HILT Earns Federal Grant to Protect Māhukona
Families participated in a biological survey at Māhukona in preparation for the USFWS proposal.
“Māhukona: An Indigenous-Led Landscape Level Conservation Effort for Resilient Ecosystems & Communities”...the name of Hawaiʻi Land Trust’s and the Department of Land and Natural Resources joint application for federal US Fish and Wildlife Service Recovery Land Acquisition (USFWS RLA) grant funding. Culturally, names are sacred and hold mana. Earlier this year, I had the privilege of working alongside many community volunteers and volunteer scientists to walk the land for the purpose of biological flora and fauna surveys, searching through hundreds of pages of documents and scientific journals, and meeting with numerous federal and state staff to prepare an application for purchase funds for 642 acres out at Māhukona, Kohala, Hawaiʻi.
In our preparation of this USFWS RLA application for Māhukona, Brett Mossman and I saw a beautiful uaʻu or Hawaiian dark-rumped petrel (Pterodroma phaeopygia sandwichensis) in flight off-shore, gliding so effortlessly along the surface of the water. Uʻau are an endangered bird species who call the Kohala mountains home for their most concentrated nesting sites in the islands.
We also came across beautiful communities of coastal sandalwood, ʻiliahiʻaloʻe (Santalum ellipticum) and captured stories from ʻohana and community member’s who have seen the endangered ʻōpeʻapeʻa, the Hawaiian hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus semotus).
When USFWS announced the $4,000,000 award towards Hawaiʻi Land Trust's purchase of Māhukona to permanently protect 642 acres of land that has been slated for decades for high density resort and urban development use, we were quite humbled and filled with emotion. Māhukona has been awarded the highest federal USFWS RLA grant award for any Hawaiʻi project and this ʻāina and its ʻohana and community are quite deserving and capable to take on the kuleana to mālama Māhukona in a way in which we are looking back, to inform our way forward. We still have a long way to go, more funds to raise, before we can celebrate the completion of this momentous project, but are grateful for the investments made by the federal government, the County of Hawaiʻi, a number of private foundations, and the many individuals who have supported so far.
On behalf of Hawaiʻi Land Trust, I would like to mahalo everyone that has been involved in getting us this far and who have helped a lending a hand in securing such a worthy grant from USFWS. From the ʻohana of Māhukona, the Solomon and Lim ʻohana, the Nā Kālai Waʻa ʻohana, Shorty Bertelmann, Chelsea Dickson, Kealii Maielua, Kai and Kailin Kim and ʻohana, Toni Withington, Fred Cachola, Congressman Kai Kahele, Senator Brian Schatz, Mayor Mitch Roth, Councilman Tim Richards, Brett Mossman, Haunani Kane, Roberta Martin, Dr. Scott Fisher, the countless more and kūpuna that are guiding the way.
— Shae Kamakaala, Director of ʻĀina Protection