Vultures in
THE HAWAII NATURE CONSERVANCY
The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those
who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves,
is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.
- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Sightings from The Catbird Seat
~ o ~
October 17, 2008
Duncan MacNaughton Tapped to Lead Nature Conservancy Board
Conservancy Well-Positioned to "Usher in New Era of Conservation"
HONOLULU, HI — Duncan MacNaughton, founding partner and chairman of The MacNaughton Group, has been elected chair of the Board of Trustees for The Nature Conservancy of Hawai‘i, the organization announced today.
MacNaughton, who has served on the Conservancy’s board since 1994, succeeds David Cole, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Maui Land & Pineapple Co., Inc., who chaired the Hawai‘i Board for the past four years.
“It is with great pleasure that I pass the reins of the Conservancy’s Hawai‘i program to Duncan McNaughton,” Cole said. “I have great respect for Duncan’s commitment to Hawai‘i and the thoughtful, strategic approach he brings to conservation. His knowledge and leadership will ensure the success of the Conservancy’s mission for years to come.”
MacNaughton was raised in the islands and attended Punahou School and Hawai‘i Preparatory Academy. He graduated from Colorado College and began a career in real estate development in 1967 with the Dillingham Corporation.
As chairman of The MacNaughton Group, he has been involved in developing a variety of successful Hawaii-based retail and condominium properties around the State and all Blockbuster, Starbucks, Jamba Juice and P.F. Chang locations in the islands. In addition to The Nature Conservancy, he serves on the boards of Punahou School and Hawaii Preparatory Academy.
“The Conservancy has been fortunate throughout its history to have board chairs who are deeply committed to conservation and to the overall betterment of Hawai‘i,” said Suzanne Case, the Hawai‘i Program's Executive Director. “Duncan MacNaughton continues a tradition started by Sam Cooke and carried forward by Bill Mills, Jeff Watanabe and David Cole. He will be a tremendous asset both for our organization and conservation statewide.”
During Cole’s tenure, the Conservancy partnered with Alexander & Baldwin, Inc. to create the State’s third largest private nature preserve at spectacular Wainiha Valley on Kaua‘i; initiated fellowship programs in both forest and marine conservation to train the next generation of conservation leaders in Hawai‘i; and developed new innovative conservation tools, including remote sensing cameras to map invasive weeds on Kaua‘i, and the “Super Sucker” underwater vacuum cleaner to remove alien algae from coral reefs. In addition, the Conservancy established a research station on Palmyra Atoll where the world’s leading scientists can study climate change, disappearing coral reefs and other global threats.
“The Conservancy is well positioned to continue advancing the cause of conservation, especially during this time of uncertainty and change,” MacNaughton said. “Energy use, sustainability and climate change have become global priorities. Now more than ever, it is critical to have strong environmental leadership. The Conservancy’s proven track record of success puts us in a key position to usher in this new era of conservation.”
The Nature Conservancy is a leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. The Conservancy and its more than 1 million members have protected nearly 120 million acres worldwide.
The Nature Conservancy Press Release
August 2, 2008
Hawaii tourism chief's X-rated
e-mails may cost him his job
Adult-oriented material discovered in
Johnson's agency e-mail account
By DERRICK DePLEDGE & ROBBIE DINGEMAN, Advertiser
Rex Johnson, the president and chief executive officer of the Hawai'i Tourism Authority, is being urged by the authority's board of directors to resign after adult-oriented material was found in his government e-mail account.
The board discussed the matter Tuesday in executive session and two board members later approached Johnson about his possible resignation. The board's administrative standing committee has scheduled an executive session regarding Johnson on Wednesday afternoon.
"It was a huge mistake," Johnson said in an interview yesterday. "I have apologized for my actions to the board."
Johnson acknowledged receiving adult-oriented e-mails on his government account and forwarding the e-mails to friends, whom he described as "fishing and baseball buddies" who often exchange jokes to keep in touch. He said the e-mails were not sent to business contacts.
Johnson said he understands his actions were an unauthorized use of state computers and contrary to state personnel guidelines against accessing or downloading sexually explicit material. But he said he does not believe it should cost him his job.
"I don't believe so," Johnson said. "But others may feel that it should."
Kelvin Bloom the chairman of the authority's board of directors, said he has been instructed by legal counsel not to discuss the matter because it involves personnel.
"The board has the full range of options from dismissal to 'get back to work,' " Johnson said.
Several state lawmakers, including state House Speaker Calvin Say, D-20th (St. Louis Heights, Palolo Valley, Wilhelmina Rise), state Senate President Colleen Hanabusa, D-21st (Nanakuli, Makaha), and state Senate Vice President Donna Mercado Kim, D-14th (Halawa, Moanalua, Kamehameha Heights), have given their support to Johnson even though they disapprove of his actions.
Board meeting urged
Mercado Kim said through a spokesman that she personally contacted five board members, including Bloom, and asked them to hold a meeting of the full board where Johnson could explain himself. At least two other senators either personally or had their staff contact board members on Johnson's behalf.
While embarrassing, lawmakers said, they question whether Johnson's actions warrant his resignation or firing given his experience and the challenges facing the tourism industry during the economic downturn.
"I believe that he is definitely entitled to due process," Hanabusa said. "I believe that he should have this discussion with his full board.
"Yes, it showed bad judgment, but the question becomes whether this is something that whoever it is that's pressuring him to resign — whether it's the whole board or bits of the board or whatever it may come out to be — whether this is something that warrants that decision."
Tourism advocate
Say said Johnson has been an effective advocate for tourism at the Legislature. The speaker said the board should consider allowing Johnson to continue, given the slump in tourism. "At this point, step back, breathe in a little," he said.
State Rep. Ryan Yamane, D-37th (Waipahu, Mililani), the chairman of the House Tourism and Culture Committee, said he questions whether changing leadership now is the right move but, like Say and others, said he is not trying to unduly influence the board.
"As chair, I would like to know how they plan to respond to or deal with the loss of somebody like Mr. Johnson as the head of HTA. You cannot, during this time in our industry, you can't just remove somebody and think that putting somebody else in their place is going to start them off where they left off.
"There's a learning curve."
Ongoing probe
Johnson's e-mails were discovered by the state auditor as part of an ongoing investigation of the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism and an audit of the HTA's major contractors.
The tourism authority is under the DBEDT umbrella, but is governed by an appointed board with 12 voting members and four nonvoting members; Gov. Linda Lingle's tourism liaison and the directors of the state Department of Transportation, the state Department of Land and Natural Resources and the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts.
The e-mails, which contain X-rated movie clips, slideshows and photographs of adult nudity, fall outside the scope of the auditor's investigations but she reported it in late June to the Lingle administration and House and Senate leaders.
Johnson, who earns $240,000 a year, is evaluated annually by the board.
Johnson is known as a risk-taker and for his candor and he has sometimes clashed with those who prefer rosy optimism about the state's dominant private industry.
Lingle's appointment of Marsha Wienert as tourism liaison was widely seen in political and tourism circles as a way for the governor to have a larger voice on tourism, since Johnson reports to the board, not the governor.
Waihee cabinet member
Johnson previously served as the director of the state Department of Transportation under then-Gov. John Waihee and also as a leader with the Hawai'i Community Development Authority.
Just before he took over at the tourism authority in 2002, he was director of facilities at the Research Corporation of the University of Hawai'i, which was responsible for the planning and building of the university's new medical school. Previously, he had been executive director for the Nature Conservancy of Hawai'i.
In 2003, another tourism leader was criticized for personal conduct. Tony Vericella, then-president of the Hawai'i Visitors and Convention Bureau, apologized after the state auditor found that he had spent $670 in taxpayer money to pay for parking and speeding tickets, in-room hotel movies and other personal expenses.
Vericella acknowledged that the spending was improper and paid the money back. He resigned shortly after the audit.
Hawaii tourism chief's X-rated e-mails may cost him his job ...
* * * UPDATE * * *
November 5, 2008
Johnson to receive $291,000
Settlement follows his forced resignation
as chief of tourism board
By Curtis Lum. Advertiser Staff Writer
Former Hawai'i Tourism Authority chief Rex Johnson will receive more than $291,000 in severance and vacation pay as the result of a negotiated settlement with the HTA board.
The board yesterday released the terms of an amended employment agreement with Johnson, who was forced to resign on Oct. 8 after it was discovered that he had used his state computer to forward pornographic, racist and sexist e-mails.
Johnson had 10 months remaining on his contract and board members had to decide how much severance pay he would receive.
The HTA board said it would honor the terms of the contract and pay Johnson the balance owed to him through Aug. 20, 2009. He will receive nearly $10,000 a week, or $208,181, plus 722 hours of unused vacation, which will be paid at a rate of $115.38 an hour, or $83,304.
Johnson's original contract had called for him not to be paid for unused vacation if he failed to give a 30-day notice. That clause was removed in the amended agreement.
The turmoil surrounding the agency comes as the tourism industry is experiencing double-digit declines in visitor arrivals and spending from a year ago. Last week, the state reported September visitor arrivals plunged 19.5 percent in September from the same month a year earlier. And on Monday an industry consulting group reported hotel occupancy in September was the lowest since the months following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Kelvin Bloom, HTA chairman, said he hopes the agency can now move forward with its mission to promote the state to the world.
"Recognizing the need for HTA to focus on more significant tourism issues without further distraction, the board has concluded this matter as expeditiously as possible," Bloom said in a statement.
In August, Johnson survived an attempt to oust him over the pornographic e-mail, but the HTA board cut his annual pay by $40,000 to $200,000 and shortened his four-year contract to one year.
But when the existence of the racist and sexist jokes was uncovered, Johnson and the HTA board faced harsh criticism from civic groups, community leaders and Gov. Linda Lingle, who demanded that Johnson resign or be fired.
Following hours of closed-door meetings, the board last month accepted Johnson's resignation. The former director of the Department of Transportation in the Waihee administration had headed the HTA since 2002.
A day after his resignation, the HTA named its chief administrative officer, Lloyd Unebasami, as interim president and chief executive officer. The search for a permanent president began immediately and the next step was to determine Johnson's severance pay.
May 30, 2008
Maui offers land tips to Chinese
A delegation uses a tour to learn
how to manage resources
By Gary T. Kubota, Star-Bulletin
HALEAKALA, Maui » A Chinese delegation visited an East Maui watershed and Haleakala National Park on the last part of its month-long tour to learn about conservation efforts in the United States.
Lucy Yu, representing the Beijing office of the Nature Conservancy, said China recognizes the importance of preserving its natural and cultural heritage.
"It's one of the main objectives for the whole nation," she said. "They are totally focused on it."
Yu said the objective of the tour was to learn about conservation practices and to develop a close partnership with various conservation groups in the United States.
Some 30 nature reserve managers from China hiked yesterday morning into the Waikamoi Preserve, a 5,230-acre watershed that is home to an ohia forest and native birds including the amakihi, apapane and iiwi.
The group later visited Haleakala National Park, where they learned about efforts to control alien species and restore native areas.
Earlier this month the group toured a number of parks and reserves on the mainland, including the Adirondacks in northern New York and Yosemite National Park in California.
China forestry official Guo Hongyan, chief of the Chinese delegation, said she was glad to be in the United States and to learn about the country's conservation efforts.
Guo said China has been making strides in protecting nature areas but was aware it needed to learn more to acquire the skills and knowledge to manage its resources.
She said the group was deeply impressed with the U.S. legal framework of environmental laws.
During the tour at Haleakala, park officials emphasized the need to preserve a native ecosystem, including plants.
Ron Nagata, chief of the park's resource management, said part of the strategy included the elimination of alien species plants that would block the growth of native plants.
Nagata said once the alien plants are eliminated, the native plants begin to flower and attract native insects and birds.
The visit is part of the China Protected Areas Leadership Alliance Project, a training partnership involving the China State Forestry Administration, the Nature Conservancy China Program, East-West Center and Tsinghua University's School of Public Policy and Management.
The Chinese government has set aside 15 percent of its land as "protected areas," including nature reserves and national parks. China has some 2,369 nature reserves, Yu said....
http://starbulletin.com/2008/05/30/news/story09.html
COMMENTS:
Richard Swann, Tempe, AZ
Some of the landslides in the recent Chinese earthquake may have been caused by deforestation. A lot of damage is still done in the USA by logging companies clearcutting on steep slopes.
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The Whistler, Winchester, KY
Yep. The Chinese really need our help conserving their "protected areas" -- not to mention supplying them with uranium and building their nuclear plants and supplying them classified information for their rocket programs.
For more of our "helping hands across the seas", book a flight on Northwest Airlines for a look at The Nature Conservancy:
http://www.kycbs.net/Nature-Conservancy-Hawai...
Mahalo!
~ ~ ~
More “protected areas”?...
May 15, 2008
China anger over 'shoddy schools'
BBC News
The shoddy construction of school buildings may be to blame for the high number of child casualties in China's earthquake, according to state media.
Tens of thousands of people have been buried in collapsed buildings following Monday's quake, many of them children.
The China Daily newspaper said questions needed to be raised about the structural quality of school buildings.
There have been frequent allegations of corruption in China's boom-fuelled construction industry.
Regulations
China adopted strict building codes after more than 240,000 people died in an earthquake in Tangshan in the country's north-east in 1976. There few buildings had been built to withstand earthquakes, and thousands were destroyed.
But BBC correspondents in China say there is concern about corners being cut to siphon off money in the construction industry - especially in rural areas.
In Dujiangyun hundreds of students are feared dead in the rubble of the Juyuan Middle School, where more than 50 bodies have been pulled out.
The school collapsed, but other nearby buildings withstood the earthquake.
One man told the AFP news agency: "I'll tell you why the school collapsed. It was shoddily built. Someone wanted to save money".
One mother told reporters there were doubts about the construction of the school.
''It was built in a very short time. They added one floor at a time, and continued building as they had money for it. So the base was not made for several floors. It was too weak."
"The whole building collapsed, straight down, hardly without shaking, even,'' she said....
Parents and grandparents mourn their children
And a newly-built primary school nearby also collapsed, leaving 100 children and teachers dead or missing.
Julian Bommer, Professor of Earthquake Risk Assessment at Imperial College, London told the BBC that the issue was one of enforcement.
"Countries in earthquake zones need rigorous inspection regimes to monitor the building regulations they introduce," he said
The state-run China Daily newspaper told readers in an editorial that if the school collapses were due to shoddy compliance with building codes the authorities should act with "firm resolve".
"We cannot afford not to raise uneasy questions about the structural quality of school buildings," it said.
The BBC's Dan Griffiths, in Sichuan, says that one effect of China's rapid economic growth is that some areas of the country have been thrown up with little regard for normal building codes.
And the grief of parents is all the greater, he says, because of China's one-child policy. "In some town's an entire generation may have been lost", he says.
The state news agency Xinhua reported that at least 1,000 students were dead or missing at the Beichuan Middle School in the city of Mianyang.
And at another school in Sichuan province's Qingchuan county where school children were taking a nap when the earthquake demolished a three-story building, 178 children were confirmed dead in the rubble and another 23 were missing, Xinhua said....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/7400524.stm
From: "Carole Williams"
To: "Bobby Harmon"
Subject: MI Uranium to be used in Chinese nuclear plants? (U.P.)
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:47:06 -0400
FYI... This might help you connect some more dots, particurlary as to why some of the players in the Kamehameha Schools Trust Fund "intrigue" wanted to get their hands on a lot of acreage in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan so it could eventually be flipped to the State and then to the Nature Conservancy.
http://www.michiganmessenger.com/userDiary.do?personId=7
~ ~ ~
April 14, 2008
Michigan uranium to be used
in Chinese nuclear plants?
by: Eartha Jane Melzer
Cameco Corp., the Canadian uranium company that is partnered with Bitterroot Resources Ltd. and Trans Superior Resources Inc. to explore for uranium in Michigan's western Upper Peninsula, is negotiating with China to supply uranium for power plants.
Desperate for energy and struggling with air pollution from coal-fired power plants, China plans to build 14 new nuclear reactors in the next five years, according to Steve Halpern of http://www.thestockadvisors.com .
Nuclear power development is an "unstoppable trend," Halpern wrote, and "more than any other company in the world, Cameco is the most direct beneficiary of the build-out of nuclear plants."
On Wednesday Bloomberg reported that shares of Cameco rose after Chinese officials with China National Nuclear Corp. met with Cameco to discuss Canadian acquisitions and partnerships. Cui Jianchun, general manager of the CNNC Finance Co., reportedly said that China is considering takeovers and uranium supply agreements that range in value from ``several hundred million dollars to more than a billion.''
~ ~ ~
Other links of interest
http://www.kaiserbottomfish.com/s/Trackers.asp?ReportID=89301&_Title=Tracker-2004-06-Bitterroots-Michigan-uranium-play (map included of Bitterroot's Michigan "play")
http://www.savethewildup.org/facts/?id=403 NIMBY report (Not In My Back Yard)
http://www.newswithviews.com/Williams/carole4.htm info about Bitterroot and Cameco's joint venture in the western U.P. Trans Superior Resources is a subsidiary of Bitterroot. I'm sure the Silver River Reserve is part of the "Voyager Lands".
* * * * *
Google for more goodies...
www.google.com/search?en&q=nature+conservancy+hawaii+earmarks
www.google.com/search?en&q=nature+conservancy+catbird+seat
www.google.com/search?en&q=hawaii+nature+conservancy+kurren
www.google.com/search?en&q=hawaii+nature+conservancy+savio
www.google.com/search?en&q=hawaii+nature+conservancy+paulson
www.google.com/search?en&q=hawaii+nature+conservancy+oha
www.google.com/search?en&q=hawaii+nature+conservancy+kamehameha
www.google.com/search?en&q=hawaii+nature+conservancy+lingle
www.google.com/search?en&q=hawaii+nature+conservancy+cayetano
www.google.com/search?en&q=hawaii+nature+conservancy+waihee
* * * * *
January 29, 2008
Bills in Legislature aim
to protect Ka Iwi Coast
By Kim Fassler and Suzanne Roig, Honolulu Advertiser
MAKAPU'U — A controversial proposal to build vacation cabins across from the Ka Iwi Coast is spurring legislative measures designed to preserve the land from development.
The bills target two parcels: a valley behind the Hawai'i Kai Golf Course and the land across from the entrance to the Makapu'u Lighthouse trail. Developer QRM LLC wants to build 180 cabins on the parcels, which are across from the Ka Iwi Scenic Wilderness area.
Measures introduced this session in the state House include a bill that asks the state Land Use Commission to reclassify the area from urban to conservation land. Another measure would set aside money to purchase the remaining undeveloped land in Hawai'i Kai and preserve it as open space.
Hearings have not been set yet on any of the measures before the House and Senate.
The legislation is part of a "multipronged approach" to prevent East O'ahu from becoming "a tourist attraction," said state Rep. Gene Ward, R-17th (Kalama Valley, Queen's Gate, Hawai'i Kai), who introduced several bills to stop the Ka Iwi development.
"Nobody wants this, and there's no reason this should be a reality," said Ward.
State Sen. Clayton Hee, D-23rd (Kane'ohe, Kahuku), chairman of the Senate Water and Land Committee, introduced a measure to extend the park boundaries to include the two pieces of land by using the Legacy Lands fund or public-private partnerships.
"When you look at the exponential development on O'ahu, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that people will cherish open spaces," Hee said. "On an island like O'ahu, open space is becoming so much more of a precious commodity."
OTHER LAND BUYS
Buying land and preserving it as open space is not without precedent along East Honolulu, the only open and accessible coastline except for Ka'ena Point on O'ahu. The city in 2003 paid $5.4 million in cash and a land swap for two parcels, totaling 32 acres, across from Sandy Beach.
And after disputes dating back to the 1970s, the state paid $12.8 million to Kamehameha Schools to purchase 600 acres along the south shore at Queen's Beach.
Dollar figures were not included in the current Ka Iwi bills. But QRM's attorney, Bill McCorriston, said the land is worth about $20 million.
McCorriston, reacting to the legislative proposals, said, "It seems like everyone's against something without any concrete proposal to work something out."
QRM Inc. wants to build 181 800-square-foot vacation cabins with lanai, recreational centers, pools and tennis courts. All would be secondary use to recreation, the primary land use allowed on preservation-zoned land.
FIRST PLAN REJECTED
This is the second time the developer has put forth plans for 181 acres, called Queen's Rise and Manu'uwai.
The first plans were rejected by the city in 2006. The developer plans to reapply with the city after the Hawai'i Kai Neighborhood Board discusses the issue at 7 tonight at the Haha'ione Elementary School cafeteria.
Several residents and visitors said they support preserving the area.
"I've lived here all my life and I've seen so many changes, just in Hawai'i Kai alone," said Rielle Rasmussen, a Hawai'i Kai resident. "It's enough. This is the last bit of open space."
Eve Anderson, a member of the Save Queen's Beach and Save Sandy Beach groups, said: "We have to protect it somehow. We need to preserve natural open space."...
Looking at the view, Liz Watson, who was on vacation from Lake Tahoe, said any development in the area would mar the scenic beauty.
"It would be a shame to have something like vacation cabins on this side of the island," Watson said.
"It's quiet, pristine and beautiful. It's so important to preserve open space for hiking and biking and just for fun."
House Finance Chair Marcus Oshiro said his committee will need to weigh the request against others, including Gov. Linda Lingle's proposed purchase of Turtle Bay on the North Shore, where five hotels are being planned with 3,500 rooms and condominium units and four public parks....
Reach Suzanne Roig at sroig@honoluluadvertiser.com.
www.kycbs.net/Ka-Iwi-Coast.mht
< < < NON-PARTISAN FLASHBACK < < <
WILLIAM J. CLINTON FOUNDATION
Speech: William J. Clinton’s remarks at the Goldman Sachs & Company 2004 Global Conference
December 3, 2004
New York, NY
Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Hank, for that wonderful introduction. I probably should quit while I’m ahead. [LAUGHTER] And thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for the warm welcome.
I admire Hank Paulson very much for many things. His interest in Asia and our long-term relationship with the Asian Pacific community and particularly his leadership of the Nature Conservancy, some of you may not be familiar with it, but it is the principal private organization facilitating the preservation of precious natural land in the United States, and increasingly, in other places on the globe. I don’t think I ever told Hank this. But when I was the Governor of Arkansas, we used the Nature Conservancy more than any other State in the country.
I also want thank the people at Goldman Sachs, many of whom have contributed to the work of my Foundation, and the work we do around the world to try to fight AIDS and extend economic opportunity, to promote education and citizen service and to try to bridge the racial and religious divides that still bedevil the world. And I want thank Goldman Sachs for hiring at least a dozen people, who worked in the White House and other places in the administration. I was worried about what all those young people were going to do when we left office. [LAUGHS] So I am deeply in your debt....
www.kycbs.net/Clinton-Speech-2004-Global-Conference.htm
Kamehameha Schools and Nature Conservancy
Team Up to Protect Lumaha‘i Valley on Kauai
Honolulu -- The Nature Conservancy has signed an agreement with Kamehameha Schools to manage the native forest in the back of Lumaha‘i Valley on the north shore of Kaua‘i. Kamehameha Schools owns the property, which contains some of the best remaining native lowland forest in the state.
“This agreement is our first with Kamehameha Schools, and it’s one that we highly value,” said Suzanne Case, the Conservancy’s Executive Director in Hawaii. “Lumaha‘i Valley is incredibly beautiful and worthy of serious conservation efforts. Our shared goal is to ensure the long-term survival of this natural and cultural treasure.”
“Preservation of Hawaii’s native environment is critical to the understanding and perpetuation of Hawaiian culture,” said Neil Hannahs, Director of the Land Assets Division at Kamehameha Schools. “At Lumaha‘i, we have a chance to demonstrate how conservation and culture overlap.”
Lumaha‘i is one of the large windward valleys on the island of Kaua`i, extending far into the island’s undeveloped central region, the Alaka’i plateau. The valley’s terminus above 1,300 feet elevation represents some of the most well preserved native lowland wet forest in Hawai‘i. ‘Öhi‘a and dozens of other species of native trees cover the valley walls, while mämaki and other native shrubs and ferns clothe the stream banks.
According to Sam Gon III, Director of Science for the Conservancy, Hawai‘i has already lost more than half of its original native lowland forest, defined as forest below 3,000 feet. “The back portion of Lumaha‘i is as close to pristine as any lowland forest and stream system can get in the Hawaiian Islands,” he said. “There are very few places remaining where you can stand at low elevation in a river valley bottom and see native forest running from river edge to ridge top. This is Lumaha‘i. Its conservation value is immense.”
But the need to bring protective management to the site is great. Invasions of aggressive lowland weeds such as Australian tree fern, clidemia and strawberry guava coupled with the upward movement of goats and pigs from the lower valley threaten what is currently a gem of biological diversity.
“The back of the valley is in many places nearly 100% native forest and shrubland,” said Kalani Fronda, Asset Manager for the Land Assets Division at Kamehameha Schools. “Habitat modification is only in its early stages, but the time to stop it is now.”
“The current scope and severity of damage from pigs and goats is fairly limited,” said Trae Menard, the Conservancy’s Natural Resource Manager on Kaua‘i. “However, based on experience in other forests statewide, the number of feral animals will likely increase to damaging levels quickly if we don’t act now.”
Initial management efforts will focus on controlling priority weeds. In the future, management efforts will likely include the use of community volunteer hunters to reduce pig and goat populations, and the placement of a fence to protect the most remote and undisturbed management areas in the upper portion of the valley.
Flashbacks:
Lindsey: "Chun manipulated the budget to award unauthorized financial aid such as $55,000 to the UH Study Abroad Tour in 1993, $47,000 over three years to the Nature Conservancy and overspending by $1.5 million in 1995 and $691,000 in 1996 for aid to Kamehameha and non-Kamehameha students."
Chun: As schools' president, he used "appropriate discretion" to give educational opportunities to Hawaiians and overcommitted needed funds to ensure they were used by as many students as possible.
Funds for the Nature Conservancy in 1995 and 1996 were $26,000, not $47,000, and provided financial aid to four Hawaiian student interns there. Also, $27,000, not $57,000, was spent to support 18 students in the UH Study AbroadTour; all financial aid recipients met requirements of need, Hawaiian ancestry and academic standing.
He did not "manipulate the budget" but did allow the Financial Aid Department to overcommit its budget in 1995 and 1996 based on past underspending of budgeted funds and current industry practices.
"All well-administered post-secondary student financial aid offices award an amount of financial aid in excess of the budgeted amount," Paul Phillips, director of financial aid at California State University, wrote Kamehameha Schools.
Although the financial aid budgets were overspent for 1995 and 1996, the Education Group's budget was not -- and in fact was under budget by $2.3 million and $6.7 million, respectively.
http://starbulletin.com/98/03/03/news/story1.html
August 3, 2007
Timothy E. Johns Named
Bishop Museum President:
International Search Lands Damon Estate Exec
Honolulu, HI - Bishop Museum has named Timothy E. Johns as President, Director and Chief Executive Officer, effective October 1, 2007 . The announcement was made today by the Chairman of the Board of Directors, David Hulihe‘e....
“I am delighted to announce the appointment of Tim Johns as Bishop Museum ’s new President, Director and CEO,” said David Hulihe‘e, Chairman of Bishop Museum’s Board of Directors. “Tim has over two decades of leadership experience with environmental and cultural issues in Hawai‘i , which will serve well him as the leader of Hawai‘i ’s State museum of natural and cultural history. I couldn’t be more pleased.”
Bishop Museum was founded in 1889. It maintains the world’s largest collection of Hawaiian and Pacific cultural and natural history objects and since its founding has as been a premier institution for research and public education. It is designated as Hawai‘i ’s State Museum of Natural and Cultural History.
Johns most recently served as Chief Operating Officer for the Estate of Samuel Mills Damon, a position he has held since 2000. Prior to that, he was the Chairperson of the State Department of Land and Natural Resources. He has also served as Vice-President and General Counsel for AMFAC Property Development Corporation. He has been a Lecturer in Business Law at the University of Hawai‘i and Windward Community College and has held the position of Director of Land Protection with the Nature Conservancy of Hawai‘i....
Johns is very active in environmental issues. His memberships include the State of Hawai‘i Board of Land and Natural Resources and the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve Advisory Council. A Rotarian, Johns is a member of the Rotary Club of Honolulu....
Johns serves on the Board of Directors for Grove Farm Company, Inc., Hawaiian Electric Company, Inc., YMCA Honolulu, Hawai‘i Nature Center, St. Andrew’s Priory School , Child and Family Services, Helping Hands Hawai‘i, Diamond Head Theatre, and Hawai‘i Public Television Foundation. In June 2005, he was named a Trustee of Parker Ranch Foundation Trust.
“We are delighted the Board of Directors has chosen a candidate with a deep commitment to the preservation and perpetuation of Hawaiian culture and respectful sensitivity to cultural issues. He is well known in the community and is held in high regard, and this will surely be beneficial in many ways,” said Betty Lou Kam, Vice President of Cultural Resources for Bishop Museum .
Johns was selected after a seven-month executive search by the international search organization Morris & Berger from Glendale , California. Founded in 1984, Morris and Berger is a generalist executive search firm that has developed a specialty practice serving the nonprofit sector, including performing and visual arts and institutions of higher learning....
Members of the Executive Search Committee included Bishop Museum Trustee Dr. Charman J. Akina (Chairman), David C. Hulihe‘e, Isabella A. Abbott, Ph.D., Haunani Apoliona, H. Mitchell D’Olier, Russell K. Okata, Gulab Watumull, Walter A. Dods, Jr., Allen Allison, Ph.D., and Amy Miller Marvin....
Johns will assume the top leadership position for the largest museum in the State of Hawai‘i in the midst of an unprecedented era of renovation and revitalization. Bishop Museum is presently undertaking a $21 million renovation of its iconic Hawaiian Hall complex with the support of world-class museum designer Ralph Appelbaum and Associates of New York.
In 2005, Bishop Museum opened the Richard T. Mamiya Science Adventure Center , an award-winning $17 million, 19,000-square-foot interactive science and cultural exploration center. Major traveling and cultural exhibitions are presented in the Castle Memorial Building year-round. Bishop Museum hosts nearly 400,000 visitors and students each year. Bishop Museum also administers the Amy B. H. Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden in Captain Cook, Hawai‘i and the Hawaii Maritime Center in Honolulu .
“I am thrilled and honored to be given the opportunity to join this wonderful institution. The Museum has long been one of Hawai‘i ’s most important and cherished treasures. It is blessed with a wonderful staff, great board of directors, and widespread support throughout our community. This is a dream job for me, “ says Timothy E. Johns, newly named President, Director and Chief Executive Officer of Bishop Museum.
http://www.bishopmuseum.org/media/2007/pr07081.html
From http://www.hawaiithreads.com
Miulang
September 25th, 2005
Oprah Winfrey (http://www.mauinews.com/story.aspx?id=12762) just announced that she would be purchasing a large tract of land from Hana Ranch and turning it into a preserve so that no one will ever be able to develop it. She has plans to put only one house on the 63 acres near Hamoa Beach, which means that 5 multimillion dollar minimansions will not be built. If she also allows locals to continue to use the area, that would be a big win for the people of Hana, who have seen many outsiders snap up land in the area and deny access to the places that locals have always been able to visit.
"...Winfrey will buy six lots covering 63 acres at Mokae, adjacent to Hamoa Beach, and she is expected to build a single residence there. The joint conservation project will be in the neighboring Haneoo and Hamoa districts.
In addition, the ranch is in ongoing discussions with Winfrey, the land trust and other landowners for a separate project adding 26 or more acres to an existing 42-acre conservation easement at Makaalae.
In a letter distributed to the Hana community on Friday, Hana Ranch Chief Operating Officer Dan Omer and Chief Executive Officer William Newsom said the arrangement would be “one of the most important private conservation efforts to occur on Maui.”
If the deal goes through and Winfrey builds at Mokae, she is expected to forego plans to build on a 102-acre Lehoula property she bought in 2002 with her friend and personal trainer Bob Greene.
The ranch’s announcement of its deal with Winfrey was greeted with elation by members of the Hana community contacted by The Maui News on Friday...."
If rich people have to buy up land in Hawai'i, let it be people like Oprah and Jason Scott Lee (on the Big Island), who want to preserve large parts of Hawai'i from development.
Miulang
~ ~ ~
onocoffee
October 8th, 2005
I was chatting about Oprah awhile back with a friend on Maui and it seems that because Oprah paid so much for her property there it was causing a very dramatic rise in property taxes. So much so that it might force lifetime residents of Hana out because they can no longer afford the taxes.
Anyone know more about that situation?
~ ~ ~
Miulang
October 8th, 2005
It's not Oprah per se and her purchases in Hana that are causing the problem because she will be turning the area into a conservation area so it can't be developed; it's all the other people who are moving in and buying up land to put their minimansions on them. Her land up in Kula is the same way; it was ranchland that she has kept undeveloped for the last 3 or 4 years....
Because of its relative isolation, the possibility of overdevelopment is reduced considerably, but what you will get instead are rich people moving in because they like the isolation....
~ ~ ~
Rickyrab
October 13th, 2005
In other words, I suppose Maui might turn into a Hawaiian version of the Hamptons, lol[
(the east end of Long Island, NY, which is a celebrity nest sitting near farmland).
I wonder if Lahaina (my favorite Maui town - remember, I'm one of those Mainland
Tourists) is affected by any of this.
~ ~ ~
Miulang
October 13th, 2005
Rickyrab, this is most definitely not a joke to the locals who are struggling to pay their taxes and make a living, unfortunately, for many of them, catering to the whims of pampered tourists. The people of Hana are decent, proud and hardworking citizens who cherish what they have and are not going to give in very easily to the lure of the dollar. A good portion of the state's taro is grown here, and to the kanaka maoli, a day without poi is like a day without milk to white folk.
Lahaina is Babylon...there's no hope of ever going back to the days prior to statehood when that town was inhabited by locals. I absolutely loathe having to go there when I'm on Maui. Every other store is a tacky souvenir shop and the rest cater to upscale tourists. There's not much there to appeal to locals.
Miulang
~ ~ ~
jdub
October 13th, 2005
isn't the whole point here that the maui coastal land trust and oprah have signed on for a parcel and a purpose that will ostensibly preserve a massive tract of maui land for perpetuity? (or at least until it appreciates to the point that even "her holiness" flips it)
~ ~ ~
Miulang
October 13th, 2005
Oprah signed a pact with Nature Conservancy for one tract in Hana and is negotiating to obtain another neighboring tract with the same type of agreement. She also owns ranchlands in Kula which she has said she will never develop, either. Since the Nature Conservancy is the conservator, the only reason they might sell land under their care is if the proceeds would be used to buy up other properties which might be in dire need of conservation (like the sand dunes on Moloka'i or the sand dunes in Waihe'e on Maui). There's also a Maui Coastal Land Trust which I believe is taking care of the Waihe'e sand dunes, which have lots of archeological artifacts still buried.
Miulang
~ ~ ~
kimo55
October 14th, 2005
..... ostensibly preserve a massive tract of maui land for perpetuity?
believe half of what ya hear and none of what ya see.
January 15, 2001
Nature Conservancy Adds 1,800 Acres to Its Honomalino Preserve in South Kona
The Nature Conservancy of Hawai`i today announced its purchase of an additional 1,800 acres adjacent to its Honomalino Preserve in South Kona on the island of Hawai`i. The $1 million purchase of the neighboring Kapu`a parcel was made possible by a donation of nearly half the property's value by seller Leighton Mau and funding from the U.S. Forest Service.
"This is a beautiful place that has tremendous value to our islands' heritage," said Conservancy Executive Director Rex Johnson. "We're very grateful to Leighton Mau and the U.S. Forest Service for their generous support in making this acquisition possible."...
Much of the funding for the purchase comes from the U.S. Forest Service's Forest Legacy program, in partnership with the State of Hawaii through the Division of Forestry and Wildlife (DOFAW). "The Forest Legacy Program is a voluntary program established to help landowners protect forested lands from conversion to non-forest uses, such as pasture or sub-division" said Jack Ewel, of the U.S. Forest Service. "We are pleased to have completed the first Forest Legacy program in Hawaii, and look forward to working with DOFAW and other landowners in Kona to help them protect the ecological and economic value of the forests on their lands."
The expanded 5,821-acre protected area, now called the Kona Hema Preserve, is adjacent to the state's 25,000-acre Manuka Natural Area Reserve, bringing to 31,000 acres the contiguous area of forest now permanently protected in south Kona. DOFAW Administrator Mike Buck, is pleased with the new purchase and the success of the Legacy program. "With strong support from the Hawaii delegation, Congress just approved an additional $1.7 million in Forest Legacy funding for Hawaii. As landowners of more than 42,000 acres in south Kona, we look forward to working in partnership with the Conservancy, the Forest Service, and other landowners to ensure the long-term protection of this unique forest system. "
In 1999, the Conservancy purchased 4,021acres at Honomalino from First Hawaiian Bank, who also made a charitable donation of much of the property value. According to Heather Cole, Big Island Field Representative for The Nature Conservancy, the Conservancy's goal in south Kona is twofold. "Primarily, we want to protect the native forests and the biological values they harbor. But we also want to develop a model of sustainable koa forestry that will enable other landowners to maintain both the biological and economic value of their lands. The acquisition of Kapu`a was key to making that equation work for us in south Kona."
The Nature Conservancy of Hawai`i was established in 1980 and is the local affiliate of an international non-profit organization based in Arlington, VA. Its mission is to preserve the plants, animals, and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive. The Nature Conservancy has helped protect more than 200,000 acres in Hawai`i and currently manages 11 preserves on six islands.
The Nature Conservancy - Press Release
East Maui Watershed Partnership
In late 1999, the Conservancy's Board of Governors chose the East Maui Watershed Partnership to receive the organization's highest honor: The President's Conservation Achievement Award. This award is given to an individual or organization that works in partnership with The Nature Conservancy to advance biodiversity protection. Out of all the partnerships in which the Conservancy is involved globally, only six receive this award annually.
The East Maui Watershed Partnership has pioneered a model for protecting large landscapes quickly and efficiently. Before this partnership, the Conservancy had helped protect 50,000 acres in Hawai`i. This one project alone brings active management to more than 100,000 acres of critical watershed and native forest habitat.
Our Approach
The East Maui Watershed Partnership (EMWP) was formed in 1991 through the joint initiative of the State Department of Land and Natural Resources, The Nature Conservancy, the County of Maui - Board of Water Supply, Haleakala Ranch Co., East Maui Irrigation Co., Ltd., Haleakala National Park, and Hana Ranch. Since its formation, the EMWP has made significant strides to control Miconia calvenscens and has built strategic, upper-elevation fences to control feral pigs.
"Perhaps the most important reason the Conservancy recognized the partnership is for its role as a model for similar partnerships throughout Hawai`i, including the West Maui Mountains Watershed Partnership, the East Moloka`i Watershed Partnership, and the Ko`olau Watershed Partnership on O`ahu," said Suzanne Case, Executive Director of the Hawai`i Chapter. "By working together as neighbors, under a unified management plan, we exponentially expand the effort that each group can make to protect East Maui's natural resources."
From the Hawaii Department of Land & Natural Resources website:
WATERSHED PARTNERSHIP PROGRAM
Forested watersheds provide us with nearly all of our state's fresh water.
Watershed Partnerships are voluntary alliances of public and private landowners committed to the common value of protecting large areas of forested watersheds for water recharge and other values.
More than 200,000 acres of important watershed areas in Hawai`i have been placed within these unique public-private partnerships...
~ ~ ~
West Maui Mountains Watershed Partnership (50,000 acres)
Partners
Maui County Board of Water Supply
Kamehameha Schools
C. Brewer and Company Limited
Amfac/JMB Hawaii, LLC
The Nature Conservancy
Maui Land & Pineapple Co., Inc.
State Department of Land & Natural Resources
County of Maui ...
http://www.state.hi.us/dlnr/dofaw/wpp/page2.html
For more, GO TO > > > Blue Gold in Blue Hawaii
July 20, 2004
Kipahulu lost a true friend
in Rockefeller
By VALERIE MONSON, Staff Writer, The Maui News
Kipahulu lost a true friend earlier this month when renowned philanthropist and conservationist Laurance Rockefeller died at the age of 94.
As his obituary circulated across the nation, Rockefeller's many contributions to keeping the world as natural as possible were cited one after another, but there was little mention of how he helped preserve one of the most precious parts of East Maui: the Kipahulu section of Haleakala National Park and the lower section of Kipahulu Valley, a place still so pristine that people can enter only with permission.
"The park wouldn't be the same without Laurance Rockefeller," said the park's superintendent, Don Reeser. "It was because of him that the park was able to stretch all the way from the mountain to the sea."
Rockefeller was a man as rare as the treasures of Kipahulu. Although wealthy beyond most of our dreams (this year he was No. 377 on the Forbes magazine list of 587 billionaires with $1.5 billion), he didn't simply live it up and forget about the rest of society to indulge his every fantasy. He used his good fortune to fund his good causes, his favorite being his love for Mother Nature's most unspoiled corners of the country.
In other words, Laurance Rockefeller put his money where his mouth was.
According to Russ Apple's 1975 history of how Haleakala acquired its lands, Rockefeller came to Kipahulu in 1961 when he was searching for the best location to build a resort in Hawaii. Unlike some of today's newly rich who buy up whatever they can on Maui and wall it off from the rest of the community, Rockefeller took in the magnificent glory of East Maui and declared it too special to belong to one person for the pleasure of the elite.
In Rockefeller's eyes, the area was simply "too scenic and East Maui generally too beautiful and rural a community for commercial exploitation, with the social, economic and environmental changes and other developments a major resort hotel would bring," wrote Apple.
So Rockefeller built his resort elsewhere (the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel on the Big Island) and bought 52 acres along the Kipahulu coast. At no time did he ever plan to keep the land for himself.
In that same era, there were others with bottomless bank accounts who also were touched by the humble spirit of Kipahulu, including famed aviator Charles Lindbergh. Sam Pryor, the eccentric airline executive and close friend of Lindbergh, had the chance to buy the land where five of the legendary pools of Oheo dance down to the ocean, but he changed his mind when he learned how much the people of East Maui used the streams. Pryor bought another parcel and, eventually, Rockefeller purchased the two lots that are now considered the heart of the park at Kipahulu.
But even a Rockefeller couldn't just buy the land and hand it over to the National Park Service. Because of a clause that says that only "adjacent or contiguous" lands can be added to parks, Rockefeller needed to figure out how to link the mountain to the sea. In 1951, a portion of the upper Kipahulu Valley had been added to the park so Rockefeller met with Gov. John A. Burns and leaders of The Nature Conservancy to begin a fund-raising drive to acquire the lower valley that would abut his coastal tract.
The appeal to save Kipahulu went to the Mainland where other wealthy philanthropists heard the call and responded in kind. In Chicago, Apple reported, Marshall Field (of department store fame) and Philip K. Wrigley (of Chicago Cubs fame) sponsored a slide show to drum up cash. Pryor gave a cocktail party in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York that was attended by Lindbergh, Arthur Godfrey and Doris Duke.
The money was raised, the deal was forged and the Kipahulu section of Haleakala National Park was officially announced on Jan. 10, 1969.
Because of The Nature Conservancy's continued efforts and additional lands donated by the state, the total amount given to the park was more than 10,000 acres. While many people were part of the overall endeavor, Rockefeller was given credit for getting it off the ground - and seeing it through.
And he wasn't done yet. In 1997, he donated 50 acres at nearby Puhilele to The Conservation Fund with the intent that it become part of the park. Reeser said the parcel was sold to the federal government for half of its appraised value.
Following that, Rockefeller and his family were invited to attend a ceremony at Piilani Heiau by members of Pa Kui-a-Holo, a Native Hawaiian society of modern warriors skilled in the ancient discipline of lua (fighting). For his contributions to Kipahulu, Rockefeller was named an honorary member of the group and presented with a kihei (cloak) and ihe (spear).
Walter Pu, who has worked in the Kipahulu district of the park for seven years with the Hawaii Natural History Association, was there as part of Pa Kui-a-Holo.
"He was neat," said Pu of Rockefeller, then in his 80s. "Because of him, this area has been preserved and that's what we're all about. He pretty much saved the valley from being infested by too many people."
More recently, Rockefeller pledged $50,000 to help with the relocation of Lindbergh's house to the park.
So not only has Kipahulu lost a loyal friend who understood its inner nature, but wealthy people have lost a role model. With Maui being inundated by millionaires who scoop up property like they're playing Monopoly, wouldn't it be great if they would follow Rockefeller's example and acknowledge that there are some places just too beautiful to be private? Wouldn't it be great if they would give back to the island that has given them so much in return?
So mahalo to Laurence Rockefeller, a man who was rich in many ways.
Valerie Monson is a staff writer for The Maui News. "Off Deadline" is an occasional column that allows staff members to step back and reflect on issues of the day or to just talk story.
Copyright © 2003 The Maui News
http://www.kipahulu.org/news_mauinews_040720.html
THE NATURE CONSERVANCY - HAWAII CHAPTER
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
The Hawai`i Chapter is grateful to these community leaders who generously volunteer their time to guide our work and support our programs in a multitude of ways:
S. Haunani Apoliona
Peter D. Baldwin
Christopher J. Benjamin
Zadoc W. Brown, Jr.
Carl A. Carlson, Jr.
David C. Cole
Samuel A. Cooke
Peter H. Ehrman
Kenton T. Eldridge
Guy Fujimura
J. Stephen Goodfellow
Thomas Gottlieb
James J.C. Haynes
Ron Higgins
Peter Ho
Stanley Hong
J. Douglas Ing
Mark L. Johnson.
Dr. Kenneth Kaneshiro
Bert A. Kobayashi, Jr.
Faye Watanabe Kurren
Duncan MacNaughton
Bill D. Mills
Wayne Minami
Michael T. Pfeffer
H. Monty Richards
Jean E. Rolles
Scott Rolles
James Romig
Eric Yeaman
February 23, 2006
LAYING CLAIM TO
NATURE’S TREASURE CHEST
www.newswithviews.com/Williams/carole4.htm
(Out take of) PART 2 of 2
By Carole "CJ" Williams
"...Bitterroot has been involved with the U.P. since 1996 or before, and signed on as an option/joint-venture partner with Kennecott Exploration involving certain goodies found while exploring mineral leases claimed by a Yooper exploration service.
Bitterroot is also involved in a “Great Michigan Peninsula Joint Venture” with Cameco, a Saskatchewan based global giant. Cameco boasts of being the world’s largest uranium producer and claims it will dominate nuclear energy by producing uranium fuel.
The venture is a complex deal, said to slant in Cameco's favor, which covers an interest area encompassing 784 sq Upper Peninsula miles, of which Bitterroot has mineral right title to only 132. Cameco has the option to earn 65% of everything within the area of interest by spending $23.6 million over 18 years. The agreement is more detailed, but for expediency’s sake, we’ll forego the nitty-gritty.
In reality, Cameco is allowed to vest in various U.P. land units by spending $1 million to $10 million depending on the land unit. Through the deal made, it’s possible for Cameco to "sterilize" exploration on the entire package by focusing on one claim area where its vesting cost is only $1 million.
These low-cost units tend to be public lands within an interest area that Bitterroot didn’t have title to when the deal was signed. Because of this, Cameco has been most eager to focus exploration on public land for which applications have already been made, but has been somewhat held up because Michigan is “reviewing” its mineral leasing laws.
At present the Michigan United Conservation Clubs, Nature Conservancy, et al, are scrambling to convince the Michigan Supreme Court to reverse an Appeals’ Court decision that the State did not and does not have title to mineral rights on tax reverted land when mineral rights were and are severed from property rights; mineral rights are not taxable and cannot be seized for non-payment of property taxes.
Leases to resource exploration and extraction companies fuel the Natural Resource Trust Fund that, in turn, abets land grabbing, but it now appears the State may not own title to mineral rights on some of its public land.
According to a September 2, 2004 online “Kaiser-Bottom-Fishing” report written by market analyst John Kaiser, the then recent weeks of excitement over uranium was drawing attention to Bitterroot’s interest in the U. P., and it’s President and Director was none too happy about it. He’s concerned about land acquisition competition and publicity that would fire up the NIMBY (not in my back yard) bunch.
Much of what follows regarding Bitterroot can be attributed to Mr. Kaiser, but it’s supported by information found elsewhere.
Bitterroot is looking for uranium in the Jacobsville Basin, which covers most of the Western U. P., including the historic Menominee Co. winter deeryard area the MI-DNR is so eager to have.
Though few know it, radioactivity has been found in some Copper Country drinking water and for that reason the Western U. P. District Health Department recommends testing well water in areas east of the Keweenaw Fault, which runs from the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula down to the Wisconsin border. This includes portions of Ontonagon, Gogebic, Baraga, Houghton, and Keweenaw Counties, but particularly a line north of Jacobsville in Houghton and Keweenaw County where conservancies and land trusts have been very busy controlling land.
In 1996, Bitterroot gained access to a patchwork of claims in a portion of their “targeted area” from a group that could trace its origins back to the Civil War. By the late 1960’s an access road had been built into a rugged portion of the property near the Silver River in Houghton County’s Laird Township. Land in several of the township’s contiguous sections had been subdivided into a patchwork of many 10-acre parcels and a few larger ones, and surface rights had been sold. Bitterroot refers to this patchwork as “Voyageur Lands.” (The Silver River Reserve is a part of these "Voyageur Lands" ~ Cj)
Some land between the Voyageur Lands belongs to the State of Michigan and although prospecting permits can be granted for state owned land through an application process, the privately owned land presents a problem.
In his 2004 report, Kaiser claimed that Bitterroot’s president had already spent 10 years trying to sort out the land ownership situation because geophysical anomalies pay no attention to mineral title boundaries. Therefore, in order to gain access to the coveted resources, a great deal of secrecy and land acquisition cleverness is a must.
Simply put, Bitterroot targets what land it wants first and then sets about getting it without sounding an alarm, sort of like the Michigan Department of Natural Resources is now doing with their public land boundary review, and what the Conservancy is doing with their “conservation puzzle” all over the U.P.
Bitterroot has two wholly owned Michigan subsidiaries: Voyageur Land Corporation (1996) and Trans Superior Resources (1995), which purchased all Voyageur shares in 1997.
Trans Superior properties include 100% interest in mineral rights on 461 square miles of land extending from the Keweenaw Peninsula and White Pine, south to the Wisconsin border. This includes 204 square miles of Copper Range Lands and 257 square miles of Voyageur Lands.
It’s Kaiser’s contention that the Jacobsville Basin's potential to host high grade unconformity style uranium deposits hasn’t been proven yet, but should it be, Cameco will need Bitterroot's “land skills” to forge ahead with an aggressive land acquisition campaign. And, once that happens, the market will be beating a path to Bitterroot's door..."
Part 1 of my article (above) ended up here. Hawaii's Gov. Linda Lingle was expected to testify regarding her business, professional, personal and political relationships with Jennifer Granholm, among many others, including Ben Benson, listed at the link below. You can draw your own conclusions, but I smell some rather large land-grab facilitating rats in the Copper Country & Western U.P. No doubt they've been rewarded handsomely with pocket change and/or positions of influence:
James B. Nicholson, Trustee vs. Harmon
(Formerly Woo vs. Harmon)
U.S. District Court For the District of Hawaii
Judges: David A. Ezra; Kevin S. Chang
~ ~ ~
DEFENDANT’S WITNESS
GOVERNOR LINDA LINGLE
Executive Chambers, State Capitol
Honolulu, HI 96813
Fax: 808-586-0006
Governor, State of Hawaii; former Mayor, County of Maui, Hawaii; Maui County Council member in 1980's; Chair, Hawaii Republican Party, 1999-2002; worked in Honolulu as a public information officer for the Teamsters and Hotel Workers Union; formerly married to Maui attorney, William Crockett....
http://www.kycbs.net/CV05-00030-Witness-Lingle-Linda.htm
October 11, 2006
The Real Deal Behind
Granholm's "U. P. Big Deal"
By C. J. Williams, www.MichNews.com
On January 6, 2005 the Yooper grapevine was abuzz with news of another State of Michigan/Nature Conservancy land grab scheme involving 271,000 acres in eight counties, an amount equivalent to 502 square miles. The parcel had been carved from 390,000 forestland acres situated in ten of the Upper Peninsula’s fifteen counties.
Described by the Conservancy as an ecological treasure trove of nature’s precious jewels and pristine landscapes, the 390,000 acres, once owned by the Bishop Estate Trust (a.k.a. Kamehameha Schools Trust), includes more than 300 lakes and 526 miles of rivers and streams. However, as Paul Harvey would say, it’s time to tell the rest of the story about Governor Granholm’s “U. P. Big Deal”, also known as the Nature Conservancy’s “Northern Great Lakes Forest Project”.
Bernice Pauahi Bishop was the great-granddaughter and last direct descendent of Hawaiian King Kamehameha I. Born to high priests, Bernice was raised by a prime minister and educated by Protestant missionaries. While in her teens, she married Charles Bishop, a 28-year old New Yorker.
After her death in 1884, Charles helped establish the Kamehameha Schools and subsequent Bishop Trust according to Bernice’s last will and testament. To do so he used her substantial land holdings and his considerable wealth.
The Bishop Trust, Hawaii’s largest private landowner once estimated to be worth $10 billion or more, still operates schools and educational programs throughout the islands. Over the past several decades, the scandal-ridden Trust has been raided through convoluted schemes that almost defy unraveling.
So how did it come to pass that a Hawaiian trust fund once owned so much of Michigan’s beautiful Upper Peninsula? The answer lies in a purported friendship between Ben Benson and Mark McConaghy, a PricewaterhouseCoopers tax expert hired by the Bishop Estate trustees to keep the IRS off their greedy backs. But, I get ahead of myself.
Some of the 271,000 acres, now lauded as Granholm’s “U.P. Big Deal”, once belonged to the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company. By the late 1960’s, however, C & H could no longer afford to mine copper while meeting all the new environmental standards being put in place. Having to compete with China and other countries, which produce ore with cheap labor while ignoring environmental issues, and facing demands of better pay from its own striking miners in 1968, C & H closed its mines and sold its land holdings to Universal Oil Products.
A similar fate met miners who rode buses for up to an hour or more to the Copper Range mine near White Pine in Ontonagon County. An environmental lawsuit filed in 1995 by the National Wildlife Federation, the Michigan United Conservation Clubs, and others, plus a successful effort to agitate a band of Native Americans over environmental issues, helped end copper’s glory days there, too. But the world’s greatest source of native copper, uranium, gas, oil, and other valuable underground resources still lie waiting in the U.P. and the State of Michigan, the Conservancy, and global mining conglomerates know it.
Ben Benson, a very young New Englander, amassed some of the former C & H property in the late 1980’s, combined it with 292,000 acres purchased in 1990 from Cliff’s Forest Products (Cleveland-Cliffs), added a little bit more from here and there, and set about developing a high-tech, satellite-enhanced timbering operation, or so the tale is told.
According to Maura Singleton’s August 1999 article, “Sea Hawk”, published in the Virginia Business Magazine, 40-year-old Benson had been a dyslexic and indifferent student who dropped out of school in the ninth grade. At age 15, he stole the family car, drove from Cape Cod to Maine, and used a newly obtained credit card to buy 100 acres of rocky wilderness, which he subdivided and sold in 5-acre vacation plots.
Singleton wrote that, at age 17, Benson joined the Navy submarine corps and worked with sonar on a nuclear fast-attack sub, but his plan for a Navy career went by the wayside four years later due to allergies.
By the early 1980’s, Benson, who claimed never to have done anything for more than four years, had already run an oil company and a New Hampshire real estate development company.
He then focused attention on the state of Virginia, marrying the granddaughter of an East Shore developer, an area where the Nature Conservancy (TNC) controlled and mismanaged a great deal of land. It was here that Benson again took up work in real estate, developing exclusive coastline property.
In 1991, Benson, with title to about half-a-million U.P. acres, became involved in a partnership of sorts with the Bishop Estate Trustees through his pal, Mark McConoghy. But, in 1994 at age 35, after surviving two heart attacks within an 8-month period, he sold his U.P. land holdings to the Trust for a few million dollars and bought a 65-foot Hatteras, which he christened “Sea Hawk”.
The partnership may have dissolved, but it later caused Benson’s name to come up in Bobby Harmon’s RICO lawsuit - Civil No. 99-00304 DAE: Harmon v Federal Insurance Company, P & C Insurance Co., Inc., Marsh & McLennan, Inc., Trustees of Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate, PricewaterhouseCoopers, et al, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii.
Harmon is still immersed in litigation regarding his claims of fraud, tax evasion, racketeering and other wrongful acts involving the Bishop Land Trust. His lengthy witness list, which he adds to almost daily, includes newly appointed U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson who is a former Goldman Sachs CEO. Paulson was also a Board member of the Nature Conservancy and served as co-chairman of its Asia Pacific Council. At one time, the scandal-ridden Bishop Trust owned a great deal of Goldman Sachs stock.
When Benson was featured in the “Sea Hawk” article, he was searching for millions of dollars worth of lost treasure off Virginia’s coast and dueling with Spain for the right to do so. He’s since sold that venture, Sea Hawk, Inc., to wheeler and dealer Peter Knollenberg.
Considering that Benson had been a dyslexic, fifteen-year-old credit card-owning high school dropout and run-away, his estimated fortune, said to be around $110 million several years ago, isn’t too shabby.
After Benson sold his U.P. holdings to the Bishop Trust, Benson Forest Products became known as Munising based Shelter Bay Forests, which managed the trust’s U.P. land holdings with “gentle timbering” technology until the forestland was put up for bids in the fall of 2002.
Although Governor Engler, the Conservancy, and an “undisclosed timber company” formed a “private-public” partnership to bid on the Bishop Trust land, they lost out to Forestland Group LLC, which closed on their deal during the summer of 2003.
Founded in 1995, Forestland Group is a North Carolina based forest investment management organization (TIMO) that purchases property through its various Heartwood Forestland Funds. As of April 2005, Forestland Group owned 560,000 Upper Peninsula acres; 78,110 acres in Houghton and Keweenaw Counties bought from Mead in 1998, 91,117 acres in Iron, Ontonagon, Houghton and Baraga Counties bought from Ned Lake Timber and Land Company in 2001, and the remainder being the former Bishop Trust holdings of 389,202 acres bought in the summer of 2003.
Within a few months of closing on the Bishop Trust deal, Forestland Group offered its prize to the State of Michigan, and by January 2004 the Michigan Chapter of the Nature Conservancy had already secured at least one grant toward the purchase. That’s not surprising, however, considering that a January ‘05 news article written by George Gallagher for the Council of Michigan Foundations lauds several foundations that had taken an active role to help TNC’s Michigan chapter in their then four-year public/private partnership initiative to get their biscuit hooks on the Upper Peninsula Bishop Trust timberland.
Upon learning in 2002 that the public/private partnership lost the bid, Phil Powers, then chairman of the MI-Nature Conservancy, said Forestland Group could fit in with the Conservancy’s goals. “Our sense is they’ve got a first-class track record of putting in place solutions like the ones we’re working on. We in the Nature Conservancy are looking forward to working out a partnership with them,” said Powers.
Tina Hall, the U.P. director of the MI-Nature Conservancy, said the idea of securing recreational access easements to portions of the property was not dead. “…We know the Forestland Group so well, we feel we can work with them,” said Hall.
As the story behind the “U.P. Big Deal” unfolded, it was claimed that key players met at Governor Granholm’s office in November 2003. And, though she had to put the parties in separate rooms when negotiations broke down and shuffle back and forth with offers and counter-offers until she got them to make a deal, an agreement was finally made between the two who’ve been bed partners for years - the State of Michigan and the Nature Conservancy - in tandem with Forestland Group LLC, whose President and CEO is none other than Thomas Massengale, a former Nature Conservancy senior executive and founder of it’s North Carolina Chapter.
Of the 390,000 Bishop Trust acres for which Forestland Group outbid the State, the Nature Conservancy, and their “unnamed” timber company partner, the Conservancy, with multi-billion dollars in tax-exempt assets, will own fee interest (includes mineral rights) in 23,338 acres in the Big Two Hearted River watershed and will manage the State’s conservation easement on 248,000 acres still owned by Forestland Group.
A campaign to fund Granholm’s “U.P. Big Deal” land grab for the Conservancy’s $57.9 million “Northern Great Lakes Forest Project” got underway without anyone asking state citizens if they approved of her Big Deal or not.
Pretty slick, eh!
Copyright by C. J. Williams
Related:
http://www.michigan.gov/gov/0,1607,7-168-23442
_21974-107788--M_2005_1,00.html
http://www.kycbs.net/GUIDE.htm
http://lists.asu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=
ind9807&L=sub-arch&T=0&P=1381
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/nation/specials/natureconservancy/
http://www.virginiabusiness.com/magazine/yr1999
/aug99/itsup/cover.html
http://www.nature.org/wherewework/northamerica/
states/michigan/preserves/art17158.html
http://www.nature.org/wherewework/northamerica
/states/michigan/misc/art14792.html
http://www.mass.gov/obcbbo/bd93-042-2.htm
~ ~ ~
www.michnews.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/318/14384/printer
March 29, 2006
Nature Conservancy, Conservation International Pledge Six Million Dollars to Protect Pacific Islands
Supports Governments in Efforts to Protect almost
200,000 Square Kilometers across Micronesia
Curitiba, Brazil— The Nature Conservancy and Conservation International committed US$6 million towards conservation across Micronesia, a region in the Pacific Ocean stretching from Hawaii to the Philippines.
The pledge was a direct response to commitments by six Micronesian nations and territories to protect a total combined marine and terrestrial area of almost 200,000 square kilometers, twice the size of Portugal.
The financial support by two of the world’s leading conservation organizations will help these islands establish protected areas across this region of incredibly diverse tropical marine life and highly endangered terrestrial biodiversity.
The US$6 million pledge is designed to generate matching funds from other financing sources including donor countries, the Global Environment Facility or regional finance mechanisms like the Asian Development Bank. The match, when fulfilled, will result in a total of US$18 million directed to protected areas and conservation across Micronesia.
“Our pledge is inspired by the leadership shown by Micronesian islands in committing to the establishment of protected areas,” said Steve McCormick, President of The Nature Conservancy, referring to the Micronesia Challenge to protect 30 percent of near-shore marine resources and 20 percent of terrestrial resources on their islands by 2020.
“We now challenge others – governments, funders, communities and NGOs – to join this rising tide and support these islands as they strive to protect the natural resources on which they depend. We encourage other nations to make similar commitments and when they do The Nature Conservancy will be there to help.”
"We are delighted by this commitment made by the governments of this region, which is part of the globally very important Polynesia-Micronesia biodiversity hotspot” said CI President Russell A. Mittermeier.
“We hope that the leadership shown by President Tommy Remengesau, Jr. and his fellow heads-of-state will inspire further action to conserve biodiversity, such as the Republic of Kiribatis decision to protect the incredible Phoenix Islands, one of the largest and most pristine reef systems on Earth. We must work together to prevent invasive species from destroying endangered biodiversity in this part of the world.”
President Tommy Remengesau, Jr. of Palau hosted the ministerial-level dinner and commended both organizations on their efforts: “The Nature Conservancy and Conservation International are demonstrating the kind of partnership and catalytic action that we hoped our actions would create,” he said.
“These kinds of pledges from the international community, coupled with tangible community, state and national commitments to conservation, are critical ingredients to achieving our national and global protected area goals.”
The Micronesia Challenge includes Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.
The ministerial event of island leaders and supporters was part of the Eighth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) which is addressing island biodiversity.
The CBD is expected to adopt a Program of Work that will lay out guidance for island nations and nations with islands for integrated conservation and management of their vital natural resources.
www.nature.org/wherewework/islands/press/press2344.html
For more, GO TO > > > Pilikea in Palau
July 4, 2003
Volcanoes park
adds 116,000 acres
By Rod Thompson, Honolulu Star-Bulletin
HILO >> The National Park Service and Nature Conservancy announced the completion of the purchase of the 116,000-acre Kahuku Ranch for addition to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park yesterday.
The purchase is the largest conservation transaction in Hawaii's history, the agencies said.
The addition enlarges the park by more than 50 percent. It creates a huge sweep of parkland that arches from the lava flow areas near Puu Oo to the top of Mauna Loa and down the southwest rift of Mauna Loa through lava fields, native forests and pasture lands.
"This property is a conservation jewel for the state of Hawaii," said Suzanne Case, the Hawaii director of the conservancy.
"There are extensive areas of native forest," she said. "Even the areas in lava have rare Hawaiian insects in them."
The conservancy helped in the purchase of the land from the Estate of Samuel Mills Damon for $22 million.
If the buy had not gone through, there was speculation the land would have been cut up for sale as "gentleman estates."
U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye acquired $16 million for the purchase, with the Nature Conservancy providing "bridge financing" of the remainder. Congress is expected eventually to provide funds to reimburse the conservancy for that financing....
The purchase includes all of Kahuku Ranch above the Hawaii Belt Road, thereby excluding a small piece of the ranch below the road where ranch headquarters sit.
Volcanoes park Superintendent Jim Martin said the new area represents a "real management challenge."
The first year of so will involve taking public comments on how to use the area, he said.
The most likely scenario is active uses such as camping, hiking and horseback riding in the lower areas, he said. The upland area, up to 12,600 feet, would likely remain as wilderness.
The park has no additional money to manage the area, he said, adding, "It's not going to cost us a whole lot more right now."
The property is a working ranch which had 4,500 cattle when Damon proposed the purchase four years ago, he said.
Purchase of Kahuku was the top priority in the nation for the National Park Service, which has been interested in the ranch since 1938, Martin said.
December 13, 2003
America's future:
A nation of renters
The generation that fought so hard to save the world from communism is now working feverishly to condemn America's future to socialism. Through dozens of programs, all designed to "protect" the land from development, we are transforming America from the land of the free, to a nation of renters.
Nearly every week, The Nature Conservancy announces a new scheme to "protect" vast stretches of land through outright purchase, the purchase of development rights or through conservation easements. TNC claims they have protected nearly 12 million acres already, and have their eye on another 3 million acres in Alabama and Tennessee. There are more than 1,200 similar "conservancy" organizations in the United States, all doing the same thing.
When a person fragments the title to his land with a perpetual conservation easement, or by selling development rights, he is, in effect, robbing future generations of the opportunity to make their own decisions about how to use the land. What right do we have to deny future generations the use of prime real estate?
The Nature Conservancy paints a pretty picture during the sales pitch: "Imagine a vast natural playground stretching from North Alabama into Central Tennessee. Imagine forests, meadows, rivers and wetlands open to the public for hunting, fishing, canoeing and hiking. Imagine farms managed to be both self-sustaining and environmentally responsible."
Sounds good, until the "open to the public" goes away. And who decides if, and when, and how long the area may be open to the public? Who decides how to manage the farms? The owner, of course – The Nature Conservancy. The private owners who are convinced to sell development rights or conservation easements sell their right to use their land in any way that's not agreeable to The Nature Conservancy. When it comes time to sell the land for retirement or to pay medical bills, the land has little value, except to The Nature Conservancy. The price is no longer subject to market demand; it is virtually useless.
When The Nature Conservancy acquires the remaining rights to the land, are they under any obligation to keep the land open to the public? No. Their practice has been to use the land for development, for logging, for oil, or for whatever purpose they desire, including selling vast portions of unusable land to the government – often for a profit.
The campaign to save "the last great places" and all open space has been incredibly successful and even more ridiculous. There is no shortage of space in the United States. Less than 5 percent of the land area is developed, according to the federal government. There is plenty of space, but less and less of it is owned by private individuals.
Governments own nearly 42 percent of the land area and are buying more land every day. Conservancy organizations are buying land for their own "preserves" and selling what they don't want to government. Not only are we stealing our children's birthright, we are condemning them to eventually live in a socialist state, where government owns all the sources of production.
In every community where there is an "open space" bond initiative on the ballot, people should organize to defeat it. In every community where local government is planning to install a "comprehensive plan" to dictate the future use of private property, people should organize to defeat it.
At the rate we are now transferring private property to government, and to its surrogate "conservancy" organizations, it will take only a few more generations before all the land is under government ownership or control. America will then truly be a socialist nation.
Had this trend begun a hundred years ago, we would already be a socialist nation of renters, subject to the whims of government. When there is no more private land to produce property tax, will the government stop collecting tax? Hardly. The government will allow us to work its land and tax our productivity to whatever extent it wishes. That's how it works in socialist nations.
This march toward socialism can be reversed by first recognizing the gross disservice to future generations of our current land-grabbing policies. Then we should force government to begin divesting its gigantic inventories of land, returning it to the private sector where it can again be the basis of our free-market economy.
This can happen only if we have an informed electorate that recognizes the dangers inherent in the present trend, and then works to elect officials at every level of government who share this belief in free markets and are committed to keeping America the land of the free.
Henry Lamb is the executive vice president of the Environmental Conservation Organization and chairman of Sovereignty International.
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36108
VISIT
To View More Birds of Prey!
JACK ABRAMOFF - HENRY PAULSON - GALE NORTON
FAYE KURREN - NANCY JOHNSON - PETER SAVIO
BRUCE BABBITT - BEN BENSON - DAVID COLE
HAUNANI APOLIONA - JEFF WATANABE
COLBERT MATSUMOTO - JAMES WATT
LINDA LINGLE - JAMES NICHOLSON
(...with more to come!)
* * * * *
December 2, 2005
Private, Corporate Donations Sought to Fund U.S. National Parks
By Sunny Lewis, Environment News Service
HONOLULU, Hawaii - More than 55 Congressmen have signed on to legislation that would effectively privatize the national parks to fund their expenses.
Congressman Mark Souder, an Indiana Republican, has written the bill that he believes would eliminate the parks’ annual funding shortfalls and maintenance backlog by the year 2016 when the country celebrates the 100the anniversary of the National Park System - by encouraging individual and corporate donations.
Sauder was in Honolulu on Thursday for the sixth in a series of hearings across the country to build support for his bill, the National Park Centennial Act, H.R. 1124. Sauder is interested in hearing about the funding shortfalls in the national parks in his role as chairman of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources of the House Committee on Government Reform, which has jurisdiction over the national parks. Souder is also a member of the House Resources Committee, to which his bill has been referred.
Souder was joined for the hearing by Hawaii Congressmen Neil Abercrombie and Ed Case, both Democrats. Case is a co-sponsor of the National Park Centennail Act, but Abercrombie is not.
The lawmakers heard testimony from Frank Hays, the Pacific Area Director of the National Park Service, and the superintendents of three of Hawaii’s seven national parks.
A second panel of witnesses included representatives of the Nature Conservancy, the National Parks Conservation Association, and Friends of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, as well as a spokesman for the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial Museum Association. The U.S. Navy memorial, commemorating those who died in the World War II attack on Pearl Harbor, is operated by the National Park Service.
Because Hawaii’s parks lack adequate funding, invasive species - from noisy coqui frogs, to invasive marine algae, to a new rust that attacks native ohia trees - are running rampant, Souder was told.
Congressman Case has introduced a bill to require the same or greater level of federal inspection of all visitor and cargo shipments arriving in Hawaii from domestic and foreign locations as now exists for outgoing traffic - an expensive proposition. Case said such a law is the only way to overcome “a true crisis” caused by invasive species and diseases....
Congressman Abercrombie is most concerned about the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial, which also attracts about 1.5 million people each year ... A new $30 to $40 million visitor center and ticketing improvements are planned, and Abercrombie would like to see a transit station that serves the memorial if Honolulu decides to build a rapid transit system.
Hayes said Hawaii National Park units received about $19 million in operations and maintenance funding in fiscal year 2004, an increase of about six percent over last year. He emphasized the public-private partnerships the National Park Service is involved in such as invasive species committees and a land management effort involving state and federal entities and private landowners.
Chronic funding shortfalls have created annual gaps in operational funding for the National Park System that exceed $600 million, and the current maintenance backlog is estimated by the General Accountability Office at between $4 billion and $6.8 billion.
Souder’s approach to funding the needs of the National Parks is focused on the contributions of private citizens and corporations, a reversal of the way the parks are funded today, by the federal government.
Souder’s legislation, the National Park Centennial Act, which establishes the National Park Centennial fund in the Treasure, was introduced in March and has 59 co-sponsors.
It would amend the Internal Revenue Code to allow individual taxpayers to designate overpayments and contributions for the benefit of the National Park System. The legislation provides new funding for the parks in part from a voluntary check-off on federal income tax returns. Congress would also contribute to support the parks.
Souder described the process, saying, “First let’s let citizens give money, and the federal government will match or make up those funding gaps.”...
While the Souder bill’s co-sponsors are drawn from both sides of the aisle, the idea of allowing corporate sponsorships in the national parks has its critics. Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a national association of government employees in natural resources agencies, is one of them.
“This starts a slow motion commercialization of the national park system,” Ruch said on Wednesday....
The National Park Service has issued a draft directive encouraging active pursuit of potential financial donors and repealing the agency’s current passive posture of accepting donations. The directive liberalized the policy offering naming rights for trails, benches, rooms and other facilities, but not parks themselves. It allows display of commercial logos and slogans on park literature, computer screens and plaques.
The plan reverses bans against accepting or soliciting donations from vendors, concessionaires and others doing business with the parks.
“Large corporate donations exert a not-so-subtle gravitational pull on park managers who are increasingly dependent on these donors for their budgets,” Ruch said.
He said PEER is already hearing from park employees who have been transferred or reassigned to placate donors. “Influence peddling will soon become a major recreational activity in our national parks,” he said.
The Fiscal Year 2005 budget is approximately $1.7 billion to cover operating expenses for the 388 units presently within the National Park System.
The National Park Centennial Act has been referred to two committees - the Subcommittee of National Parks of the House Resources Committee, and the House Ways and Means Committee.
www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2005/2005-12-05-02.asp
January 6, 2006
Auditor slams state
conservation efforts
Mismanagement and a lack of resources
could cost Hawaii its “fertile environment”
By Mary Vorsino, Honolulu Star-Bulletin
STATE conservation enforcement officers are spread thin, undertrained, under-equipped and mismanaged, leaving Hawaii’s natural resources susceptible to blatant “overuse and abuse,” said state Auditor Marion Higa in a report released yesterday.
“If resources continue to be depleted at their current rate and conservation enforcement remains ineffective and inefficient, Hawaii’s future generations will lose the enrichment of abundant wildlife, a fertile environment and a rich cultural heritage,” said the audit, which reviewed the state Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Division of Conservation and Resources Enforcement. “The absence of enforcement coverage contributes, in part, to overuse and abuse of Hawaii’s resources.”
The 60-page report, compiled between May and December, said enforcement officers are often pulled from conservation patrols to work on crime prevention and marijuana eradication.
The enforcement division has a $7.5 million budget and employs 103 people. Its officers are responsible for 1.3 million acres, from the tops of mountains to the coastlines and three miles out to sea.
Though the division’s staff is small - and overstretched - the audit noted that the state does not use its enforcement “workforce efficiently and therefore does not provide as much enforcement coverage as could be possible. Through improved work methods and better scheduling, available staff could provide more widespread coverage for longer periods each day.”
Lawmakers and environmentalists said the audit confirmed their suspicions about the state of conservation enforcement in the islands and raised serious concerns about the well-being of Hawaii’s environment....
“The fundamental problem is that whatever new law we enact, it doesn.ht have a lot of credibility if we can’t enforce it,” said state Rep. Brian Schatz (D. Tantalus-Makiki_, one of several legislators who pushed for the audit last year. “We have work to do. The first step to improving the division is admitting that it’s not running at an optimal level.”
DLNR Chairman Peter Young said the findings and recommendations in the audit “were not a surprise.”
He said he is already working to solve some staffing and compliance issues, and will go to the state Legislature this year with an increased budget request.
Young declined to release details on his upcoming budget request but did say he would ask for $800,000 to hire private, uniformed security officers who would patrol 22 state parks during peak hours or when violations tend to occur. He said it is still unclear whether the officers would be able to issue citations.
(CB: Uh, oh! Could this be another case of the fox guarding the henhouse? Take a gander at Who’s Guarding the Henhouse, to see what I’m whistling about! )
Also in the request is about $1 million that would be granted to Hawaii environmental groups to provide education on the state’s conservation laws.
Jeff Mikulina, executive director of the Sierra Club in Hawaii, said under-funding is a key part of the division’s woes. But, he said, leadership is also an issue.
“What we really need is an environmental 911,” he said, adding that enforcement officers should be better supervised and held to higher standards....
State Rep. Hermina Morita, chairwoman of the House Energy and Environmental Protection Committee, agreed, saying she wants the division to work on its “priorities for enforcement.”
For example, she said, enforcement officers should be hunting out poachers or illegal loggers before looking for marijuana plants....
www.starbulletin.com/2006/01/06/news/story01.html
January 9, 2006
From the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources website:
You are invited to attend a press conference headed by DLNR beginning at 2:00 p.m., Monday, January 9, 2006, st the Kalanimoku Building, 1151 Punchbowl, Room 130.
Peter Young, DLNR Chairperson will provide details on DLNR’s unprecedented budget request of $92-million to the Legislature...
www.hawaii.gov/dlnr/Welcome.html
October 15, 2005
DeLay Reaction
By John Dawson, www.worldmag.com
It will surprise no one in Washington that former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) is a sinner. His Democratic counterpart, Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and DNC party chair Howard Dean have called him corrupt following indictments stemming from a fundraising sandal in Texas that forced him to step down from his leadership position. But Democrats are talking politics.
DeLay friend Mark Souder (R-Ind.) knows the former leader from dealings in the House and from a Capitol Hill Bible study.
“I’m definitely a DeLay ally,” Mr. Souder says. “ I call him the greatest repenter I’ve ever met. He struggles with anger and aggression.”...
The cumulative effect of the DeLay indictments, investigations into a stock sale by Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist, and ongoing FBI probes into fundraising by GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff are making conservatives nervous...
www.worldmag.com/subscriber/displayarticle.cfm?id=11144
November 17, 2005
Atoll as laboratory
Hawaii and mainland scientists head to Palmyra to study a coral ecosystem still largely untouched
By Diana Leone, dleone@starbulletin.com
DOZENS of top scientists are launching cooperative research on remote Palmyra Atoll that could provide new insights into climate change, disappearing coral reefs and other global environmental issues.
The consortium, which includes the University of Hawaii, Stanford University and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, will use a $1.5 million research center recently built on the atoll's Cooper Island by the Nature Conservancy.
"The thing that makes Palmyra so sexy to a researcher is that there are very few human impacts," said Barry Stieglitz, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's senior policy-maker for Pacific islands.
Studying the coral reef ecosystem on this tiny National Wildlife Refuge, 960 miles south of Honolulu, will be "establishing a base line against which other places can be measured," he said.
According to Rob Dunbar, a Stanford oceanographer who has helped set the consortium in motion, projects will include:
» Learning about long-term cycles of wet and dry years, by decoding information stored in coral colonies that are thousands of years old.
» Better understanding of how humans have affected coral reef ecosystems on inhabited islands by studying the almost untouched plants and animals of an ocean paradise.
» Striving to save a tropical forest of pisonia trees from the onslaught of invasive ants and scale disease.
"This place is so remote," Stieglitz said. "It's not like any other place."
The Nature Conservancy bought the formerly private atoll, with 600 land acres and 480,000 acres of submerged reef, from the Fullard-Leo family in 2000, then sold most of it to the Fish and Wildlife Service.
The atoll's water and land is home to 125 different coral species (three times more than in Hawaii), 29 bird species, the endangered green sea turtle and dozens of other marine creatures.
The Fullard-Leo family turned down development offers over the years that proposed turning the atoll into a nuclear depository or a casino.
On the several hundred land acres the Nature Conservancy kept, it used a grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to build a research station that can accommodate up to 20 researchers at a time. The complex has an up-to-date lab, 100,000-gallon freshwater catchment, 24-hour electricity and an environmentally friendly septic system.
The 14 small screened-window huts for researchers to live in are simple but pleasant, said Dunbar, who hopes to spend about three weeks a year there over the next five years.
"I hope it will have a lot to tell us about a healthy marine ecosystem," said Suzanne Case, executive director of the Nature Conservancy in Hawaii, as well as document the effects of a Navy air base there in World War II.
http://starbulletin.com/2005/11/17/news/story08.html
November 16, 2005
The Nature Conservancy Joins World’s Top Scientists to Launch Climate Change Research Station on Palmyra Atoll
Secluded Palmyra Atoll will allow scientists
to study threats to coral reefs
The Nature Conservancy
HONOLULU - A team of the world’s leading scientists has joined forces with The Nature Conservancy to launch a new research station on Palmyra Atoll, a tiny National Wildlife Refuge in the central Pacific, where they will study climate change, disappearing coral reefs, invasive species and other global environmental threats.
Located 1,000 miles south of Hawai‘i and surrounded by one of the most spectacular coral reef ecosystems in the world, Palmyra offers a unique laboratory setting to develop conservation strategies that can then be used to assist threatened marine habitats around the world.
Inaugural members of the research consortium include Stanford University, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, American Museum of Natural History, California Academy of Sciences, University of California at Santa Barbara, University of California at Irvine, University of Hawai‘i, U.S. Geological Survey, The Nature Conservancy and Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. The consortium will work in cooperation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the atoll as a National Wildlife Refuge.
“The Conservancy has long recognized Palmyra’s potential as a site for scientific research. Its phenomenal biodiversity and the fact that humans have had very little impact on the atoll make it an ideal laboratory,” said Suzanne Case, the Conservancy's Hawai‘i Executive Director. “Working together with these world-renowned institutions, we can discover and develop new conservation strategies for island habitats throughout the Pacific and around the world.”
Consortium scientists will conduct their work at a new research station built on Palmyra by The Nature Conservancy earlier this year. The Conservancy's Hawai‘i program will operate the new station and assist the Fish and Wildlife Service, the nation’s principal wildlife conservation agency, in protecting and conserving the atoll’s significant terrestrial and marine resources....
In January of 2001, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service extended further protection to Palmyra when it designated its 450 acres of land and 480,647 acres of lagoons, coral reefs and submerged lands and waters as a national wildlife refuge.
Anders Lyons, former director of the Conservancy’s Maui program, has been tapped to be the new Palmyra Project Director. Lyons will work with the Fish and Wildlife Service on conservation management at Palmyra and also oversee operation of the new research station....
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< < < PALMYRA FLASHBACK < < <
From Washington on $10 Million a Day : . . . Lobbyists and Nuclear Visigoths . . . Big money corporate lobbyists don't always win their battles, but when they are defeated it's rarely because Congress or the White House rises to defend the public interest. More likely, the scheme being advanced was so loopy that even official Washington was too embarrassed to take up the cause.
That's the case with a multi-billion plot put together by a cabal of beltway con men who hoped to dump tons of nuclear waste on a Pacific island.
Despite having been defeated, the would-be scheme is noteworthy in showing that well-connected capital honchos and aggressive lobbying can keep even the nuttiest projects in play. . . . The corporate vehicle for the plan is U.S. Fuel and Security Inc. (USF&S), a Washington-based firm....
USF&S had an easy time lining up money and influence peddlers to back its plan. Finding a dump site proved more difficult. Like a crew of punch drunk sailors lost at sea, Murphy & Co have desperately scouted the horizon for a Pacific Island where they can come aground. (Alex) Copson explained to me that the Pacific was chosen because it lies between Russia and the U.S., and because it is littered with "useless dots of real estate."
As he sees it, sacrificing a "tiny piece of bullshit in the Pacific" is a small price to pay in order to avoid the doomsday scenario of nuclear annihilation....
USF&S first approached the Marshall Islands ... Another possibility explored by USF&S was Midway Island ...
The next port of call was Palmyra, a tiny atoll about 1,000 miles south of Hawaii which is owned by the Fullard-Leo family of Honolulu but administered by the Dept of the Interior. USF&S drew up plans that showed that all the world's spent fuel could fit in the atoll's 5,400-acre lagoon, which would be filled with cement to prevent leakage.
Peter Savio, the Fullard-Leo's Honolulu-based real estate broker, said a Wall Street firm headed by Kirch, KVR, agreed to pay "in excess of $40 million" for Palmyra. "The buyers claimed they were interested in building a hotel and also mentioned plans for some sort of scientific research," he said.
"They never discussed using the island as a nuclear waste site."
Once again, strong opposition to the plan arose when word leaked out about Murphy & Co's true intentions. ... Hawaii's congressional delegation soon entered the fray, with all six members signing a letter to President Clinton in June of 1996 urging him to oppose the project....
The death knell for the Palmyra plan came in August, when the White House sent Senator Akaka a letter promising that the Administration would "strongly oppose" the USF&S proposal. KVR then decided not to buy Palmyra, costing Kirch's firm what Savio termed a "substantial deposit."
Copson was as bitter about this setback as he was about the unraveling of the Marshalls plan. During our conversation he called Senator Akaka an "ignorant lightweight." McGarey, the senator's aide, would "realize the error of his ways when terrorists set off a bomb in Tel Aviv."...
July 4, 2003
Volcanoes park
adds 116,000 acres
By Rod Thompson, Honolulu Star-Bulletin
HILO >> The National Park Service and Nature Conservancy announced the completion of the purchase of the 116,000-acre Kahuku Ranch for addition to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park yesterday.
The purchase is the largest conservation transaction in Hawaii's history, the agencies said.
The addition enlarges the park by more than 50 percent. It creates a huge sweep of parkland that arches from the lava flow areas near Puu Oo to the top of Mauna Loa and down the southwest rift of Mauna Loa through lava fields, native forests and pasture lands.
"This property is a conservation jewel for the state of Hawaii," said Suzanne Case, the Hawaii director of the conservancy.
"There are extensive areas of native forest," she said. "Even the areas in lava have rare Hawaiian insects in them."
The conservancy helped in the purchase of the land from the Estate of Samuel Mills Damon for $22 million.
If the buy had not gone through, there was speculation the land would have been cut up for sale as "gentleman estates."
U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye acquired $16 million for the purchase, with the Nature Conservancy providing "bridge financing" of the remainder. Congress is expected eventually to provide funds to reimburse the conservancy for that financing....
The purchase includes all of Kahuku Ranch above the Hawaii Belt Road, thereby excluding a small piece of the ranch below the road where ranch headquarters sit.
Volcanoes park Superintendent Jim Martin said the new area represents a "real management challenge."
The first year of so will involve taking public comments on how to use the area, he said.
The most likely scenario is active uses such as camping, hiking and horseback riding in the lower areas, he said. The upland area, up to 12,600 feet, would likely remain as wilderness.
The park has no additional money to manage the area, he said, adding, "It's not going to cost us a whole lot more right now."
The property is a working ranch which had 4,500 cattle when Damon proposed the purchase four years ago, he said.
Purchase of Kahuku was the top priority in the nation for the National Park Service, which has been interested in the ranch since 1938, Martin said.
WHO GIVES THE GREEN?
www.green-watch.com/search/orgdisplay.asp?Org=NCO177#grant
September 26, 2002
State considers appeal on Sacred Falls liability
Earl Anzai says the ruling
appears to be based on a
"very subjective standard"
By Debra Barayuga, Star-Bulletin
Mother's Day 1999 likely was the last day the general public legally set foot in Sacred Falls State Park.
And the state's top attorney is seriously considering appealing the court ruling that the state was at fault for the eight deaths and numerous injuries suffered in the May 9, 1999, rockslide.
"It would be very foolish of us if it did reopen with this kind of ruling on the books," Attorney General Earl Anzai said yesterday.
Circuit Judge Dexter Del Rosario ruled Tuesday that the state knew about previous rockfalls that caused injuries or, in one case, killed a 4-year-old girl in 1982, but failed to adequately warn visitors of the severity of the rockfall hazards, particularly in the waterfall area.
"It's very troubling because it seems to be a very subjective standard or one that requires perfection, rather than adequate warning," Anzai said.
"We believe there's some expectation that the public has some responsibility to read and to take the signs into account," he added. There were at least 10 signs warning of falling rocks and/or rockslides at the beginning and along the 2-mile trail into Kaluanui Valley, he said. Whether the signs were too wordy or too brief, were posted too high or too low or had bullet holes in them, "the point is, the person could read that (sign)," Anzai said....
There is also a state task force that is reviewing signs at beach parks after a bill was passed in recent years giving the state and county immunity from shore-break accidents.
Jon M. Van Dyke, also a professor of law at the university, said the state has to strike a balance between giving people adequate warning but allowing them to experience the state's natural wonders in their natural state....
Citizens can sue the federal government for injuries suffered at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, but they rarely do, said spokeswoman Mardie Lane...
One reality the state faces, however, is that state parks are "horribly underfunded, and that puts the state between a rock and a hard place," Antolini said.
In the Sacred Falls case, Del Rosario had found that the state did not do an adequate job of surveying the risks involved or evaluating rockfall incidents so future accidents could be prevented.
Doing so would have been a time-consuming and intensive effort, Antolini said.
"It's very difficult to provide safe access and appropriate signage in a park system that doesn't have adequate resources -- and that is another tragedy."
Because of insufficient funding, the state may be forced to close areas that otherwise would remain open if it had more resources, she added....
State Rep. Colleen Meyer represents the district where Sacred Falls and the adjacent Maakua Gulch trail, which also remains closed, are located. She said at some point individuals have to take some responsibility for their safety and that there is no way the state can guarantee something will not happen.
"How many signs are enough signs?" she asked. "If the state is going to be sued every time someone is killed, pretty soon everything is going to be off limits."
~ ~ ~
Hiking and conservation groups
fear trail access restrictions
By Diana Leone, Star-Bulletin
Hiking and conservation groups worry that the negligence ruling in the Sacred Falls lawsuit could lead landowners, including the state, to restrict access to some natural places.
Spokespeople for the Sierra Club, Hawaiian Trail and Mountain Club, and the Nature Conservancy said they regret the loss of eight lives and dozens of injuries at Sacred Falls on May 9, 1999. But they want nature lovers to be able to choose where they go.
Suzanne Case, executive director of the Nature Conservancy, said Circuit Judge Dexter Del Rosario's ruling that the state was at fault at Sacred Falls "could have a dampening effect on private landowners who allow the public onto their land for recreational use."
The conservancy, which brings visitors onto its conservation land, is not "going to shut things down or anything, but we'll probably be a little more cautious," Case said.
Sierra Club Director Jeff Mikulina said the ruling surprised him. "In the big picture, it points to the need for taking care of our state parks. Close to 80 percent of visitors to our state parks are tourists, so there is a need for signage, interpretations and warnings," Mikulina said. "That was the whole key to this (Sacred Falls) lawsuit."
Improving warning signs in state park and recreation areas is part of the Department of Land & Natural Resources' ongoing Environmental Risk Assessment and Management Plan, said Curt Cottrell, manager of the department's Na Ala Hele trails program...
http://starbulletin.com/2002/09/26/news/story4.html
Obituaries
Thursday, June 22, 2000
Kenneth B. Hipp Jr., 28, a former scuba instructor and commercial diver in Hawaii Kai, died June 8 in Patterson, La. He was born in Chapel Hill. N.C. He is survived by father Kenneth B.; mother Ann B., and brother Andrew C. Services: 4 p.m. Saturday at Unity Church, 3608 Diamond Head Circle. Aloha attire. No flowers. Donations suggested to the Nature Conservancy of Hawaii for its work with the Ko'olau Mountains Watershed Partnership, 923 Nuuanu Ave., Honolulu 96817.
http://starbulletin.com/2000/06/22/news/obits.html
Watershed Partners and Projects
KO'OLAU MOUNTAIN RANGE
KO'OLAU MOUNTAIN WATERSHED PARTNERSHIP
GOAL:
Protect the mauka forested watersheds that fall in the forestry reserve boundary. Some previous projects involve surveying lands to record what's on the property- natives species (rare and endangered), fencing projects to protect the resources from pigs and goats, invasive species control.
PARTNERS:
Comprised of landowners in the Ko'olau Mountains.
Founding members include Department of Land and Natural Resources, Agribusiness
Development Corporation, Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, U.S. Army, The
Board of Water Supply, Queen Emma Foundation, Kamehameha Schools, Manana
Valley Farms, Tiana Partners, Bishop Museum, Kualoa Ranch, Hawai'i Reserves Inc,
O'ahu Country Club.
ASSOCIATE PARTNERS:
US Fish and Wildlife Service, Nature Conservancy of Hawai'i.
ttp://www.state.hi.us/dlnr/dofaw/wmp/koolau/default.htm
Nature Conservancy Adds 1,800 Acres to Its Honomalino Preserve in South Kona
The Nature Conservancy of Hawai`i today announced its purchase of an additional 1,800 acres adjacent to its Honomalino Preserve in South Kona on the island of Hawai`i. The $1 million purchase of the neighboring Kapu`a parcel was made possible by a donation of nearly half the property's value by seller Leighton Mau and funding from the U.S. Forest Service.
"This is a beautiful place that has tremendous value to our islands' heritage," said Conservancy Executive Director Rex Johnson. "We're very grateful to Leighton Mau and the U.S. Forest Service for their generous support in making this acquisition possible."...
Much of the funding for the purchase comes from the U.S. Forest Service's Forest Legacy program, in partnership with the State of Hawaii through the Division of Forestry and Wildlife (DOFAW). "The Forest Legacy Program is a voluntary program established to help landowners protect forested lands from conversion to non-forest uses, such as pasture or sub-division" said Jack Ewel, of the U.S. Forest Service. "We are pleased to have completed the first Forest Legacy program in Hawaii, and look forward to working with DOFAW and other landowners in Kona to help them protect the ecological and economic value of the forests on their lands."
The expanded 5,821-acre protected area, now called the Kona Hema Preserve, is adjacent to the state's 25,000-acre Manuka Natural Area Reserve, bringing to 31,000 acres the contiguous area of forest now permanently protected in south Kona. DOFAW Administrator Mike Buck, is pleased with the new purchase and the success of the Legacy program.
"With strong support from the Hawaii delegation, Congress just approved an additional $1.7 million in Forest Legacy funding for Hawaii. As landowners of more than 42,000 acres in south Kona, we look forward to working in partnership with the Conservancy, the Forest Service, and other landowners to ensure the long-term protection of this unique forest system. "
In 1999, the Conservancy purchased 4,021acres at Honomalino from First Hawaiian Bank, who also made a charitable donation of much of the property value. According to Heather Cole, Big Island Field Representative for The Nature Conservancy, the Conservancy's goal in south Kona is twofold. "Primarily, we want to protect the native forests and the biological values they harbor. But we also want to develop a model of sustainable koa forestry that will enable other landowners to maintain both the biological and economic value of their lands. The acquisition of Kapu`a was key to making that equation work for us in south Kona."
The Nature Conservancy of Hawai`i was established in 1980 and is the local affiliate of an international non-profit organization based in Arlington, VA. Its mission is to preserve the plants, animals, and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive. The Nature Conservancy has helped protect more than 200,000 acres in Hawai`i and currently manages 11 preserves on six islands.
January 7, 1999
Nature Conservancy
looks to buy coral atoll
With federal help, Palmyra may
become a national refuge
By Lori Tighe, Star-Bulletin
The U.S. government's $8 million appropriation to buy Palmyra Atoll, "a postcard paradise," has pleased its owners, but didn't bring a sale any closer.
The $8 million is the largest allocation for a federal refuge in the western United States, said U.S. Sen. Dan Inouye yesterday.
The asking price is roughly $35 million, but private funds from the Nature Conservancy are intended to help pay for it.
The Nature Conservancy, which is negotiating the deal, made its second offer in December to buy Palmyra Atoll, 1,000 miles south of Hawaii, from the Fullard-Leo family. They have owned Palmyra since the 1920s and bought it for $22,000.
"The appropriation is positive, but there's still no agreement on price," said Peter Savio, agent representing the family, and owner of Palmyra Development and Savio Realty....
"We're thrilled about the $8 million," said Barbara Maxfield, Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman. "We're hopeful the Nature Conservancy can work out a deal with the landowners."
If the Nature Conservancy buys Palmyra, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will run it as a national refuge with limited public use....
Palmyra Atoll, which has 600 land acres and 15,000 acres of coral reefs, remains the world's only undeveloped wet atoll, Maragos said.
Read the complete story at...
http://starbulletin.com/1999/01/07/news/story10.html
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JACK ABRAMOFF - HENRY PAULSON - GALE NORTON
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HAUNANI APOLIONA - JEFF WATANABE
COLBERT MATSUMOTO - JAMES WATT
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(...with more to come!)
* * * * *
Air America: Flying High with the CIA
Allianz...was a deal made with the Devil?
Birds in the Halls: The University of Hawaii
British Petroleum: Buzzards in the Pipelines
Confessions of a Whistleblower
Dirty Money, Dirty Politics & Bishop Estate
The Consuelo Zobel Alger Foundation
The Office of Hawaiian Affairs
The Vultures in Maunawili Valley
Office of the U.S Trustee vs. Harmon
Vultures up to their beaks in Tesoro Petroleum
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First posted: December 1, 2007, by The Catbird
Last Updated: August 10, 2009