City parks officials are looking at permanently closing the archery range at Queen Kapiolani Regional Park because of safety reasons after a stray arrow was found earlier last week in the nearby tennis courts.

Officials closed the range Tuesday and plan to keep it closed until a decision is made this week.

The range is "closed because the errant arrow must have come from the archery range," said Gary Cabato, director of the city Department of Parks and Recreation. "It was alarming, of course, to the tennis players, and of course it’s a safety issue for us."

He said he was notified Monday that a tennis player found the arrow on the court and other tennis players told him that it wasn’t the first time.

He ordered the range taped off and signs posted on the bales holding the targets notifying users about the temporary closure. He said he will mail letters to the user groups of his final decision before the end of the week.

If the range is closed, the bales and targets would be removed and the area would be returned to natural park space.

It’s unknown how many people use the Kapiolani Park range, but Cabato said the range has outlived its usefulness and archers now have other places to go. The range was the parks department’s only archery range for decades until the city opened up two more ranges in recent years at Central Oahu Regional Park in Waipio and at Koko Head Shooting Complex.

He said the plan before he became parks director was to close the archery range at Kapiolani Park after the additional ranges were built.

Cabato said the plan makes sense to him because the range has "out-used its life." He said today’s shooting equipment is much more powerful, but the bales at the range are still only about 40 yards from the tennis courts.

The range also can’t be relocated in the park, and it can’t be reoriented because there are roads on the makai and ewa side of the range. Archers currently fire their arrows toward the tennis courts, which are next to the range, and the only other direction they can shoot is toward a roughly 150-foot cliff on the kokohead side. But that would endanger residents at the top of the cliff, Cabato said.

Danelle Pulawa, owner of The Island Archer, said she was disappointed by news that the city was — again — considering the closure of the range, especially since it was there before the tennis courts.

"To me, the tennis courts encroached on the range," she said. "Archery’s always been a quiet kind of sport, so to speak."

The sport is growing in schools and among the young, and the city shouldn’t close the range just because two more ranges are available, she said.

In the wake of the popular movie "The Hunger Games," in which the main character, Katniss, uses a bow and arrow, Pulawa hasn’t been able to keep her store stocked with the traditional archery equipment.

She said anyone, including those as young as 3 and the very elderly, can take part in archery, which has been shown to increase concentration and discipline. She said Kapiolani Park should include archery because it is known for having a variety of activities.

"Anybody can just toss an arrow in the tennis court and claim that someone shot an arrow," she said, adding that the tennis courts wouldn’t be closed if someone stepped on a tennis ball lying outside of the court and twisted his ankle.

She said every once in a while, there is talk of closing the range.

"They’re going to realize there’s a lot of people who use the park (for archery)," she said. "They shouldn’t close it."