Newswatch

By Star-Bulletin Staff

Thursday, August 28, 1997

King's Guard gets
helmets back -- plus one

Sixteen helmets were stolen, but King's Guard got back 17 of them.

"Talk about aloha spirit," said an elated Albert Keliikuloa, vice president of the Azabu Group, which owns King's Village in Waikiki, where the drill team performs the "changing of the guard" ceremony nightly.

"Somebody turned in the extra helmet at King's Village and it's one of the (King's Guard) originals made in England," Keliikuloa added. "We think it's 12-15 years old. We don't know for sure if it was stolen."

The 16 helmets taken from a van stolen in Manoa Monday night were recovered yesterday, but not all at once.

The white 19th century British-style helmets were packed in two plastic storage crates.

At about 10 a.m. yesterday, Keliikuloa's office received a call from a St. Louis Heights man who said he saw the two crates containing the helmets while walking on Kaminaka Drive. When Keliikuloa arrived, he found only one crate containing eight helmets.

At about 2 p.m., Keliikuloa received a call from a St. Louis Heights resident who had the other box. "The woman said her son had noticed the containers (Tuesday) and took one home (yesterday)," Keliikuloa said. "When they saw what was inside the containers, they called us."

Waikoloa hotel on state
land, court decides

HILO -- The Hilton Waikoloa Village on the Big Island is partially built on 1.75 acres of state land, and the hotel must start paying for use of the land, U.S. District Judge David Ezra has ruled.

The Aug. 15 ruling ends a 14- effort to have state ownership of the land recognized, said Douglas Blake of the Kona Conservation Group, which started the effort.

Although federal Magistrate Francis Yamashita ruled last year that the state made a mistake in allowing a private landowner to take possession of the land, Blake still maintains the state action was deliberate.

"This was no accident but an attempt to purposely defraud the public," he said.

Endangered hawk pressures
nearly extinct Hawaiian crow

It's become a battle between endangered species.

For nature conservationists, the story of Hiwa Hiwa and Hilu, two young female alala, shows the difficulty of preserving wildlife close to extinction in Hawaii.

The two birds were raised in captivity and released in a historic alala habitat in South Kona on the Big Island in 1993 and 1994. Hiwa Hiwa had bonded with one of only 13 alala known to still exist there in the wild. Biologists were hoping she would be the first alala raised in captivity to breed in the wild and lay eggs next year.

But U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists found Hilu dead on Aug. 19 and Hiwa Hiwa dead on Aug. 24.

They believe a pair of io, the Hawaiian hawk that is also an endangered species, were in the area scouting for food for their fledglings and found the two young alala.

The io - about 1,600 are left - is a natural predator of Hawaiian forest birds, and the alala is one of the most conspicuous birds in the forest. Two other young alala living in the wild were found dead last January, probably from io predation as well.

"As discouraging and frustrating as it is to lose young alala to predation, it is not to be unexpected," said Alan Lieberman, program director for the Peregrine Fund in Hawaii.

"We need to play a numbers game - release greater numbers of alala within their historic range so they can successfully defend themselves from io attacks."

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Police/Fire


By Star-Bulletin staff

Fire rescue crew finds
four stranded paddlers

A fire resue crew found four stranded canoe paddlers last night in waters near Chinaman's Hat.

The four men had paddled out of Heeia Kea Boat Harbor before sunset. At 11:20 p.m. fire rescuers found the men clinging to a buoy and a canoe after their canoe's outrigger had broken off.

All the men were in good condition.

Pedestrian hit, killed
on Farrington Highway

A 34-year-old man died early today while crossing Farrington Highway near Leeward Community College.

Police said at 12:30 a.m., a small pickup truck Ewa-bound on Farrington east of the Kamehameha Highway overpass hit the man.

See expanded coverage in today's Honolulu Star-Bulletin.
See our [Info] section for subscription information.