State money still needed for Kahoolawe restoration

The Kahoolawe Island Reserve Commission is asking the state Legislature for financial support in its ongoing mission to restore an island that remains wounded from decades of abuse in the form of military bombing practice.

This year’s request of $500,000, plus money for two additional staff positions, has cleared the first hurdle in the legislative process, surviving hearings in both chambers. House Bill 1880 is moving on to the House Finance Committee while Senate Bill 3094 goes to the Senate Committee on Ways and Means.

The additional funds, according to the commission, will help with operating the Honokanaia base camp, generating power and water and maintaining infrastructure, equipment and vehicles on the island. The money also would pay for medical supplies, safety equipment and emergency transportation.

It’s all in support of the ongoing restoration effort and the volunteers who provide the manpower used to help with native plantings, erosion control and eradication of invasive weeds.

Volunteers are the key, says Michael Nahoopii, KIRC executive director, but there are only so many who can safely visit the island. The funding, he said, would help the agency free up the logjam of a two-year waiting list of volunteers who want to contribute to the island’s restoration.

“The more people we can bring and support out there, the more work we can get done,” Nahoopii said. “Right now it’s a balance of how many people want to come and being able to support them. We want to accommodate as many people as possible, but we can only support so many because of the funding.”

Nahoopii said he’s hoping the allocation will become an annual one so there won’t be a continuing threat of cutbacks to the effort.

Dwindling funds

Eleven miles long and 7 miles wide, and about 6 miles from the Kihei shoreline, Kahoolawe is the smallest of the eight main islands in the Hawaiian archipelago.

About 30% of the island is barren due to severe erosion, the result of 200 years of uncontrolled grazing by ranching operations. With the outset of World War II, Kahoolawe came under the control of the Navy as a live-fire training area that lasted for decades.

A long struggle, led by the Protect Kaho‘olawe ‘Ohana, succeeded in stopping the bombing in 1990 and set the tone for a Native Hawaiian cultural resurgence throughout the islands.

An act of Congress in 1993 conveyed the island back to the state of Hawaii, but the Navy was held responsible for a 10-year, $400 million cleanup of unexploded ordnance and retained control over the island until it left in 2004. At completion, approximately 75% of the island’s surface had been cleared of unexploded ordnance, but only 10%, or 2,647 acres, had been cleared to a depth of 4 feet. The remaining 25% of Kahoolawe was not cleared, and unescorted access to these areas remains unsafe.

The KIRC was left with about $30 million from the cleanup funding, but the trust fund wasn’t enough to serve as a true endowment. “We’ve had to live off of that for about 20 years. By 2016 it was all gone,” Nahoopii said.

In 2005 the annual budget for Kahoolawe restoration was $7 million. By fiscal year 2019 the budget was down to $1.1 million. The dwindling funds forced KIRC to downsize and become more thrifty.

“We spent so many years trying to scrape two pennies together,” Nahoopii said. “You learn after a while how to make everything stretch.”

Helicopter transport was eliminated in favor of boat travel only, cutting transportation costs by roughly 90%. The entire camp was converted from generator power to photovoltaic. The air conditioning was removed when the ventilation was improved in the camp buildings.

“We used to bring $80,000 worth of fuel out to the island. Now we’re down to $25,000, mostly for vehicles and the boat,” Nahoopii said. “The vehicles were left over from military. We’re the kings of government surplus.”

Meanwhile, the work of restoration continues with successful reforestation and revegetation projects across the island. Crews have also implemented erosion controls and replaced countless invasive plant species with native species.

To support these efforts, a 500,000-gallon rainwater catchment and storage facility was recently installed to accelerate the pace of restoration.

“The first 10 years we had to figure out what works. Was it irrigation? Was it seeds? Was it seedlings? We found out seedlings work best. You irrigate for a few months, and after that we’re good to go,” he said.

The next battle

Nahoopii, an Oahu native and Kamehameha Schools graduate, volunteered on Kahoolawe when he was a teenager and then went on to command the cleanup for the Navy. He joined KIRC as the top staffer in 2008.

He said he’s proud of the restoration progress made over the years.

“I’ve seen the change,” he said. “I remember as a kid in the ’80s hiking up this hillside, and there were no plants on this entire mountainside except for this one dune that had grass atop because it was too tall for the goats to get up there. I remember two or three months ago stopping there because I saw a 6-foot tree which had grown from a little seedling, and I was stunned because for years and years I hiked up that hillside and there was nothing.”

When the Hokule‘a returned to Hawaii at the end of its worldwide “Malama Honua” voyage in 2018, the canoe called at Kahoolawe first, and there was a group there to greet the crew members. The aalii shrub hadn’t grown on the island for decades, but enough were there at that time to pick fresh materials to create lei for the crews that arrived on the island.

“Big huge leis, with flowers all from the island,” Nahoopii said.

But native plants aren’t the only thing growing on Kahoolawe.

“A lot of our island is getting covered,” he said, “but a lot of the plants are weeds. That’s our next battle. They’re blowing over from Maui.”