Army land exempt
as critical habitat
Satisfied that the Army already is protecting endangered plants on its Oahu lands, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it will not list 27,000 acres of Army land as "critical habitat" for the plants.
The agency excluded the Army land from the 55,040 acres of Oahu designated yesterday as critical habitat for 99 threatened and endangered plants, but that doesn't mean Fish and Wildlife is giving the military a blanket exemption, said Paul Henson, the service's Pacific Islands field supervisor.
The Navy still has lands designated as critical habitat on both Oahu and Kauai, Henson noted.
Critical habitats, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service, are "areas of habitat that are known to be essential for an endangered or threatened species to recover and that require special management or protection." Within these areas, any use of federal money or workers requires Fish and Wildlife to evaluate the proposed actions as to whether they could harm the endangered species.
Fish and Wildlife is listing its final decisions on what isle areas are deemed critical to the conservation of an endangered or threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. The service has published final rules for all Hawaiian Islands but the Big Island in the Federal Register.
Between 10 percent and 15 percent of the state will be listed as critical habitat for more than 200 plants, as the result of a lawsuit against Fish and Wildlife by conservation groups.
In 1998, a federal court judge in Honolulu required that the Fish and Wildlife Service name critical habitats for 255 threatened and endangered native plants across the islands.
If landowners "are doing things that meet or exceed what critical habitat would provide, it's redundant" to label land with the term, Henson said.
David Henkin, attorney for EarthJustice, disagrees that naming lands already under conservation programs as critical habitat is redundant.
"This (the Bush) administration has launched an all-out assault on critical habitat. It has expressed what has been implicit in the past -- that it doesn't like that Congress wants it to designate critical habitat," said Henkin.
The final rule and other information about the designation are available at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Web site at pacificislands.fws.gov. Copies of the rule may be obtained by calling the Service's Honolulu office at 541-3441.