Question: We need your kokua to reopen La‘au Trail on Diamond Head. Runners and hikers who have used that trail for 20-plus years appreciated the neighborhood’s concern regarding the use by homeless people of this trail. However, we have not seen any homeless there for many, many years. What the neighborhood is probably seeing are kids with spray paint going to the cement pit to create graffiti art. The trail was created for joggers and hikers, and we’ve all taken care of the trail for 20 years.

I’ve seen families put their Thanksgiving dinners out next to the monument and safely enjoy the day. Can it be reopened?

Answer: Although Diamond Head, as other public lands, has its share of transient homeless encampments, that is not the reason Na La‘au Arboretum Trail was closed and remains closed today.

The trail, developed in the 1950s by ornithologist/conservationist George Campbell Munro, was closed in the early 1980s following increased complaints by the neighborhood about loud after-hours gatherings there, especially at the George Munro Memorial site above La Pietra school. There were also complaints about trespassers.

The State Parks Division fenced off the trail and posted “closed” signs at public access points.

The trail is 1.5 miles long, with many ways to access it, but none are authorized for public access, said Yara Lamadrid-Rose, Diamond Head State Monument coordinator.

Visitors would have to trespass on private or public property.

“The problem of people illegally accessing the George Munro Memorial site continues today,” Lamadrid-Rose said, noting it was vandalized and “graffitied” earlier this year.

There also was a large amount of trash and broken bottles in and around the memorial, which State Parks workers and the Diamond Head State Monument Foundation teamed up to clean.

Although you say your group has tended to the trail, it “is not maintained,” according to staff who recently visited the area, and in several locations the path is overgrown with non-native invasive species, including the “pencil cactus” and the night-blooming cereus, both “caustic succulents,” Lamadrid-Rose said.

NA LA‘AU ARBORETUM TRAIL

George Munro was a New Zealander who came to Hawaii in 1890 as an assistant to a bird collector. He became manager of Lanai Ranch in 1911 and, after retiring in 1934, moved to Oahu. He died in 1963 at age 97.

Munro established the trail on the slopes of Diamond Head, from Makalei Place to around Kepa Street, with dry-land native and non-native species.

The Diamond Head Master Plan Update of 2003 calls for a “new” Na La‘au Arboretum to be established on the other side of the Diamond Head State Monument, between the monument entrance and 22nd Avenue, said Lamadrid-Rose.

The new arboretum would duplicate a dry-land habitat with native plants but no non-native invasive species, such as those found abundantly along the La‘au trail, she said.

It would be adjacent to the “Linear Park” that the State Parks Division will begin building later this year on the exterior of Diamond Head crater.

Asked whether the new arboretum is anywhere close to fruition, she said it “could actually be established in the near future, if funding becomes available.”

MAHALO

To the helpful, friendly and honest personnel at Hardware Hawaii in Mapunapuna. I went there to get some DIY project items and inadvertently left my wallet there. The manager had it locked in the safe, after discovering I was from the mainland with no number or address to locate me. As relieved as I was about getting my wallet, the whole staff was just as elated.

— Selma Kelly