The Hawaii state Senate has approved Suzanne Case as director of the Department of Land and Natural Resources.
The Senate voted Friday to confirm Gov. David Ige’s nominee.
Case is a 28-year veteran of the Nature Conservancy. She has a background in coastal, marine and native forest preservation.
Case was approved to fill the role after Ige failed to convince senators to confirm his previous pick, Castle & Cooke land development lobbyist Carleton Ching. Environmentalists had decried Ige’s selection of Ching to lead the department.
Family donation will preserve taro wetlands
LIHUE » A Hawaii family has donated two perpetual conservation easements to place permanent restrictions on the land use of 40 acres of wetland used for taro production.
The Garden Island Newspaper reported Friday that Gaylord and Carol Wilcox and their daughters Nicole Pedersen, Darcie Gray and Eliza Wilcox made the donation Thursday to the Hawaiian Islands Land Trust. The land is in Waioli Valley. The easements permanently protect the farm from future development and degradation.
A perpetual conservation easement is the Land Trust’s primary conservation tool. It is a voluntary legal agreement between a landowner and a conservation entity. The landowner who donates the conservation easement remains the landowner and the Land Trust must uphold the conservation easement even with future landowners of the property.
Firefighters on Maui put out 5-acre cane fire
Maui firefighters extinguished an unscheduled sugar cane fire that burned five acres in Puunene early Friday.
The blaze was reported shortly before 9:30 p.m. Thursday by Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co. security guards. Firefighters arrived 15 minutes later and found grass and brush on fire off South Firebreak Road next to the Hawaiian Cement plant off Mokulele Highway.
No structures were damaged and no injuries were reported. Firefighters were assisted by HC&S, which sent two water tankers.
The fire was contained by 11:54 p.m. Thursday and extinguished at 2:26 a.m. Friday. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
