is quoted here. According to Conant, “On 27 April Paty told Audubon Director Dana Kokubun that the capture plans were canceled because of objections from a ranch owner. The cancellation took place on 25 April, within hours of the conversation between Paty and one of the ranch owners, during which that person was reported to have threatened to frighten crows away using firearms if biologists entered the public lands leased by the ranch. Harassing `alala by firing guns would have been a felony under current law.”

Conant continued: “In a conversation with Audubon Director Dana Kokubun, Simmons [Peter Simmons, manager of the McCandless Ranch] mentioned that he and the ranch owners didn’t want scientists on the ranch because they might find other endangered species…” (In Wagner’s article, Simmons had been quoted as saying: “We really have a lot of aloha for the birds, but we don’t give a hang for scientific research.”)

‘Plenty of Crows’

On November 20 and 21, 1989, Salley and several guests set out to look for `alala on the ranch. Among those making the trip were Allan Marmelstein, then the Pacific Islands Administrator for the Fish and Wildlife Service, and Barbara Lee. Several spottings were made. “There are plenty of crows on the ranch,” Barbara Lee was quoted as telling a reporter for the Honolulu Advertiser. “We saw someplace between 9 and 25.” The sightings, Lee said, vindicated the ranch owners’ stance against scientific surveys.

In September 1990, Salley issued a press release, announcing at least two additions to the wild flock (and praising the ranch for a “long history of working with government agencies”). One chick had been heard and another one seen when she and a Fish and Wildlife Service biologist accompanied a laborer checking mongoose traps in a remote area of the ranch. (Under a predator eradication program, the state provides the ranch with mongoose traps and pays the cost of checking them regularly.)

This year, the Department of Land and Natural Resources is again trying to work out with Salley terms for some kind of study. As Environment Hawai`i went to press, no firm agreement had been reached, but officials were thinking they might be allowed to do a proper scientific census of the bird, with transects, qualified observers and the like. The very idea, however, of capturing `alala to add to the genetic stock at Olinda seems not to have made it to the bargaining table.

Volume 1, Number 10 April 1991

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *