ENDANGERED
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park's funding shortage is showing
By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Big Island Bureau
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HAWAI'I VOLCANOES NATIONAL PARK, Hawai'i — The natural resources in the state's busiest national park are in poor condition, mostly because non-native plants and animals are threatening to overwhelm native flora and fauna including many endangered species, according to a new study of the park.
The study by the National Parks Conservation Association, an organization dedicated to advocating for national parks, also judged the condition of natural features and cultural sites at the park to be "fair to poor," and argues for more money for park operations.
Hawai'i Volcanoes is among the national parks with the largest numbers of endangered plants and animals in the national system, with a total of 54 species in the Big Island park that are endangered, threatened or proposed for endangered or threatened status.
About 1.6 million people visit the park each year, and the park has been designated a World Heritage Site. Nearly 131,000 acres of the park are designated as wilderness.
Park Superintendent Cindy Orlando said the 333,086-acre park needs 64 more employees, but lacks the money to hire them.
The park has about 183 employees, including seasonal workers and staff who work at the park under cooperating agreements with other agencies.
"Remember, this is not unique to this park," Orlando said. "It's a system-wide issue. I think it speaks to the lack of funding for the system."
Kari Kiser, senior program coordinator for the Pacific regional office of the conservation association, agreed. Of the 60 reports her organization released so far on national parks, Kiser said, "there are very few parks that have gotten anything above fair and poor, and it's solely due to the lack of resources that are made available to them."
Kiser said there is an estimated $8 billion backlog in maintenance work in national parks across the nation.
The report on Hawai'i Volcanoes contends the park needs more money to pursue strategies such as fencing and weed control to protect habitat critical to the recovery of native bird and plant populations in the park.
Steps such as installing fencing to keep out pigs, goats and other hoofed animals has helped other species to recover in some parts of the park, but such steps need to be expanded to other park lands, the report said.
Rhonda Loh, chief of the park's natural resources management division, said the park now spends about $1.5 million of its $17.7 million annual budget combating invasive species.
Orlando said the base budget for the park is about $7.1 million, with an additional $6.4 million in federal money supplied for special projects. The park earns more than $3.54 million in fees, including visitor entrance fees, and receives $735,000 more from donations and other sources.
Other study findings:
For all of the criticism of the park budget, the report credits Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park with working aggressively with volunteers, landowners around the park and others on its four showcase programs to protect endangered species, including efforts to increase the populations of the hawksbill turtle, the Hawaiian petrel, the nene goose and the Mauna Loa silversword plant.
And Orlando said the park received its first increase in base funding in many years under the federal Centennial Initiative to restore park funding as the system approaches its 100th anniversary in 2016, and said the national park system received the largest operating budget increase in its history.
For Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, that translated into money for about 22 new seasonal positions and a full-time volunteer coordinator position to help increase the role of volunteer labor at the park, which already provides 40,000 hours of free labor a year, or the equivalent of 25 full-time employees, she said.
Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com.
