COURTESY OF ROB SHALLENBERGER / U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE Midway Phoenix Corp. and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have dissolved their agreement to run an ecotourism destination on Midway Atoll.

Midway contractor
officially pulls out

The Georgia company says
it is losing money in
the ecotour venture

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By Diana Leone
dleone@starbulletin.com

After 5 1/2 years of offering a unique ecotourism destination on Midway Atoll, a Georgia-based company is officially pulling out today.

Midway Phoenix Corp. and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are dissolving the cooperative agreement that had been in place since 1996, both confirmed yesterday.

Some Midway Phoenix crew will continue to operate the airport and utilities for the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge through May 1.

By then the Fish and Wildlife Service hopes to have another operator running the airport and infrastructure, so that its staff and some scientists conducting research in the remote Northwest Hawaiian Islands will still be able to do their work, said Robert Shallenberger, deputy project leader for the Hawaiian and Pacific Islands National Wildlife Refuge complex.

But for hundreds of ecotourists who hoped to fish, snorkel or bird-watch at Midway this year, their trips are canceled, with little hope of a rain check before 2003 at the earliest.

The current scenario actually is an improvement from a month ago, when Midway Phoenix was publicly saying it was leaving but had not yet formally notified Fish and Wildlife of its intentions.

Even the U.S. Coast Guard worried aloud where it would make mid-Pacific stopovers.

Midway Phoenix Executive Vice President Bob Tracey called the transitional arrangement "mutually beneficial."

In a short telephone interview, Tracey repeated his statement of a month ago that his company has lost at least $15 million while operating Midway and that it cannot go on. He also warned that "no one will go out and run Midway for free."

In addition to staffing, the airport and utilities, the company had run a hotel in renovated military barracks, provided meal service for up to 100 guests and subcontracted tour packages.

Last month, Tracey said Fish and Wildlife "managed at an extreme" -- citing the removal of non-native ironwood trees and the agency's refusal to allow moneymaking activities such as kayaking or surfing.

Fish and Wildlife's priority for the refuge is to protect its millions of Laysan albatross and other seabirds, endangered Hawaiian monk seals and threatened green sea turtles, Shallenberger said, as well as to provide interpretive services for visitors.

Shallenberger blamed the breakup on "two groups that had a different vision and a different set of priorities."

"Midway Phoenix alleges that somehow restrictions we placed on them because this is a refuge made it impossible for them to succeed," he said. "But there were no restrictions there at the end that weren't there the first day."