---

Cars without plates
can travel Nimitz

Question: Why are new cars, those that have not yet been delivered to a dealer, allowed to be driven up and down Nimitz Highway, which I frequent every day? They still have protective covering on their body parts. There is no license or registration.

Answer: They're allowed to do so for one specific reason, according to Dennis Kamimura, administrator of the city Motor Vehicle & Licensing Division.

He cited Section 286-53(f) of the Hawaii Revised Statutes as allowing new vehicles to be operated on public highways without plates "on the initial continuous movement from the place of entry of the vehicle into this state to the warehouse, storeroom, salesroom, or other place of business selected by the manufacturer or dealer."

More on turtles

Federal officials are hoping to implement an outreach project to educate the public on how to appreciate the Hawaiian sea turtles (honu) -- but only from a distance.

We weren't able to reach federal wildlife officials for comment about a reader's complaint that too many people harass sea turtles by getting too close to them (Kokua Line, June 5).

In that column, noted honu authority George Balazs said he believes most casual contact between humans and the Hawaiian sea turtles these days is not harmful and, in his eyes, often beneficial to both.

State wildlife enforcement officials agreed that most human contact did not appear to be harmful and that action was taken only for "egregious" activity. But they also said they did not want people to think they should touch or play with the turtles.

Gene Hester, resident agent in charge of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's office of law enforcement in Hawaii, recently contacted Kokua Line to say that the "legal response" to the question of how people are supposed to deal with turtles is that they are not to touch or handle them.

Federal criminal sanctions for harming or harassing the turtles, like state sanctions, are usually applied only "when something egregious happens to a turtle," he acknowledged.

However, observing that, Hester said federal authorities do "not condone behavior such as feeding turtles nor making physical contact in any way with them."

Instead, federal officials "encourage people to appreciate the wildlife and observe them from a distance."

To that end, he said both his office and the law enforcement division of the National Marine Fisheries Service "are currently pursuing options of expanded outreach that would educate the public to appreciate turtles and observe them from a distance."

However, nothing definite has been set up yet.

"We firmly believe that physical contact with the turtles is inappropriate behavior as intended by the law, and that ultimately it may be a child that loses a finger or is otherwise injured through petting or feeding of a turtle," Hester said.

|

---

---