Mauna Kea report calls for more Native Hawaiian involvement

A working group tasked by the state Legislature to come up with recommendations for a new management plan for Hawaii’s tallest peak and its affiliated telescopes released the first draft of its proposal Friday.

Mauna Kea is the proposed site for what would be the world’s largest optical telescope, the Thirty Meter Telescope. The giant telescope project has sparked a cultural movement among Native Hawaiians who believe the mountain is sacred. Construction of the massive instrument has been blocked by opponents.

The working group, which was asked in a House resolution earlier this year to develop the report, suggested a new governing entity for the mountain, which now hosts 13 of the world’s most advanced observatories. The university’s lease expires in 2033.

The group recommended that the university not have a seat on the board of the proposed new governing body.

“The University of Hawaii was represented at the table during the working group discussions,” said the group’s chairman, Rep. Mark Naka­shima, a Democrat whose Hilo district includes Mauna Kea. “One of the premises of the resolution was that the university failed in some of its duties and responsibilities to the Native Hawaiian population, and so it was not included in the final management structure.”

The group could not come to a consensus on whether someone from the astronomy field should participate, as some members shared concerns about potential conflicts of interest. It recommended any such involvement be in an advisory capacity.

Greg Chun, executive director of the UH-Hilo Center for Maunakea Stewardship, told the Honolulu Star- Advertiser on Friday that if a conflict of interest is a concern, “I think there are other ways to address that. Every board of directors has to address conflicts of interest all the time. But to just say that that group shouldn’t have representation, I think it is troublesome.”

The report does not discuss or make any recommendations about the $2.65 billion TMT project.

“The working group early on discussed the fact that … some of those decisions were not in our control,” Nakashima said. “Other entities have come down and decided that, not the least of which is the Hawaii Supreme Court. And so we did not touch upon that discussion.”

The management structure should include many Native Hawaiians, especially those from Hawaii island where Mauna Kea stands, the report said.

Pualani Kanahele, one of the group’s cultural advisers, said she is relieved to have Indigenous voices at the table.

“I’m just happy at the fact that at this time we are allowed to have input into what goes on on the mountain,” she said. “We included a lot of cultural aspects in the report.”

Emphasizing the cultural and environmental restoration of Mauna Kea, the group recommended the eventual decommissioning of the telescopes that sit atop the mountain and the return of those sites to their natural state. The report also said the new management team should develop a framework that limits the development of new observatories on the summit.

Opponents of astronomy activities at the summit say Mauna Kea’s observatories desecrate the peak and harm the environment.

Scientists and other supporters of the telescopes say the summit offers some of the world’s best conditions for astronomical observations. Some of the research done at Mauna Kea has contributed to science’s understanding of black holes and gravity, among other major breakthroughs.

The draft report referred to a December 2020 independent evaluation prepared for the state Department of Land and Natural Resources that concluded that while UH’s Office of Maunakea Management made progress in implementing most of the management actions in its comprehensive management plan, three areas of the plan were not being effectively implemented: the timely adoption of administrative rules to ensure protection of the mauna and its resources; lack of consultation of key stakeholders on matters relating to cultural resource issues; and inadequate engagement with the community, particularly Native Hawaiians, on education and outreach.

Chun said that “there’s always more that can be done to improve engagement with the Native Hawaiian community as well as the broader community, and we have been actively working on that quite frankly for the last couple of years.”

“A lot of these criticisms we have taken to heart, and we have been addressing them through the work that we’ve been doing with our advisory boards,” he said.

Chun added that the DLNR evaluation also noted that much of the criticism is not necessarily tied to UH’s management of Mauna Kea, but to the larger issue of whether people want to see a future for astronomy on the mountain.

“That is a not a management question. That is a policy question that the state of Hawaii has to decide on,” he said.

The legislative Mauna Kea working group’s report is open to public comment until early January. The group will conduct a final review and submit its recommendations to state lawmakers for consideration.

The report is available at 808ne.ws/maunakea draftreport.

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Star-Advertiser staff writer Rosemarie Bernardo and The Associated Press contributed to this report.