Unique park needs asserted for Hawaii
Associated Press
Hawaii faces unique conservation issues because there are still lands in the islands that need to be protected, the chairman of a congressional subcommittee said yesterday.
Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., said if Hawaii's conservation areas are not expanded, what little open space is left will become even more heavily used and cramped.
Souder spoke to reporters during a visit to Honolulu for a hearing on national parks. He had earlier visited national parks on the neighbor islands.
"The biggest surprise I had in going to islands other than Oahu was that unlike Alaska, where you have town and then wild, there are people everywhere," Souder said.
"If you don't expand that open space, what little open space there is, is going to become so incredibly cramped ... it will seem like a town park," he said.
U.S. Rep. Ed Case (D, Neighbor Islands-Rural Oahu) told panelists that most people in Hawaii want to expand the national park system in the islands. The island Democrat said the question hinges on which lands would best suit the mission of the National Park Service.
Yesterday's hearing in Honolulu was the seventh that Souder's subcommittee has held around the country focusing on the issues facing national parks.
The subcommittee on criminal justice, drug policy and human resources has already met in Boston, Seattle and Flagstaff, Ariz., among other cities. It plans other hearings in Chicago, Atlanta and Denver.
Souder said the subcommittee wanted to hold a hearing in Hawaii because the state has a large number of national parks for its size.
The subcommittee also wanted to hear about invasive-species problems at Hawaii's parks and how the parks are a place for educating the public about native Hawaiian culture.