Land Board hears
competing proposals
for West Hawaii parcel

By Rod Thompson
Big Island correspondent

HILO >> Kuulei Keakealani was nearly in tears after listening to people from outside the area criticize a proposal for mixed conservation, ranching and hunting use of 21,000 acres at Puuwaawaa in West Hawaii.

"This is my home, my family, my land, my history," she told the state Board of Land and Natural Resources yesterday.

She and other Hawaiians have generations of ancestral ties to the state-owned land, she said. But she is caught up in two competing proposals for a ranching lease that is due to expire soon.

Keakealani is part of Ka Ahahui o Puu Waawaa, which wants to take over the lease and return the land to multiple uses, including eco-tourism. A competing request from the current leaseholders, Ernest and Stephen DeLuz and Mikio Kato, would allow them to continue their ranching. They are allied with hunters who also propose environmental protection but no eco-tourism.

The difference between the groups is emphasis. The hunters want sustained hunting, meaning no eradication of animals.

The Ahahui also wants sustained hunting, but with eradication of animals in critical areas. The ranchers want at least 1,000 cattle, for profitability. The Ahahui wants no more than 500 cattle, primarily for fire control.

Ahahui Vice President Chris Yuen said ranching alone will not save native plants in the area.

"You cannot maximize all things in all places at all times," he said.

Of 21,000 acres, only eight acres are now fenced to protect 22 endangered plants, he said.

Keakealani quoted her father, "Just like you and me, the land has got to rest."

Former Republican senatorial candidate John Carroll made the harshest criticism of the Ahahui plan, saying it is really a plan from the Nature Conservancy, because that organization helped put it together.

Ahahui board member Sally Rice responded, "I'm not the alter ego, nor am I a pawn of the Nature Conservancy."

Land Board member Fred Holschuh said he plans to set a meeting in which the two sides can try to resolve their differences.