State sued over threats to rare seabirds

Three conservation groups filed suit against the state Wednesday, claiming it has failed to address the harm to imperiled seabirds caused by bright lighting at its facilities in violation of the Endangered Species Act.

Earthjustice said the state Department of Transportation has failed to address injuries to and deaths of three species of seabirds — the threatened Newell’s shearwater and the endangered Hawaiian petrel and band-rumped storm petrel — at state-operated airports and harbors on Kauai, Maui and Lanai.

The seabirds are attracted to the bright lights but become disoriented and circle around them, then fall to the ground from exhaustion or crash into nearby buildings.

Earthjustice said that on Kauai, home to most of the remaining Newell’s shearwaters, bright lights at the facilities are among the largest documented sources of injury and death to the birds in the state. Bright lights have contributed to a 94 percent decline in the birds’ population since the 1990s. Over the same time period, Hawaiian petrel numbers on the Garden Isle have plummeted more than 70 percent.

“It’s clear that the Department of Transportation is one of the major causes of injuries and death to seabirds due to lights at their facilities,” Earthjustice attorney David Henkin told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

The Transportation Department issued its own news release saying it was “disappointed” to learn of the suit and that it has “proactively evaluated ways that its facilities can be operated in a manner that is most protective of all of the islands’ sensitive resources, including threatened and endangered seabirds and other species.”

This includes spending hundreds of millions of dollars on energy-efficient lighting as well as the safe translocation of endangered nene away from airport facilities.

“HDOT will vigorously defend the state’s interest in this suit,” the department said, declining to comment on specific allegations.

The suit, filed by Earthjustice on behalf of Hui Ho‘omalu i Ka ‘Aina, Conservation Council for Hawai‘i and the Center for Biological Diversity, was prompted in part by a breakdown in talks between the Transportation Department and federal and state wildlife agencies while ironing out an islandwide habitat conservation plan for the birds on Kauai last October, Henkin said. Since then, the department agreed to resume talks, he said, but finalizing the plan could take some time.

Pursuant to the Endangered Species Act, Earth­justice gave the Trans­­ portation Department 60 days’ advance notice of the suit in mid-June before filing it Wednesday.

Newell’s shearwaters were listed as threatened in 1975, and the Hawaiian petrel listed as endangered in 1967. Both are endemic to Hawaii, meaning they are found nowhere else. The Hawaiian population of the band-rumped storm petrel was added to the endangered species list last year.

Many experts believe the seabirds are attracted to the lights because they use the moon’s reflection on the water to guide them to the ocean.

In October 2010, the same conservation groups, along with the American Bird Conservancy, reached a settlement in a similar suit filed by Earthjustice against the St. Regis Princeville Resort on Kauai due to the resort’s lighting.

The resort agreed to reduce its lights during fledgling season from mid-­September to mid-December, and to make monetary contributions to projects protecting seabirds.

“St. Regis has been taking responsible steps and we feel the state Department of Transportation needs to do the same,” Henkin said.