<DOC>
[109th Congress House Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:27922.wais]
NATIONAL PARKS OF HAWAII
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,
DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
DECEMBER 1, 2005
__________
Serial No. 109-147
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/
index.html
http://www.house.gov/reform
______
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27-922 WASHINGTON : 2006
_____________________________________________________________________________
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
DAN BURTON, Indiana TOM LANTOS, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN L. MICA, Florida PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
CHRIS CANNON, Utah WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee DIANE E. WATSON, California
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
DARRELL E. ISSA, California LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland
JON C. PORTER, Nevada BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
KENNY MARCHANT, Texas ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia Columbia
PATRICK T. McHENRY, North Carolina ------
CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina (Independent)
JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio
------ ------
Melissa Wojciak, Staff Director
David Marin, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director
Rob Borden, Parliamentarian/Senior Counsel
Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk
Phil Barnett, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana, Chairman
PATRICK T. McHenry, North Carolina ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
DAN BURTON, Indiana BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
JOHN L. MICA, Florida DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota DIANE E. WATSON, California
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
CHRIS CANNON, Utah C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina Columbia
Ex Officio
TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
Marc Wheat, Staff Director
Jim Kaiser, Professional Staff Member
Malia Holst, Clerk
Tony Haywood, Minority Professional Staff Member
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on December 1, 2005................................. 1
Statement of:
Hays, Frank, Pacific Area Director, National Park Service,
accompanied by Geri Bell, Superintendent of the Kaloko-
Honokohau, Marilyn Parris, Superintendent of Haleakala
National Park, and Cindy Orlando, Superintendent, Hawaii
Volcanoes National Park.................................... 10
Obey, Craig, vice president, government affairs of the
National Parks Conservation Association; Suzanne Case,
executive director of the Nature Conservancy in Hawaii;
George Sullivan, chairman of the Arizona Memorial
Association; and Casey Jarman, board member of the Friends
of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.......................... 40
Case, Suzanne............................................ 56
Jarman, Casey............................................ 64
Obey, Craig.............................................. 40
Sullivan, George......................................... 63
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Case, Hon. Ed, a Representative in Congress from the State of
Hawaii, prepared statement of.............................. 8
Case, Suzanne, executive director of the Nature Conservancy
in Hawaii, prepared statement of........................... 58
Hays, Frank, Pacific Area Director, National Park Service,
prepared statement of...................................... 14
Jarman, Casey, board member of the Friends of Hawaii
Volcanoes National Park, prepared statement of............. 66
Obey, Craig, vice president, government affairs of the
National Parks Conservation Association, prepared statement
of......................................................... 43
Souder, Hon. Mark E., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Indiana, prepared statement of.................... 3
NATIONAL PARKS OF HAWAII
----------
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2005
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and
Human Resources,
Committee on Government Reform,
Honolulu, HI.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:11 a.m., at
the Hawaii State Capitol, room 329, 415 South Beretania Street,
Honolulu, HI, Hon. Mark E. Souder (chairman of the
subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representative Souder.
Also present: Representatives Abercrombie and Case.
Staff present: Marc Wheat, staff director and chief
counsel; Jim Kaiser, counsel; Mark Pfundstein, professional
staff member; and Tony Haywood, minority counsel.
Mr. Souder. The subcommittee will come to order. Good
morning, and thank you for joining us today. This is the
seventh in a series of hearings focusing on the critical issues
facing the National Park Service. I would like to welcome
Members of Congress who joined us today who deeply care about
the National Parks, like Congressman Abercrombie and
Congressman Case. I have worked together with them on numerous
issues, and it's good to be here with them here in Hawaii.
This hearing will focus on parks in Hawaii. Millions of
Americans have been captivated, either in person or on
television, by the nearly continuous eruptions of Hawaii's
volcanoes. The unparalleled sight active volcanoes are a unique
part of the National Park Service.
Also unique among the National Park Service units is that
of the USS Arizona Memorial. This site, a memorial to those who
lost their lives on a quiet Sunday morning nearly 64 years ago,
holds a special place in the hearts and minds of Americans.
The National Park Service is facing many challenges and
problems. Management and funding are of constant concern to all
park units. Underneath these issues are problems special to
each park unit. In Hawaii, visitor services are of a particular
concern. The popularity of Hawaii's parks and the number of
people wishing to visit them pose many difficulties. The USS
Arizona Memorial's location, in the middle of Pearl Harbor,
places special demands on the National Park Service--how does
the Park Service transport so many people out to the Memorial,
and how can this be improved?
Moreover, the tendency of lava to move and flow where it
wants creates a problem because people want to visit the lava.
Moving visitor's centers closer to lava or losing centers to
lava flows is certainly costly and hard to manage.
Also of concern to the National Park Service is the cost
involved with invasive species. A problem throughout the United
States and throughout Park Service units in every region of the
country, Hawaii may be one of the best examples of this
problem. The enormous task of combating this problem
undoubtedly impacts management and funding considerations on
many levels.
I would like to welcome Congressmen Neil Abercrombie and Ed
Case to this hearing. Although not Members of this committee, I
welcome them to join the panel for this hearing. Both gentlemen
are strong advocates for Hawaii and for the National Parks.
Our first panel I would like to welcome Frank Hays, the
Pacific Area Director of the National Park Service. He will be
joined during the questioning time by Geri Bell, Superintendent
of the Kaloko-Honokohau--close?
Ms. Bell. [Shakes head].
Mr. Souder. No. Marilyn Parris, the Superintendent of
Haleakala National Park, and Cindy Orlando, the Superintendent
of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
Mr. Souder. Our second panel will be Craig Obey, vice
president for government affairs of the National Parks
Conservation Association; Suzanne Case, executive director of
the Nature Conservancy in Hawaii; George Sullivan, chairman of
the Arizona Memorial Association; and Casey Jarman, board
member of the Friends of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
Last summer I spent 3 weeks here doing narcotics-related
things in the parks and was able to visit with many of you at
the different parks and see firsthand the variety of
challenges. One of the most troubling--and I hope we can get
into it a little bit, too. We were just talking about the
lawsuit at Hawaii Volcanoes and the one over at Haleakala where
the person fell into the water and drowned. It is a huge
challenge how to figure it out, with so many tourists that do
not follow the signs. And unless you're going to put a ball and
chain around them, how you can enjoy the visitor experience?
I also saw firsthand--fortunately the Navy took me out to
the Pearl Harbor site, but I saw that in the summer and earlier
in January, the long lines. And it isn't just a small visitor
center. I think in the summer it's a 6-hour wait to get tickets
to the USS Arizona. There's only so many the actual site can
hold, in addition to the visitor's center challenge. So we have
some huge challenges with that Memorial.
I thank you all again for coming and yield to Congressman
Abercrombie.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Mark E. Souder follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7922.001
Mr. Abercrombie. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know you're
anxious to get to the panel. I just want to say welcome to you.
We're delighted that you're here, and I want to indicate to all
the folks here you may find it unusual that the Committee on
Government Reform is hearing something having to do with parks
or the other subjects that are before us, and it has to do with
a philosophy. For one thing, we're fortunate that Mark is an
alumnus of the Resources Committee, so you already have someone
with familiarity with what we're trying to do. And he's trying
to promote at the present time a way to deal with the National
Parks through his National Park Centennial Act dealing with the
maintenance backlog, and hopefully that we can deal with this
in a volunteer way, in certain respects. Across the country,
there are people who love the parks and want to see them
succeed.
So what's happening here today? I'm a great believer that
politics is addition; the more people you can get for you and
where you want to go, the better off it is for whatever reasons
they have. And the reasons, the rationale of the Committee on
Government Reform has a different mission than the Resources
Committee, but the result is the same, if we're able to get
exposure for the meritorious activity we're trying to promote
regarding parks, particularly here in Hawaii today.
So we're delighted that he's here and we're delighted to
participate in this hearing. I'm delighted that yet another
Member, particularly a Member with the influential position
that he occupies as chairman here of the subcommittee, I'm sure
we're--I'm confident at the end of the day we're coming out of
here with another ally in our quest to get full funding for the
activities that are associated with the Memorial and with the
National Parks in Hawaii.
Mr. Souder. Thank you. Congressman Case.
Mr. Case of Hawaii. Thank you very much, Congressman. I
want to join Representative Abercrombie in thanking you for
doing this. I think Mark alluded to it in his opening remarks,
but I wanted to let everyone know that he's been a strong
supporter of Hawaii, both in this area as well as in the area
of crystal methamphetamine, where he is rightly regarded as a
leader in our county's effort in that way. He was at a hearing
with me in Kailua-Kona, a field hearing, I guess you would call
it, not an official hearing, but certainly a full-scale meeting
on Maui on that, spoke yesterday at a national conference
that's taking place right here in Hawaii right now, as he
noted, has visited our parks, is interested in our parks, and
is regarded as a national leader in terms of protecting and
saving our National Parks.
Let me make a couple of introductory remarks. I hope the
people that are going to testify get to some of these points,
but I think the first thing I want to say on behalf of all of
us Congressmen is that here in Hawaii we love our National Park
system. We have a very, very long history with our National
Park system, going back almost a century. We have great
National Parks and units within the National Park system, eight
in all. They have some common similarities, but they're quite
different also. If you go to each one of them, you will see the
uniqueness of them. Some focus on geological and cultural and
scenic issues, some on history, some on recreation.
We have a very obviously unique one at Kalaupapa, the
National Historic site on Molokai, which you're still waiting
to get to and we're going to try to get you to that. That park
is actually celebrating its 25th year this year. Of course we
have the USS Arizona, in dire and pressing need of some
rehabilitation and kind of an upgrading to handle crowds and
interest that is way beyond anything that anybody could have
reasonably projected when that was going.
I think the second thing I want to do is just commend the
employees of the National Park Service. I think we would all
say that in all of our experiences we have great employees
here. We have the best professional staff throughout the
Federal Government, and it's been a real pleasure for me
personally--and I'm sure Neil will echo this as well as
everybody else--to work with each and all of you. You're
fantastic, easy to work with from a congressional perspective.
We're all on the same page. When we have issues, we work them
out together. So I really thank you for that.
A couple of kind of specific points. Clearly, as you look
at the challenges facing our National Parks, I think the first
one, of course, is perhaps unlike some of the units in the
states on the mainland. I think it would be fair to say that
most of us want to expand the National Park system in Hawaii,
and I certainly am among them. I believe that Hawaii's natural,
historic, cultural, scenic, recreational, open spaces are under
attack, under threat, and are not going to survive unless we
protect them. The National Park systems offers a perfect
opportunity to protect them. The question is one of priorities.
The question is priority of what we bring in, what is
consistent with the mission of the National Park system, and
how we bring them in, just as a raw level of funding.
At the National level, and I may disagree with the National
Park system a little bit on this, at the National level the
focus from the top policy perspective at this point has been
not on acquisition but on repair and maintenance. And I have
made the statement in the past, and I believe it, that you can
repair and maintain any time you want, but when you miss the
opportunity to acquire, it's missed forever. And we have those
situations throughout Hawaii. I have introduced into Congress
various proposals to in fact expand the National Parks area
right here in Hawaii, and in particular, areas that are
especially threatened.
I would probably say the top one would be the Ka`u coast on
the island of Hawaii, which I hope and believe should be an
extension of the National Park system coming down the southeast
coast of Hawaii along the incredible coastline. Mr. Hays has
kindly undertaken a reconnaissance study of adding that. We
have the so-called Kahuku Makai parcel. We just had a major
acquisition for a National Park on Hawaii, on the mauka side,
tremendous expansion of the park, now if we can finish that
job. Over on Maui, the north coast of Maui between Paia and
Spreckelsville, an incredible resource that will be lost pretty
soon to development if not protected, and then the south coast
also around what is referred to as Pi`ikinau, a unique area of
cultural significance which has its own challenges. Right here
on Oahu, we have some possible sites for the National Park
system. Over on Kauai, we have the Mahalapu, which is an
incredible coastline resource. We have many, many areas that
frankly I'd like to expand and potentially bring into the
National Park. Clearly that's an issue of funding.
I am proudly a co-sponsor of your bill, Congressman Souder.
I want to make sure everybody knows about the National Park
Centennial Act, which was introduced by Chairman Souder here,
which tries to provide a couple of things. First of all, just a
recognition of where we are with the National Park system, but,
second, a realistic way to fund both the acquisition and the
repair and maintenance. It is going to be increasingly harder
for us to do this out of the general fund of the U.S. Treasury
as we go through the next 10 to 20 years.
So we can either fight that battle all we want or try to
develop alternatives by which we can provide for a realistic
way of funding on a directed basis and satisfying the desire of
many, many millions of citizens of our country to bring these
into the National Park system and to take care of them. So I
would cite that specifically as an issue we have to walk
through, whether it be dedicated Federal funding or enhanced
means for private-public partnering, which have been a real key
to success right here in Hawaii, through some of the testimony
you'll hear right here in the second panel, and perhaps in the
first panel as well.
The second area I want to just highlight briefly are
invasive species. Our environment here in Hawaii is unique and
one of the most endangered in the world, the invasive species
capital of the world. And that is true whether you're in a
National Park or not in a National Park. It's our National
Parks that we're trying to protect, our natural environment,
and one of the mistakes that we sometimes make is to
distinguish between National Park and everybody else. In
reality, the invasive challenges are everybody's problem. I
personally have come to the conclusion that the only way for us
to really prevent invasives is to have the equivalent of the
New Zealand incoming inspection system. It's very successful
there, and which we use here in Hawaii on an outgoing basis to
protect California. We're not busy protecting ourselves. We're
busy protecting the U.S. Mainland from invasives from Hawaii,
which ironically came from the mainland for the most part.
Nonetheless, we have had--I hope the first panel highlights
some of the examples where we have had invasives destroy
natural wildlife. So we have to work on joint efforts which are
not just efforts on behalf of the National Park, but everybody
to provide a greater level of protection.
Finally, just two quick points and then I'll turn it over.
We clearly have stress on many of our visitor facilities here.
Haleakala, I think, is probably the one that has the highest
intensity of focused visitor ship on any single day. Hawaii
Volcano National Park is real spread out and accommodates it
better, but Haleakala is one road to the top and one road back
down and it's pretty stressed out. Our National Park there
needs to develop some pretty innovative visitor management
kinds of issues that may be along the lines of Yosemite that
just became necessary as a result of the popularity of that
park, and, of course, the old adage that we're going to love
some of our National Parks to death if we don't watch it.
And then finally, I think everybody will attest to this,
whether they say it or not. I have freedom of saying whatever I
want. Nobody's censoring me. But certainly I've been listening,
and I think that clearly many of our parks are functioning
under management plans, management regimes which are a quarter
century old. Hawaii's changed in a quarter century. The parks
have changed in a quarter century. The focus has changed. The
usage has changed. The entire scheme under which they're
operating has changed. They are short of the fiscal and
management abilities to develop updated management plans. I
think that's a penny rich and a pound foolish. So I would
hope--and I hope this is coming out of the hearings throughout
the rest of the country, but I would hope that one of the
things we commit ourselves to as we move forward is simply
updating some basic long-range management plans for our parks.
Hawaii Volcanoes needs it, Haleakala needs it, Kaloko-Honokohau
needs it, and many others.
So those are the areas that I think are at issue here. Some
of them are similar to the rest of the country, some of them
are a little more unique to Hawaii. For example, the invasives,
I think, is much more acute here than the rest of the country.
The solutions are much more manageable than the rest of the
country in that area, but we're going to take care of our
National Parks. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Ed Case follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7922.027
Mr. Souder. Thank you. Next, we have some procedural
matters, before we hear the testimony. First, I ask unanimous
consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to submit
written statements and questions for the hearing record, and
that any answers to written questions provided by the witnesses
also be included in the record. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Second, I ask unanimous consent that all exhibits,
documents, and other materials referred to by Members and
witnesses may be included in the hearing record, and that all
Members be permitted to revise and extend their remarks.
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Finally, I ask unanimous consent that all Members present
be permitted to participate in the hearing. Without objection,
it is so ordered.
That gives me the opportunity to make one other point, and
that is that in the sometimes difficult environment of
Washington we've had incredible bipartisan flexibility in our
subcommittee. We were hoping that Congressman Cummings was
going to be able to join us. He originally was planning to and
at the last minute could not. Our Democratic Minority Staff
Director is here as well, Tony Haywood, but we've been able to
have a lot of flexibility in how we conduct hearings because of
the bipartisan nature of how we try to work through our
subcommittee, both on this and other issues, and I appreciate
that as well on the full committee level with Chairman Davis
and ranking Member Waxman. And it's enabled us to do these with
flexibility, have other Members joining our hearings, which is
a waiver of normal House rules. This and meth are the only two
things right now that we've been able to get some bipartisan
cooperation on and it's exciting to try to pull this through
with the National Park Service, because historically it's been
a tremendous opportunity. And we have had at our different
hearings--when Jim Ridenour, however, when he testifies in
January at a hearing in the Chicago region, I think he will be
our fourth former Park Service Director participating at these
hearings, so we appreciate them and the entire executive core
for speaking out as well.
With that, would our first panel like to begin with the
opening statement of Frank Hays, Pacific Area Director of the
National Park Service. We have a clock here that gives a
rough--the red means stop, which is 5 minutes. It starts at
green, turns yellow at 4. We're going to work this on Hawaii
time, which means up to 20 minutes. We'll be flexible. We know
we want to get through the two panels. And I forgot to swear
everybody in. Because it's Government Reform, we need to do
that. So could each of you raise your right hands?
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Souder. Let the record show that each of the witnesses
responded in the affirmative.
Mr. Hays.
STATEMENT OF FRANK HAYS, PACIFIC AREA DIRECTOR, NATIONAL PARK
SERVICE, ACCOMPANIED BY GERI BELL, SUPERINTENDENT OF THE
KALOKO-HONOKOHAU, MARILYN PARRIS, SUPERINTENDENT OF HALEAKALA
NATIONAL PARK, AND CINDY ORLANDO, SUPERINTENDENT, HAWAII
VOLCANOES NATIONAL PARK
Mr. Hays. Thanks.
Mr. Souder. Now you really do have to change your
statement, maybe.
Mr. Hays. I'll cross out things and stuff. I can start out
by saying I've never used steroids, so I can attest to that.
Mr. Souder. Or masking agents.
Mr. Hays. That's right, or masking agents.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to appear
before you, Representative Abercrombie, and Representative Case
today on this hearing on National Parks in Hawaii. We are
pleased to welcome you to Hawaii and appreciate your interest
in our work here.
As the Pacific Area Director, I oversee the seven National
Park units and the Alaka`ahai National Historic Trail in
Hawaii, and units in Guam, American Samoa, and Saipan. I'd like
to summarize my testimony and submit my entire statement for
the record, if that's OK.
We have seven parks in Hawaii. On Oahu, the USS Arizona
Memorial commemorates the attack on Pearl Harbor. The other six
units on the other Hawaiian islands protect and interpret the
range of natural and cultural resources, including many
associated with native Hawaiians. Three units built around
archeological sites on the island of Hawaii are specifically
devoted to native Hawaiian culture.
In addition to preserving and interpretation sites that
draw visitors to Hawaii, the NPS also works with Hawaiian
residents in building partnerships to enhance resource
protection. The National Park Service's Rivers, Trails, and
Conservation Assistance Program has been assisting local
recreation groups on Maui, specifically, outside of areas of
the National Parks to develop well-managed off-road vehicle
areas, enabling ATV enthusiasts to enjoy that activity while
helping to protect Hawaii's resources.
We wanted to give you kind of a brief summary of the
visitor service issues that are going on in Hawaii, and we
tried to take a strategic look at visitor services. About 1.5
million visitors come yearly to the USS Arizona Memorial to pay
their respects to the 2,300 members of the armed services who
made the ultimate sacrifice for the Nation. In the attack on
Pearl Harbor, about half of them died on the USS Arizona. The
current visitor's facility, which was mentioned a while ago, is
deteriorating and is often overcrowded, since it was designed
to accommodate only half of the number of visitors it currently
receives.
Right now the Arizona Memorial Museum Association is
heading up a $34 million fundraising effort for a new visitor
center that will offer more exhibits and amenities. And we're
also moving toward coordinating ticketing, parking, security,
and concessions with the non-profit operated USS Bowfin
Submarine Museum and the USS Missouri, and as well as an air
museum that's being proposed for Ford Island. All of these
efforts will greatly improve the visitor experience at the USS
Arizona.
Haleakala National Park also attracts about 1.5 million
visitors annually, and an increasingly large number of those
folks want to experience sunrise right at the Haleakala summit,
so we are now developing a Commercial Services Plan that will
help us better manage visitor use. We want to enable visitors
to enjoy the sunrise more and to help them better understand
why the site has so much spiritual significance for the native
Hawaiians, and also to encourage folks to visit Haleakala at
all times of the day. Sunsets are spectacular from the summit
as well.
Kaloko-Honokohau National Historic Park has recently been
made more accessible by the opening of a visitor contact
station and parking lot adjacent to park trails, and we
anticipate opening a similar facility within the next year at
the Pu`ukohola Heiau National Historic Site, and those are
fairly self-service visitor contact stations.
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park has the newly renovated
visitor center as well, and that offers very nice, state-of-
the-art maps and it also has the Jagger Museum, which is
operated by the U.S. Geological Survey, where visitors can
learn more about volcanoes. Of course we have Cindy here today.
I'm going to have to talk to her afterwards because she lost 34
acres of her park yesterday when a large lava bench fell into
the ocean. So I don't know what we're going to do about that.
No, actually, it's quite an amazing park to be able to see
those active landscape scale activities going on. And we also
offer an intensive interpretation program at the lava's end by
the ocean.
Of course Congressman Case talked about the seriousness of
invasive species, and that is a serious problem. Battling
invasive species proliferation is the most serious resource
protection problem our parks face. Because invasive species
cross geographic and jurisdictional boundaries, we need
collaborative efforts among Federal, State, and local entities
and others to manage the problem. A critical area barrier that
faces--NPS faces with these efforts is the lack of authority to
expand Federal dollars for work outside the land it manages.
And we're--NPS and the Department of Interior are trying to
address that problem with the legislative proposal that the
administration has submitted to Congress to give the National
Park Service authority where there's clear and direct benefit
to park natural resources. Passage of this legislation would
give the NPS the same authority that the other three major
Federal land management agencies already have.
And with the continual arrival of new invaders to Hawaii,
the problem of non-native species occupying park areas only
increased. The Coqui frogs are beginning to appear in Hawaii
Volcanoes National Park. These frogs will consume the insects
that native birds depend on and that pollinate the Hawaiian
forest, and will interfere with the natural quiet. If you've
ever been around a bunch of Coqui frogs, you know it interferes
with the natural quiet.
On Oahu and Maui, the recently arrived rust, and I'm not
talking about stuff on your car, initially found on ohia trees
in plant nurseries, has now been observed in wildland ohia
forests and is potentially a very serious problem.
The veiled chameleon, which is considered by island
biologists to have the potential to decimate native bird
populations, is similar to what the brown tree snake has done
on Guam. In addition, invasive marine algae can kill corals and
significantly impact the health and biodiversity of coral reef
communities and could result in major financial losses to the
tourism industry as well. One area that has been recently
invaded is Kaloko fishpond in Kaloko-Honokohau National
Historic Park. Red algae currently covers about a third of the
bottom. In addition to restoring this important native historic
resource, we want to prevent the algae from spreading to the
reef adjacent to the fishpond and throughout the Kona
coastline. And the University of Hawaii is joining us in
dealing with that issue.
At Haleakala National Park, over 20 years of fencing and
feral animal control, followed by invasive plant control and
rare plant stabilization, has resulted in spectacular recovery
of native species. If you go up there, you can see silver sword
coming back in large numbers and other species. However, non-
native species, such as Miconia, which is called the green
cancer, threatens to reverse this recovery. Pampas grass and
silk oak also threaten to convert native grasslands and forests
into single invasive species stands. So far these three species
have been eradicated from parklands through joint partnership
efforts, but reinvasion is a constant threat.
One way we do address invasive species is through our
Exotic Plant Management Teams, which provide highly trained,
very mobile strike forces of plant management specialists who
assist parks in the identification, treatment, control,
restoration, and monitoring of areas infested with invasive
plants. Another way is through the Department of Interior's
Cooperative Conservation Initiative, through which land
management agencies partner with landowners and communities to
battle invasive species and restore natural areas. And yet
another partnership is with the Student Conservation
Association, where student teams are building our capacity to
address the problem. We anticipate that the Noxious Weed
Control and Eradication Act, passed by Congress last year, will
help provide financial and technical support to our State
partners in controlling weeds.
We work with all partners at all levels of government as
well as in the private sector in addressing the invasive
species problem. One example of a successful public-private
partnership that's occurring at Hawaii Volcanoes is with the
`Ola`a Kilauea Partnership. The partnership's goal is to
enhance the long-term survival of native ecosystems and manage
420,000 acres across multiple ownership boundaries. The
partnership also offers valuable educational and cultural
benefits by providing staff and field sites for hands-on
environmental education activities for teacher workshops and
student programs. The private landowner in the area plans to
restore the ranch adjacent to the park and use the entire area
for conservation, cultural enrichment, and education.
The most cost effective and successful strategy for
battling invasive species--I think Congressman Case mentioned
this--is preventing them from entering Hawaii or our National
Parks. New and innovative programs are being established to
institutionalize prevention programs and the National Parks
Service's Inventory and Monitoring Program networks are helping
parks develop monitoring programs for the detection of new
invasions, so a quick response can ultimately remove the threat
before it becomes unmanageable.
Mr. Chairman, that concludes my statement. I'd be happy to
answer any questions you have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hays follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Let me start with a kind of off--because I
think it's safe to say, given the number of regions that we're
hoping to cover, and in fact we're headed into an election
year, that we're not going to get to Guam, Samoa, Saipan, or
other territories. Can you submit for the record, if you have--
we'll work with some questions of how to do this, but some one-
page summaries on what--two pages so we can put them in our
hearing book report, and then maybe we can work into this
hearing Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and have a
subsection on these territories.
Up until I went on the Resources Committee, quite frankly,
when I first got on the committee and saw all the delegates, I
wondered, why are you on this committee? Most of the
constituents I represent or Americans don't know what
percentage of these islands we actually own, how much land
space has been turned over to the Park Service. So if in each
one of these you could give a couple of the challenges that
you're dealing with there, an idea of visitation, idea of
budget, and whether it's flat, going up or down, and what you
have there. What we're going to do systematically is match up
our hearings and give 3 years of--here's 1 year, here's 1 year,
and here's the last year, to see where the FTDs are and the
budgets are. We may get that out of our headquarters. I'm not
sure yet which way we're going to do that. That's when we get
toward the end.
We're going to sit down with them, figure out what is the
most simple way to do this, but also not only the acreage but
the percentage of the land there that is the Park Service.
Because it's interesting, for the record, also Fish and
Wildlife, I don't know that there are Forest Service, and then
also try to get the military an idea of what percentage of
Guam, what percentage of American Samoa, what percentage of
these places are actually under the U.S. Government and how do
we interrelate things like invasive species, visitor services,
land utilization, because we dominate many of those islands.
Mr. Hays. That's correct, even the--this is off the top of
my head, but I believe the National Park Service controls 20--
well, we lease from the American Samoa government 20 percent of
American Samoa, which is pretty substantial amount of their
land base.
Mr. Souder. Then first kind of, we'll probably deal with
this more on the second panel, but on the USS Arizona
challenge, it's very confusing for me that the--what's
military, what's what branch of the military, the Missouri
isn't part of the Park Service. You've made a statement here
that you're going to try to coordinate those together, and Ford
Island Air, would that be Federal or would that be private?
Mr. Hays. Those are the three non-profit organization
attractions, but to provide a very kind of seamless visitor
experience.
Mr. Souder. Like in Oregon they have a pass for whether
you're--first off, just getting the Bureau of Land Management
and Fish and Wildlife to partner, and then they have the State
Parks where you get a pass that's good for everything.
Mr. Hays. I think they're looking closer at kind of a
ticketing facility where you can package tickets to all four
attractions together and individually, and of course the three
non-profits may evaluate it sometime, too, to do a package deal
for their sites. But the Arizona, because the ticket is kind of
the access onto the tour and it's a no-cost ticket, I think
that would remain separate.
Mr. Souder. This is a side point, but I have the Lighthouse
Transfer Bill, and some of the non-profit groups should learn
from that, make sure that if there are--sounds like you're not
going to do this, but if you do, we have an incredible problem
with disentangling the dollars. Because when you have any
agency transfer--DHS is now trying to claim this private
group's money.
Mr. Hays. Yeah, the effort has been going on for several
months now, but it's still in the preliminary stages. I think
the direction that they're leaning is kind of a joint ticketing
facility.
Mr. Souder. And in this, is the $34 million for the museum
and new visitor center, is that viewed as mostly private,
public-private, how do you see that?
Mr. Hays. That's the fundraising portion from the Arizona
Memorial Association and the National Park Service through the
line item construction program that's funding approximately $7
million.
Mr. Souder. You said it's projected in the budget? What
year do you plan----
Mr. Hays. In 2006, fiscal year 2006 it's in the line item.
Mr. Souder. And we'll talk more on the Association. Are
they coming along in the case of fundraising?
Mr. Hays. They are. I think what I saw was about 12
million, and they feel, you know, pretty solid about their
fundraising.
Mr. Abercrombie. May I interject?
Mr. Souder. Yes.
Mr. Abercrombie. Part of this has to do with us getting the
agreement.
Mr. Hays. That's correct.
Mr. Abercrombie. And I'm confident, Mr. Chairman, that the
private fundraising will roll once everybody knows that the
deal's been set.
Mr. Souder. You have space for it?
Mr. Hays. Yeah, there's actually a concept plan that's
been--we've actually, through luck and some happenstance and
through a great cooperation with the Navy, current Admiral out
there, looks like we're going to be able to transfer 6.6 acres
that's between the Memorial--the Arizona Memorial and the
Bowfin to the National Park Service for management. And that
just facilitates the overall site plan and traffic flow plans
to get people around to the various attractions up there.
Mr. Abercrombie. I can assure you, Mr. Chairman, between
Senator Inouye and myself, the cooperation with the military
will be ensured.
Mr. Hays. They have been very cooperative. Admiral Vitale
should be commended for his efforts.
Mr. Abercrombie. Excellent job. If he wanted to--don't get
me wrong. I'm saying it with a smile on my face because they
are--everybody is very anxious to participate in this. Believe
me, it's not a question of competition or confrontation or
anything. Quite the opposite, it's everybody making sure that
from their own institutional base that they do the right thing
in order to make sure there's a smooth conclusion to all of
this, including whatever land transfers have to be done,
whatever--you're quite right about ticket differentiation,
different packages. That all has to be worked out, but they
know they have to do it and it's well under way. The Park
Service is kind of a focal of all of this.
Mr. Souder. Do you----
Mr. Abercrombie. The good part here, honestly, I think Mr.
Hays will agree, is that the Park Service, having been a little
bit of an orphan in this whole process in the past, now has the
problem of so many foster parents----
Mr. Hays. That's right.
Mr. Abercrombie [continuing]. In the waiting room out there
that it's a matter of coordinating all the positive--you've got
so much help, you're not quite sure how to put it all together,
right?
Mr. Hays. They actually have formed what's called the Pearl
Harbor Historic Partners, which includes the non-profits and
the National Park Service working together to come up with
business plans, kind of a--ticketing plans and so forth,
traffic flow plans, and, you know, there are issues of trying
to then coordinate with what's going on with the National Park
Service plans. And since this 6.6 acres just recently came to
us, or is going to come to us, that has set us back a little
bit, but we're ready to move forward again.
Mr. Abercrombie. It's a good problem to have.
Mr. Hays. A great problem to have, and I think visitors,
when they arrive there in a few years, will have--it's an
overused term, but a world class experience to learn about
World War II and the Pacific----
Mr. Souder. Will the visitor center be large enough to
accommodate what's been the outside waiting lines?
Mr. Hays. Yeah, there's going to be a--there's 20--proposed
for about 23,000 square foot interpretive center with exhibits.
And, you know, people will be able to get their tickets and
then have their choice of spending time up in the 23,000 square
feet of exhibits, going to the Bowfin, maybe catching the bus
over to the USS Missouri.
Mr. Souder. And do you think that will alleviate some of
the pressure?
Mr. Hays. That should help quite a bit.
Mr. Abercrombie. Mr. Chairman, again, if I might. This has
been complicated a little bit by the fact that the city and
county of Honolulu is now in the process of determining whether
it's to have a rail transit line, and one of the stops on the
rail transit line inevitably would be in the area of the
Arizona Memorial and the stadium, which is called the Salt Lake
area, and that has to be figured out. But if that comes to
fruition, it will add to the logistical problems that we're
speaking of right here because it will make it even more
convenient for people to be able to come, say, from Waikiki to
Pearl Harbor as part of their visitor experience, not that they
have any problem attracting people now, but it will be even
more convenient in that sense. Therefore, the kind of planning
that's being undertaken right now has added pressure because
the numbers may actually increase even over what was
anticipated now.
Mr. Hays. They're actually pretty limited at this point
with operating dollars and so forth.
Mr. Abercrombie. So would you agree that part of what has
to be planned for here is the actual visit to the Memorial? And
this, I think, is part of the confusion that you mentioned that
takes place. That's one thing, and that's highly limited.
Mr. Hays. Exactly.
Mr. Abercrombie. A visit to the site, to the visitor
center, or the various designations or various other non-
profits, that's another question entirely. Some people may be
able to integrate all of those activities, but the likelihood
of only a small percentage ever actually being able to visit
the Memorial will remain a constant; isn't that the case?
Mr. Hays. Unless they're able to increase the number of
barges or the operating hours, but----
Mr. Abercrombie. Even then----
Mr. Hays [continuing]. The current status, yeah.
Mr. Abercrombie. Even there you're still talking of an
extraordinarily small number?
Mr. Hays. That's correct.
Mr. Abercrombie. And rightly so. I mean, the Memorial
itself is not--you know yourself when we go to--at the Capitol
the stairs become a question because so many millions of people
walk on the stairs they actually get worn away. We can't have
that happen to the Memorial, after all. And, logistically, only
so many people can arrive there, so many hours in a day, and
have it in the context of respect. This is not something where
you troop up to the Venus de Milo with your camera and people
have this--having done this just recently, watching people not
actually viewing or experiencing the attraction, if you can
call it that, itself, saying in this instance the statue, but
they're taking pictures of it in a crowd sticking their cell
phones in the air or something. They're not really doing it. We
can't have this with the Memorial. This is not some kind of a
free-for-all that takes place.
Therefore, one of the difficulties--or one of the
challenges--it's not a difficulty. It's a challenge. One of the
challenges to be met is that the--and Mr. Sullivan I'm sure
will speak to this when his turn comes, is that you have to
provide an experience for the visitor who isn't actually going
to go to the Memorial itself. The visitor has to be able to
observe the Memorial is there and have some opportunity to
experience that in a respectful way, but at a distance. And so
there are various ways in which that can be accomplished. But
we have to understand that the average visitor coming to the
Arizona Memorial site is not going to go to the Arizona
Memorial.
So we have to have the observation venue, we have to have
an experience which incorporates that visit in a respectful
way, but takes into account that literally tens of thousands,
in fact hundreds of thousands of people will be there without
ever actually going to the Memorial itself. Is that a fair----
Mr. Souder. Let me clarify that. If you don't have this, I
do. How many people come to the Pearl Harbor site, park visitor
site?
Mr. Hays. It's 1.5 million visitors a year.
Mr. Souder. And how many actually go out to the site?
Mr. Hays. The majority are actually going out to the
Memorial right now. They're getting tickets and going out
there. I don't know the--I can get you the----
Mr. Souder. Not the exact figure, but you think it's over
50 percent.
Mr. Hays. Yes.
Mr. Souder. And if you can give us what the peak seasons
are where the percentage drops the lowest.
Mr. Hays. I do know that there's really not a peak season.
It's busy all the time. There's a little bit of a drop, I
think, in the fall and the spring, but it's pretty busy.
Mr. Souder. Do you do on-line advance reservations?
Mr. Hays. They do not yet.
Mr. Souder. Do you see that coming?
Mr. Hays. There is talk for on-line reservations.
Mr. Souder. At any kind of preference?
Mr. Hays. That I don't know.
Mr. Souder. One of the concerns, if you look at this as we
go to the 100-year Anniversary of the Park Service, how are we
going to handle the most intense visitation points in the Park
Service? And should there even be kind of a record where we say
we have one shot at this? Yosemite Valley, right down to the
Grand Canyon, how much of this should be advance plans, how
much of it should be flexible, and how will we manage this?
Because in effect you've got the equivalent of, or certainly,
probably more so than most, this intense usage. But we dealt
with this with the Grand Canyon for a long time. Unfortunately,
that means anybody that plans a last-minute trip can't get
there, and so how to balance those kind of things is a huge
challenge. Getting to Old Faithful is getting to be an
adventure. How do we do this?
In my second round I'm going to do the other parts. This is
where going out and seeing the Hawaii Volcanoes and seeing the
lava at night last summer, it--I saw one of the advantages,
which I don't exercise that often of being a Member of
Congress, because you drove me up----
Ms. Orlando. Shhh.
Mr. Souder [continuing]. And saw what was there. And
clearly warned, beyond the signs, that I was supposed to wear
long pants, no flip-flops, and flashlights, otherwise I might
not be walking as well today. But those type of experiences
become very intensely used. How are we going to manage this in
a fair and equitable way that--by the way, a huge advantage--
this is an even more explosive question, the huge advantage to
more highly educated, upper middle class people who plan ahead
and have the resources in which to plan ahead and to get to
these sites. It's a tough, tough dilemma.
And then the whole net thing becomes even more explosive
when you have certain really important memorials like this that
are so intensely meaningful. We haven't even talked yet today
about what about kids and grandkids of people who were at Pearl
Harbor, when grandkids come out to Hawaii and can't get to the
Memorial site. Should there be some kind of consideration that
we have to that family heritage? Because I know the 1-day we
were there the tickets--you sell out the tickets early in the
morning?
Mr. Hays. They are distributed early in the morning,
generally.
Mr. Souder. I think by 9 a.m. they were gone.
Mr. Abercrombie. We'll try to----
Mr. Souder. Is it OK if I yield to Mr. Case?
Mr. Case of Hawaii. Let me just first, for the record,
endorse and indicate my support as well for everything Neil has
said about the Arizona. I mean, although it's technically in
the First Congressional, none of us stand on ceremony on that.
And I agree that this is of the most immediate priority for the
National Park system in terms of getting this right. We've got
the critical mass. We've got the opportunity. We have the need.
Mr. Hays, just a couple of quick questions. I spoke in my
introductory remarks about acquisition versus repair and
maintenance. And assume that you were acquiring for Hawaii,
assume that we were considering additions to the National Park
system. Do you have any sense of what would be the most acute,
what would be most needed or consistent, whatever criteria you
might use? I mean, where would we need to go in Hawaii to
assure that natural resources appropriate for protection of the
National Park system were in fact brought into the National
Park system that are not now? Do you have a list that you're
following?
Mr. Hays. You're talking about specific geographical areas.
Mr. Case of Hawaii. Yes.
Mr. Hays. I would have to provide that for the record,
because I don't know that.
Mr. Case of Hawaii. Can I request that, Chair, a response
to that.
Mr. Souder. Yes. And if I could interject that it may be
tough to get clearances to rank, but if you could provide
things that the Park Service has considered and have been
opposed to the Park Service. If you agree that you would have
more reservations about some than others, then we can put our
opinions in and sort that through, then that's more likely to
get it through the process.
Mr. Case of Hawaii. That's fair. I think it is a matter of
priority. It is a matter of what we can do. It is a matter of
what we want to do. It's a matter of kind of turning to the
list of what is practically achievable under whatever climate
we're dealing with over the next 5 years. I think it does have
something to do clearly, I will state, with pressures for
alternative use, where you have untouched--relatively untouched
resources that otherwise would be lost forever.
Mr. Souder. And let me put one other caveat, so we don't
get back what we normally get back at this portion of the
hearing, which is we believe we have to take care of backlog
maintenance before we purchase additional lands, which is a
clear statement that will come through. But if the Park Service
got additional money and we said we were giving additional
money to the State of Hawaii specifically for land purchase,
then how would you consider these based on the recommendations
of other types of things? And if they want you to put the
boilerplate in front of it, that's fine.
Mr. Case of Hawaii. We'll just put it in front.
Boilerplate, it's done with, gone. We acknowledge the repair
and maintenance side of things. Now let's get to the second
part.
Mr. Abercrombie. This is beyond repair and maintenance,
way, way, way beyond that. So that's not an issue.
Mr. Souder. But as you know, they always send out----
Mr. Abercrombie. I know, but that's one reason we're happy
you're here, Mr. Chairman, because we're talking about the
actual facts on the ground and not a theoretical construct, or
even a practical construct, but here that question is
essentially secondary because we have to literally change--not
literally change, but we'll worry about maintenance and the
rest of it when we get the new facility. That's not what we're
talking about. And I just want to make sure on the other part
that I have it clear. We're talking about land here, primarily.
Purchase is not necessarily a problem here. A lot of this has
to do with transfer, right? The majority of what we're talking
about, if we're talking about land, is less an acquisition
question. I'm talking about Arizona and Pearl Harbor, talking
less about acquisition----
Mr. Hays. That would be a transfer.
Mr. Abercrombie. Pardon?
Mr. Hays. That would be a transfer from the Department of
Navy.
Mr. Abercrombie. And there may be--you've got the city,
you've got--there's all kinds of things that might or might not
take place, like as I said, with the transit circumstance, but
principally we're probably dealing with an overwhelming
majority, if not in its entirety, land questions involving
transfer and responsibility rather than purchase problems that
would require appropriations for that purpose.
Mr. Souder. But in Mr. Case's question, as it relates to
outside of the USS Arizona, to look at this--one of the
supplemental types, if I may interject here, is that unlike
many other areas in the country, the Park Service is mostly
looking at reclaiming land, land that's been forested over,
land that has--you know, a lot of the kind of crown jewel parks
are overrun. In Hawaii, they're still crown jewel space, and
it's either that or development. So some kind of combination
also of what is the opinion of the Park Service, if Congress
were going to allocate. Because we'll do what we want anyway,
regardless of what the Park Service recommends. So it would be
nice to have the Park Service proposals as to how you do the
tradeoff of development threats, land that would be helpful to
keep, and maybe you can make comments on this subject regarding
some of the different proposals that are out there. Which ones
would help invasive species control? Which ones are naturally
more important for wilderness? Which ones would have the
advantages for visitor usage that we keep open area? Which ones
have developmental threat? Where are the State parks strong and
where there might be a State park or private supplemental? If
the Federal Government took some of the land, would Nature
Conservancy or other groups be able to get other lands to hold
so we pick up some of that?
Give us some of the depth of the variation of the challenge
in the islands of Hawaii, which are different than what we're
hearing in other hearings. It's different because there is
still undeveloped land that's under tremendous developmental
pressure in Hawaii.
Mr. Case of Hawaii. And then I think, following up, really,
on both of those observations, you've worked throughout the
system. Is there another way that we on the national level can
look at the challenge of funding the National Park system,
specifically acquisition? Not to take away from the repair and
maintenance perspective, but I'm talking about acquisition.
Because sometimes I feel we get stuck in the rut of, OK, we
don't have enough earmarked in the park budget this year, so
therefore we can't acquire. Whereas my impression of here in
Hawaii is we've prevented--we haven't prevented, but we
certainly have been utilizing some means of acquisition that
works pretty well, private-public partnerships, acquisition by
a private entity holding.
I think we have to note that there are many people out
there that are willing and able to donate their land to the
National Park system. They're willing to let it come on in, and
that's not just private entities. That's the State and county
governments. We have several situations in Hawaii where the
State government would transfer to the National Park system,
you know, and we're not talking about monetary consideration.
We're talking about protection.
So the direct question is is there--given your experience
in the system, are there unique means of funding or
facilitating acquisition in Hawaii where there can be a lesson
learned on the national level that we could somehow implement
or change or fix or include in the Federal law? Or are we just
like everybody else, we just kind of do it?
Mr. Hays. I think--well, there are some unique examples in
the Pacific island network with the number of leases that the
Park Service does, you know, like with American Samoa where
we're leasing from American Samoa. Now, those aren't no cost,
but there could be no cost ways to do that. I can't think of
other kind of innovative approaches that have been used. I
don't know if my colleagues have any examples.
Ms. Orlando. Public-private partnerships are pretty much
it. You could also flip it to the other side, and I think--and
I appreciate, Mr. Chairman, your bringing up the Oregon Coast
pass, because that was something that I worked on. I think on
the flip side, if we look at the National Park Service doesn't
necessarily have to manage everything and we work with local
communities. Mr. Hays alluded to the partnership that we have
with Kamehameha Schools and their vision for really their own
park. They shifted from back in the 1930's and 1940's, we don't
want to be like the National Parks, to today asking themselves
why don't we want to be like the National Park? So even co-
management might be another way to look at it, and I think
Redwood National Park, certainly, up in the northwest, northern
California is a good example of that.
So co-management, seamless passes. Public doesn't know
whose land they're on, and sometimes maybe they don't really
care. They just know that every time they walk in the gate,
they're getting dinged another $10 or $5. I think those might
be some ways.
Mr. Hays. The Kona Coast Task Force that the State
legislature just recently chartered I think in a couple years
will tell whether that's an effective approach to managing some
of the lands in the Kona Coast. There's a community-driven kind
of approach to preservation.
Mr. Souder. Following up before I yield to Mr. Abercrombie,
do you have in Hawaii any kind of variations of like
conservation easements that Teddy Roosevelt--to try to keep
some of the historic ranchers there when they weren't doing
ranching anymore? You do some of the ranching, I believe, at
Haleakala. You've got an experimental--you've kept one of the
farming areas where you have poi in there.
Ms. Parris. Yes, raising of the taro for the poi.
Mr. Souder. Yeah, taro, but that's a small kind of
demonstration type area. Do you see potential that with the
development pressure, some of these open areas you would get
easement type things to try to work through and do you have
anything like that?
Ms. Orlando. We don't have any easements I'm aware of. We
certainly do in the system. National Historical Reserve is a
perfect example of that.
Mr. Case of Hawaii. We're going to hear testimony regarding
conservation easements from the private perspective.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Abercrombie.
Mr. Abercrombie. No.
Mr. Souder. Let me cover--I want to make sure we--and we'll
do additional involvement, but, Ms. Bell, could you describe a
little bit the historic parks you have, the unusual
relationships you have with native Hawaiians, and the nature of
the parks you're managing?
Ms. Bell. I sure can, Chairman Souder. I'm the
superintendent at Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park and
also Pu`uhonua O Honaunau National Historic Park. And Pu`uhonua
O Honaunau, Pu`uhonua means place of refuge. That was one of
the largest places of refuge on the island of Hawaii. And we do
have at both parks extensive use by the native Hawaiians,
because those places are still special and sacred. So we work
very closely with our--the descendents, particularly, of the
areas, the cultural and--the cultural descendents in the area,
and, as we do with all of the parks, we allow them access to
those cultural sites and try to balance management of the parks
and visitor use with their uses of the park.
At Pu`uhonua we have begun a resource stewardship program
with the descendents of the park to make them more responsible
for those sites that have been part of their families for
generations. At Kaloko-Honokohau we have an advisory commission
that we work with made--composed of native Hawaiians, and it's
congressionally mandated, that support us, particularly with
the interpretive programs of the park. And at Hawaii Volcanoes
and Haleakala they have kupuna, or the elders, that provide
advice on cultural issues occurring in the park. So we do enjoy
a good relationship with the native Hawaiian communities.
Mr. Souder. What's the third park?
Ms. Bell. Pu`ukohola Heiau, which we refer to as the
independence hall of Hawaii, and very, very important site for
native Hawaiians. Each year they have a festival there where
hundreds of Hawaiians throughout Hawaii and even from the
mainland convene to celebrate Kamehameha the Great.
Mr. Souder. And do you have it written into the park
agreements, the native Hawaiian usage? How does that work?
Ms. Bell. Yes, we do. Some of the--some of us do and there
are some uses that we're still looking into.
Mr. Souder. Is it the--I believe it's the refuge park. I
thought I had it phonetically here.
Ms. Bell. Pu`uhonua O Honaunau.
Mr. Souder. My sons went last--is that where the snorkeling
is, over near that park?
Mr. Hays. Yes, it is.
Mr. Souder. Now, of all the places they had tried, they
said that was the best snorkeling. You said this is one of the
intentions you have. Is there a concern about the heavy usage
you have? And that's not actually in the park.
Ms. Bell. It's not in the park. It's right next door. It's
State property and managed by the county of Hawaii. It is one
of the best of two on the west side of the island, and we do
have a lot of folks come to the park looking for the
snorkeling, which is next door, but we do--there is a lot of
visitation to South Kona, to that area, and then of course to
the park.
Mr. Souder. How does that affect your parking?
Ms. Bell. Actually, it--we allow folks to park in the park.
They pay a park fee. And the county and State have done some
things with the area to make parking more manageable, but it is
still a contentious issue with the residents over there.
Mr. Souder. In what way?
Ms. Bell. When there is no parking, they will be parking in
people's driveways or yards or blocking parking, because the
area--there's a one-lane road into that area and the area is
just too small, space is just too small.
Mr. Souder. Have you had----
Ms. Bell. I'm sorry.
Mr. Souder. Go ahead.
Ms. Bell. We have been working with the community,
Kamehameha Schools, because they own the bulk of the land
there, to try to alleviate some of it, you know, to have folks
park further up on the highway or just say, sorry, no parking.
Mr. Souder. Have you had a flat freeze in your budget, a
slight increase, or have you reduced the number of employees
over the last few years?
Ms. Bell. At Kaloko-Honokohau we have had an increase in
our budget, particularly to manage the visitor services because
we built a--two years ago built a visitor contact station
there. So we did enjoy the increase, at Pu`uhonua, a slight
increase in our budget to manage personal services, etc. So
we've been holding our own. One of the wonderful things about
managing both parks is that I get the flexibility, you know, to
use employees where I need them.
Mr. Abercrombie. My wife had the pleasure of going to
Pu`uhonua Sunday, and I just wanted to emphasize the
importance, critical importance of personnel at places like
Pu`uhonua. Some of the other places you can have signs and it's
a little bit more of the visitor being able to handle himself
or herself or even their group in a way that's manageable
without necessarily a lot of contact with individuals. But
would you agree that Pu`uhonua is unique in the sense that the
participation of the people who come to visit there with the
personnel that are there can explain what they're doing, why
they're doing it, how they're doing it, and who they are is a
critical element in the visitor experience? And by definition
it kind of has to stay small. I understand about parking, but
you cannot handle at Pu`uhonua thousands and thousands of
people coming through because it would destroy what Pu`uhonua
is all about. Is that a fair assessment?
Ms. Bell. That's a fair assessment, and we are--you know,
we are experiencing marked increase in visitation from the
ships that are coming into Kailua-Kona, and, you know, the
ships are in now maybe three times a week and we have busloads
of visitors to our park. And you're right, it is a unique and
special place, and we can accommodate so many of our--just so
much visitors to the park, but the interaction with the
employees there is so important. And about 60 percent of my
staff is from the community. They are lineal and cultural
descendents of that park. So they have a stake in how----
Mr. Abercrombie. Right. I remember when I first went--when
it was first open, you could go and have a conversation not
much different than what we're having right now, but the
employees now have to have microphones and, you know,
amplification because they have to deal with 50 people at a
time or something like that or----
Ms. Bell. We do have the amphitheater, if you remember, so
we do schedule talks in the amphitheater. I also impress on my
employees to do roving interpretations. So we have uniforms out
in the area. We will not use the amplification, etc., but it is
getting more and more difficult to make contact with our
visitors. We call the visitors off of the ships our 20-minute
visitors. They get off the buses. They have to use the restroom
because they've come all the way from Kailua-Kona. They need to
buy a book or postcard to take back, and then they need to see
the park, and all of that in 20 minutes.
So that's where we're trying, you know, to get the pre-
education, but most of them have already done their homework.
We have very educated visitors to our parks. They've done their
homework. They know about the park, but they want to be there
because of the specialness of that area. It attracts people
from around the world.
Mr. Abercrombie. So are you able to work with the cruise
ship people to kind of alert them ahead of time, here's what
you're heading for?
Mr. Souder. Let me ask a specific question on that, and let
me ask all three of you if you've done any of this, and that is
in Alaska you see more rangers on the boats or going into
Skagway so they can use some of that time in advance?
Ms. Bell. That's one of the things that--we haven't done
it, but we're looking into it.
Mr. Abercrombie. Pardon me. Excuse me, Mr. Chairman,
because the cruise ship thing is just getting to settle into
Hawaii in a significant way, because we instituted now inter-
island travel that didn't exist before. And now that this is
institutionalizing itself, we're going to be dealing with
thousands of people in the parks. This is a new phenomenon.
Ms. Bell. Very new. What we have done, we are looking at
approaching the cruise ship operators to get our rangers on the
ship. We have--and this is a couple of years ago when they
first started was actually put a ranger on a ship from Hilo to
Kona, which worked out really well, but where we're trying to
focus is tour drivers, the drivers that are on the buses and to
try to get them to do the orientation before they get to the
park. And that's working.
Mr. Souder. Do you give a certificate of training course
where you conduct the training?
Ms. Bell. It's been done, yes.
Ms. Orlando. Likewise, the same. We're looking at about
7,000 visitors a week now from the cruise ships. It's a huge
impact, huge impact. And I would say none of us have the
infrastructure to support that kind of activity. Now, as Geri
mentioned, the buses--the cruise ships are on a schedule. So
unfortunately the visitors are not getting the quality
experience that we would like to offer. And in fact, at Hawaii
Volcanoes it's even lesser so because the buses cannot go down
to the eruptionsite. So they can't even see the primary
resource that they've come to see.
Mr. Souder. What about at Haleakala?
Ms. Parris. Unfortunately, we're not getting the educated
visitors that apparently are going to Geri's park, and that
does concern me. I've just arrived at Haleakala. One of the
things I've already been talking about with my staff is that we
need to make better contact with the cruise ships and educate
the visitors better about the park. And what makes Haleakala so
special, and especially the sunrise, is that sacred, that
spiritual place that it is at that time of day. That sun could
be rising anywhere right now. They come off the cruise ships
from the hotels with the bike companies, boom, the sun comes
up, and they're gone. And we need to find a way to better
educate by working with the hotels and the cruise ships, and
that's something that we're going to look into.
It's going to be difficult to go get with those people the
night before but yet still have the staff there that morning to
talk to them when they arrive, but I'd say our visitors aren't
that educated about the special place that they're visiting, or
that's not been my experience or that of my staff.
Mr. Souder. If I could move to my impression of Haleakala
for a minute. My impression of the bike riders is almost like
bats coming out of a cave. Are there times when you're at peak
load as to how many bikes can actually come down that mountain?
How close are you to that at sunrise?
Ms. Parris. We don't know what that would be right now.
Pretty much all day starting before sunrise still the end--till
the afternoon there are bikes coming down the mountain, and
right now the park--I wouldn't say we would know what our
capacity is there, but this commercial use study, commercial
services plan will take us there.
Mr. Souder. That's a study that you started.
Ms. Parris. We're--we've got to get the package approved,
but we've already written up the package. We'll be doing it
with some of our fee demo money. And there really are two
planning processes that run parallel. One will look at
commercial services, how do we best manage that. And it's not
just the bikes. It's horses as well. We've got four-foot
troughs in the trails down in the crater from too much horse
traffic on those very fragile cinder trails.
But, OK, so we're doing that. How do we best manage the
commercial services? We also need to know what is our capacity,
and we'll do what's called a visitor education resource
protection study that will say this is how many people this
small area--this is how many people that this small area can
maintain without--while maintaining a good visitor experience,
but also without damaging the resources, which we're seeing
both cultural and natural. There's over 1,000 people a morning
at the top of the summit.
Mr. Souder. Each bicycle company pays you a fee per person,
is that how it's working now?
Ms. Parris. They pay an entrance fee. They also--right now
they are paying $50 a year to get the permit and then are
paying $200, which is supposed to be going--which comes to the
park supposedly for us to manage it.
Mr. Souder. And then are they capped as to how many they
can bring in a morning?
Ms. Parris. They can only have 14 riders on one tour, one
group, but some of them are bringing four or five different
groups a day.
Mr. Souder. So they're not restricted under their permit
how many they can bring? They just have to have certain level
of management?
Ms. Parris. Yes, sir.
Mr. Souder. That's what your study is going to look at.
Ms. Parris. Effective November 1st we needed to--again, I
just arrived a couple of months ago, and we needed to somehow
get a way of handling this. We were in gridlock, which causes a
problem because we couldn't get emergency vehicles in or out.
The cruise ships started bringing huge buses. The bike
companies--I mean, it's just a madhouse up there. And so
effective November 1st.
Mr. Souder. Unless a visitor actually sees it, it's hard to
visualize how much of a madhouse it is.
Ms. Parris. My second day there, Frank joined me. We kind
of went up incognito, and I was stunned. I was like, oh, my.
But we kind of went up incognito to experience it, and it
happened to be a very busy day.
Mr. Hays. It was a busy day.
Ms. Parris. And I didn't even get to see the sunrise
because just as the sun started coming up two bike companies
figured out who I was--who we were and came up and started
asking me questions. But what we implemented is what we call an
interim operations plan that cut--that limited how many bike
tours could be up there at sunrise, the size of buses until 2
hours after sunrise for the cruise ships. You know, like one
bike company had cut what they were doing by half, and it's a
way of us to kind of manage it now while we find a more final
solution. And it's--but we're still turning people back every
morning that come up in private vehicles. We're--just about
every morning we're having to say, no, we've reached capacity
and turning them away.
Mr. Souder. I want to plunge into something where your
collection of parks here is at a potential threshold of huge
problems for the National Park Service. Let me start with the
bikes. If somebody gets hurt, do they sue you?
Ms. Parris. We have been sued a lot at Haleakala.
Mr. Souder. And I'm going to talk about the ponds at Hana
in a minute, but let's take the bike riders. Clearly some
people didn't--I mean, it's in some of the materials that this
is going to be a fast bike ride and good luck. If somebody
happens to have a heart condition or they're moving at too fast
a rate or they go off a curb, have you been sued from the bike
riders at this point?
Ms. Parris. Not to my knowledge. I'll have to get back with
you over the last few years.
Mr. Souder. Do you have a release form they have to sign?
Ms. Parris. The Park Service does not. That would be with
the bike company. And there are bike accidents every day. We
had two broken legs last week, a smashed nose. I mean, my
rangers every day deal with bike accidents.
Mr. Souder. I'm going to go off on a tangent, and I
apologize. Are the fees from the bike companies enough to cover
your cost to just handle the accidents?
Ms. Parris. No, sir, they're not. And in fact I've asked
our regional office to look at what we're charging the bike
companies and give me a better assessment of what would be a
fair--what would be a more fair sum. The costs we're getting
now, both through the horse use and the bikes, aren't allowing
us to properly manage.
Mr. Souder. Let's talk about the person who drowned in the
pools. Almost every guide that I picked up--and I'm a person
who picks up everything they can get. One of the things they
say is everybody's encouraged to go to Hana and then go
swimming in the pools. And it's clearly--there are signs posted
about the dangers. Part of the problem is you can't see a flash
food coming because it may be raining up higher and it isn't
raining down where you are. But clearly this person, in my
opinion, with a standard warning, should have realized that
where they were was risky. And there were plenty of signs. You
just have to be sued in one.
This is one of the only cases where there's been a lawsuit
that's been won against the Park Service, and that impact, if
we can't figure out how to deal with this, is--I don't know how
anybody is going to be able to go down to Crater Lake. I don't
know how they're going to be able to go in the Grand Canyon on
a mule.
Could you put a little bit of what happened with that
particular case and maybe just a brief synopsis here and give
us some history on that case. Because then I want to move into
the Hawaii Volcanoes case, because this could incredibly
cripple visitor services in the United States, unless we can
figure out how to handle the liability.
Ms. Parris. Again, I'm fairly new there. I don't know how
they won that case. We are now being sued by another family, a
husband--or a father and a daughter that were killed as well
for $35 million, and that suit is going on now. Same thing, in
a matter of seconds, a 5-foot wall of water took them over 180-
foot falls down some other falls. You know, I was at the top of
that falls recently. If there had been this much water in
there, I wouldn't have gone in that pool, much less the average
water. I just value my life too much to be on slippery rocks
near a 180-foot drop, but we do have numerous signs. The
brochures that you're reading are outside--are not Park Service
brochures.
Mr. Souder. Right, I understand. The question----
Ms. Parris. And I think we're going to have to do a better
job of educating.
Mr. Souder. And should they be held liable if in fact the
Park Service has warnings but the brochures and guides don't
have warnings? This is interesting legal challenge here,
because if the Park Service puts out the warnings--Ms. Orlando,
could you talk a little bit about that? You said you have some
case?
Ms. Orlando. Well, we had--the one that you and I discussed
previously, and I think everybody in the room knows it, it
actually is currently in litigation, so I'm probably not privy
to talk too much about it, but a similar situation where we
have a lot of visitors coming in with commercial operators,
some are signing, you know, liability waivers and others are
not. In this particular case the woman was left behind, so
there's multiple suits against both the Park Service, the
operator, as well as even the cruise ship.
Mr. Souder. Isn't it, to some degree, just like the bike
riders on Haleakala, the nature of getting on that bike without
having done a pretest of how fast you can ride and your
ability, you are taking some risk. When you walk out on hard
lava, how many visitors would you say you have on a regular
basis, not necessarily----
Ms. Orlando. Oh, every day, every day probably at least a
half dozen, maybe more. And it can be basic didn't bring the
water that we told you to bring. Every time I go out there I
have a backpack full of water because I know I'm going to
encounter somebody who doesn't have any water and can't make it
back. I might add, too, in the case of Hawaii Volcanoes, we
don't allow the bikes either to drive--to go down on their
bicycle down to the eruptionsite. They have to go in their van
with their tour group and drive down, but we don't allow
bicycles to go down that road, also.
Mr. Souder. Would you describe at Hawaii Volcanoes the--I
believe certainly in recent times you were the only park to
lose a visitor center to a volcano. Can you describe some of
the challenges of trying to work with a site that gives way
every so often, or the road goes over?
Ms. Orlando. We lose 30 here, we gain 5 here, it's just,
you know, we're a park on the move. I guess, you know, we made
the conscious decision that we would not rebuild the visitor
center. That was an incredibly significant visitor center.
Superintendent Bell would attest to that. It was our cultural
center, largely supported by the Kalapana community, native
Hawaiian community. So the decision not to rebuild--obviously
not to rebuild the road. Now we've got buildings down there on
wheels and that works for us. We use our user fees to staff an
eruption crew, unlike any other crew that I'm aware of in the
Park Service. So we've tried to be creative.
I think that's one of our success stories, is the ability
to provide safe access to lava flow. We want to be able to do
that. We made a couple of decisions in the last year that we
wondered what the backlash would be in terms of closures. The
bench collapse is a perfect case where 6 months ago my partners
at USGS advised me that we were in imminent danger out there,
and I made the decision to close the site. In 6 months I
received one written complaint about closing the site to ocean
entry viewing.
So we've all mentioned that it's education, it's valuing
your own life, and yes, you are going to get the rogue visitors
who will do what they want to do. You've probably also heard
about a couple of folks who have been lost out on lava, but
actually outside of the park boundary. They were on county
property on the other side of the park, but people do strange
things.
Mr. Souder. What you need is a video-enhanced image of that
as if there had been tourists there and showing all the people
falling in. That would be a great visitor education to see at
the beginning of the film.
Ms. Orlando. You've seen the film down there. We have the
film and we've got rangers and we try to approach as many
people as we can, and frankly, because we have closed off this
dangerous site, we are able to encounter that many more
visitors. It's made life so much easier for the rangers down
there. We can have more one on one. So we do the best we can.
Ms. Parris. Could I add? It kind of goes back to what you
were asking about the Hawaiian culture and how we work with
them. The situation is getting to such at Haleakala that the
native Hawaiians, pretty blunt with me, saying they don't come
to the park anymore. There's too many visitors trampling their
sacred sites. In fact, I was telling--sharing with my
colleagues here, I met with one of the kupuna groups on Tuesday
and, boy, they beat me up pretty bad about how they just refuse
to come up there anymore. And so we've got to find that balance
between visitors--visitor experience and protecting the site,
but also allowing that traditional use.
Mr. Souder. We need to get to the second panel, so if you
could comment on one other thing that seems unusual. I know at
Haleakala and with Geological Service at Hawaii Volcanoes and
maybe you could give us kind of an overview of your other
parks, you have a lot more scientific land usage inside your
park. It's kind of like a different type of in-holding. I also
wanted to ask you that question. Do you have much in-holding in
the Hawaii park system? Are there landowners inside of the
Federal Government land holdings?
Ms. Parris. Not at all.
Mr. Hays. No.
Mr. Souder. So it's mostly the Federal Government
observation towers up at the top, the Geological Service? If
you could give us some idea, do you have a chart there.
Ms. Orlando. You just happened to see me pull that out.
Just specific to Hawaii Volcanoes, and I'm not sure if I
provided this to you before, but we're only--the National Park
Service and Hawaii Volcanoes is only 90 percent of the total
work force in the park. So we've broken that out. In terms of
our cooperators, our public-private concessionaires, SCA, other
partners, volunteers. We had 42,000 volunteer hours last year.
That's the equivalent of 26 people. We could not open the doors
without those volunteers.
Mr. Souder. Let me do one other thing here, and we'll ask
more specific data. Like I said, this will give us in effect--
when we print the hearing book, we try to figure out how to get
those in the key hands, but also up on our Web site where
individuals can download, and we'll want to fill out printed
materials, much more specific data, what percentage you get
from fees and this type of stuff. So in effect we'll have a
Hawaii book when we're done.
But as we look to the 100-year birthday of the park, what
kind of vision are we going to have for the Park Service? Part
of it is we clearly have backlog. Part of focusing on the
backlog means we haven't kept up with, for lack of a better
term, the front log. In other words, we're seeing a decline of
visibility of actual rangers, how we deal with pension,
Homeland Security, other types of questions like that. And then
this huge question, we're dealing with the backlog, keeping
personnel funding. What about opportunities and holes in the
Park Service that we need to fill in?
I was at Angel Island earlier this week. As we look at
Native American sites, what do we have there? Land type
opportunities to purchase. Once they're gone, they're gone. And
then you can't worry about what kind of rangers you're going to
have at the visitor center, because you don't have the land.
It's already built over.
As you see us trying to capture the public imagination--and
all of you have probably served at multiple parks in Hawaii.
Why don't we start with Mr. Hays and go to Ms. Bell, Ms.
Orlando, and Ms. Parris. This is your chance to say, here are
some ideas on how we can capture the public imagination, what
should we be looking at both executive-wise, congressional-wise
as we move toward the 90th next year, 100th. Mission 66 didn't
start in the anniversary year. It started way ahead.
Mr. Hays. Well, you know, parks are associated with
superlatives. I mean, we talked about crown jewels already
today. They've been called America's best idea. I've read that
they've been called the sincerest expression of democracy. They
create history for Americans. They create knowledge about
natural ecosystems and so forth for Americans, and I would hope
that anything we do will ensure that for the next 100 years or
200 years that those kind of adjectives are used about the
National Park system.
And some of the approaches and considerations and issues to
think about as we move into 2016, our anniversary coming up, I
think maintaining relevancy with our changing demographics in
the country is particularly crucial. You know, we need to make
sure that we're reaching out to the amazingly diverse America
that we're becoming. I had the opportunity to be superintendent
at Manzanar before my current position, which was a Japanese-
American internment camp, and I never thought before I got to
Manzanar that I would have the opportunity to hear a Buddhist
priest thanking the National Park Service for taking care of a
significant site like Manama.
So I think you look at the sites that are saved that may be
relevant to other cultures, but also the Park Service's efforts
to reach out and talk to and encourage other ethnicities, other
than the typical visitor to National Parks, is a critical thing
to do. And I think our work force ought to reflect that
diversity in America, and the Park Service has been working
hard over the last several years to increase diversity. Because
a lot of folks, frankly, before this effort looked a lot like
me, balding white guy with a beard. So I think it's a nice,
appropriate thing to make sure that our work force reflects the
diversity--the great diversity of America.
You know, I think engaging the public, and that kind of
ties into the topography issue. I think most parks already have
been doing it, but this is a little more formal process to
really get out there and do ground-up public engagements about
how parks are managed, and the more we can do to get parks
involved--or people involved in the management of parks, I
think that's crucial. And, you know, it would be great to see
the National Park Service as seen as the best in doing
sustainable design, the best in resource management programs,
and invasive species programs.
I was out at Hanauma Bay, which is just Diamond Head--or
east of Honolulu here and the community visitor center out
there--it's the city and county of Honolulu that runs the
visitor center, and I was impressed with the design. It's very
sustainable yield. It blended into the landscape. They have
wind generating and solar-powered lights in the entire parking
lot, and it's just great to see the park system is really
actively pursuing sustainable design. It's a great idea for the
Park Service to make sure they're a leader in sustainable
design.
Mr. Souder. Our other goal on Mission 66 was to maximize as
much usage of as much energy as possible by creating big, high
ceilings.
Mr. Hays. Exactly. So maybe now those are cultural features
that we need to preserve in many cases, so, yeah, I think being
a leader in sustainable design would be great. And I think
those are key things, from my perspective, that should be
considered.
Mr. Souder. Thank you. Ms. Bell.
Ms. Bell. I'm going to ditto Mr. Hays' comments. He used
the word relevant several times, and what I'd like to see is
that the parks that I manage in the National Park Service still
are relevant as special places to the American people, and
particularly for me as a native Hawaiian and a manager of two
cultural parks, that it remain relevant to the native Hawaiian
community.
Mr. Souder. Ms. Orlando.
Ms. Orlando. We really didn't discuss this beforehand, but
my big word was the R word. You know, on a personal level, I
worked--this is my 36th--I'm going into year 36. Unlike most of
my children who will probably have multiple careers in their
lifetime, probably yours as well, it's been my only career,
with the Park Service. I've worked at four parks, two regional
offices, and the National office. And I do have to say, as Mr.
Hays alluded to, that growing up in the Park Service, 20 years
ago you wouldn't have seen three females sitting up here in a
senior management position.
So relevancy is incredibly important, I think, to a
generation in the next century that did not grow up with the
National Park ideal. So we are challenged, and in Hawaii even
more so because we want to remain relevant and important to the
native Hawaiian culture, but broadly--more broadly is how do we
connect our places to the public in a way that they understand
that we are managing for their benefit, and I think that's
really critical in getting that story out there.
I think we need to manage smarter. I think we need to look
at leveraging resources. And I think also, as Frank alluded to,
sustainability, leading by example, and it's difficult to lead
by example sometimes when your resources are a little thin.
Mr. Souder. Ms. Parris.
Ms. Parris. Well, ditto the relevancy. Anyway, you know,
I've been doing this for 30 years, and like Ms. Orlando, this
is the only job I've ever known. Haleakala is my 17th park that
I've worked in and seventh one I've been superintendent of. And
visiting National Parks is what I do on my own time as well.
And I think over the years our--my hope for our 100th
anniversary is that we've gone back to what was the primary
goal when I started with the National Park Service, and that
was the visitor experience, uniforms on the ground talking to
people. And as I've traveled around other National Parks over
the years, every time I go you see less and less of Park
Service employees. And I think that does diminish the visitor
experience less and less. And it's not all about money. It's
just as we--there's just a lot of things we're having to deal
with as managers and employees now that takes us away from that
front desk, that front line, that roving out on the trail.
You know, the general public, everybody loves the National
Park Service, but they really don't understand what we are and
what our mission is. And that's always puzzled me in my career.
I remember back when we had the closures a couple of years ago,
and I'm standing out there with a news reporter at one of the
parks I was superintendent of in western Pennsylvania. They
pulled up and they were like, well, darn, why can't we go in? I
was like, well, you're aware of the Federal closures? Yeah, but
what's that got to do with you? You know, what does the term
national mean to you?
So I don't know how we attack that, but I think we need to
focus and get back to visitor experience, because in preserving
and protecting our resources, knowledgeable visitors helps make
our job easier. And I've always taken a great amount of pride
in that my job has been to preserve and protect our Nation's
heritage, and that's what I take seriously, as I know my
colleagues do.
So that's my hope for 2016, is that we stop and look, and a
lot of the things we do are important, but it's all about
preserving and protecting resource and educating visitors on
what we do and why there's a need.
Ms. Orlando. I just wanted to add one other thing, that I
think we have an opportunity in Hawaii--we were the 12th
National Park established, and I say we collectively because
Hawaii Volcanoes and Haleakala were established as one park
before the National Park system existed. So we have an
opportunity at the local level to walk our talk and to prepare
our parks for that event as well. So I would just remind
everyone that there were 12 National Parks established before
the Park Service, and not to forget them in 2016 either.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Case, any final comments?
Mr. Case of Hawaii. I guess, first of all, on that
question, I agree with what you just said. I guess that is your
mission, to preserve the heritage of our country. And I think
looking at what--chairman, I think one of the things that I
think we're all focused on is Hawaii is unique in so many ways,
as are many parts of our country, but here in Hawaii we have
certainly a unique ecology, geology, unique scenery, unique
history, unique culture. And I think the National Park system
is absolutely integral to preserving that uniqueness about
Hawaii. As one of the major components of that native Hawaiian
culture, it's under threat. Hawaii, in general, is under
threat, and I think the National Parks system is just an
absolutely indispensable part of our own effort to preserve our
unique qualities.
If I could just--for the record, this would just be--I want
to make sure I ask the right question. I made opening remarks
to outdated management plans. Is there some way of asking so
that the record is clear on how old the management plans are
here?
Mr. Hays. Sure. We can provide that.
Mr. Souder. Do you know off the top of your head when your
last management plan was?
Ms. Bell. My management plan was written for Kaloko-
Honokohau in 1996.
Ms. Orlando. 1970's, one of the older ones.
Ms. Parris. Ten years old, very outdated. Doesn't----
Ms. Orlando. Lucky you.
Ms. Parris. There's been a lot of land added.
Mr. Hays. We'll get that.
Mr. Souder. And whether you're doing current analysis.
Mr. Hays. I'll get you the status, because there's one for
Hawaii Volcanoes is online.
Ms. Parris. I hope to get one online, too.
Mr. Souder. Are you done?
Mr. Case of Hawaii. Yes.
Mr. Souder. One challenge that I want to get out that I've
been kind of ramping up as I go here is that very seldom do I
ever at these hearings get out of the Park Service the biggest
single change that's happened in the United States, and it's
partly the nature of your business that you're outdoors people
and you're there, and that is the explosion of the Internet in
the education system and how people are experiencing things.
Park Services Internet has improved. I know Dick Ramey had
worked for a period of years and many others on how to do
education stuff, but the truth is that you're the biggest
repository of science, you probably have more art than the
National art museums combined inside the Park Service, and most
people aren't going to see it. They may get to their regional
park at one time or another. The question is as we move--we're
looking at 2016 and the next 100 years after that. Much of the
experience is going to be you're going to be able to get 3-D
multi-sensory experiences in your head or around you through
your television and other types of things, how can we
interconnect this with the tremendous resources we have in the
Park Service?
Everybody's having to adjust to it. People on the ground
have to decide whether they're going to go to tapes or rangers
and how you handle even the quantity on the ground. People are
looking at local and regional parks as the next generation
needs hiking and walking places near them. My experience with
the Park Service is that you're very good, because each
superintendent is told they have to make peace with the people
around it that have somewhat different vision than the majority
of the taxpayers who are paying for the park, such as you're
used to accommodating them so local schools get in.
But, for example, through a fluke, both a personal contact
and my son's contact, my daughter in third grade in Indiana was
teaching bass as part of a science course. So she hooked with
Carlsbad on bass and was able to do a conference call of
materials that made that experience so much richer. It
shouldn't just be that the people who are in the immediate area
that happen to have a visit from a local ranger can tap into
the natural resources.
We've got to think big here. How do we take and build the
support and extend the support? And that's one way we're going
to reach lower income, diverse members of the population to get
them exposed to it in their classrooms, then whatever their
local urban park is, and then a regional park. And then to
visit the great natural sites will always be more inclined
toward middle class and older people, as they get more income
and more ability to travel, unless you're geographical. And I
want you all to think about and if you want to add anything to
that of what you've done in those areas.
Ms. Orlando. I would just say we're just embarking on it.
The National Park Foundation has a partnership with Ball State
University and Best Buy, I think, is the corporate sponsor of
an electronic classroom. Grand Canyon I think completed it a
couple years ago, and they are receiving 25 million kids on
that electronic classroom. We're working on, I think, Carlsbad
this year. They do one National Park a year, and Hawaii
Volcanoes is scheduled for 2007. So we can expect, as you say,
to see more of that kind of a contact made.
Mr. Souder. It's a transformation, even in our offices. We
get 300, 400 letters, calls, and direct emails a week, and
that's held pretty steady in my 10 years in the House and the
history of our congressional district. We did a check, as we've
upgraded our home page, I think we had 2 million hits in June.
We had 120,000 being there for 2\1/2\ minutes or more. And when
you look at those numbers, it just staggers the traditional
contacts you have. And the world is changing underneath us and
we've got to figure out how to do that too.
I also want to make one more comment. When we were at
Lassen last summer and this summer, that it shows you what you
can see in our National Park Service. Because Lassen came into
the Park Service when it had been like Mount St. Helens, Hawaii
Volcanoes. Now you see an old park that in effect we're seeing
how it's rehabilitating itself in volcanoes. You can go to
Crater Lake, where I was this summer in my northwest tour of
the parks, Crater Lake is a sunken volcano. Mount St. Helens is
still smoking. You've got lava. And in fact you can do--but it
is--the question is when can you go to your site and say I'm
going to research volcanoes. I can see this whole thing. I can
watch a site that's erupted, that's rebuilding itself. I can go
a little bit to the north and see a sunken lake, see one
smoking, see one with lava inside the same Park Service. We're
thinking in terms of Hispanic tours, if we could get the Asian
culture subgroup. How could we do this in other types of----
Ms. Parris. There was actually an all American highway, I
don't know if you saw the signs when you were in the park, but
there's a scenic byway, Federal scenic byway that takes you
from Lassen Volcano all the way up to Crater Lake, and it was
being extended to Mount St. Helens. It includes private
organizations, the U.S. Forest Service, the National Park
Service, local communities working together to tell that story
kind of--it's along a highway, because they connect, but it's--
--
Mr. Souder. And like what finally Lewis and Clark, after--
--
Ms. Parris. Exactly.
Mr. Souder [continuing]. Ten years of hounding on them, as
we headed up, the last 2 years they finally started organizing
Lewis and Clark. But often these things are inside a region,
when in fact it's a stove pipe, much like we have to do in the
Department of Homeland Security, about across the region. It's
a start to get it in the regions. It's a start on the home
pages. We're getting much more live cam type things, and
there's definitely been improvement, but it's kind of like how
can we big picture this.
Ms. Orlando. One other thing on that, we can also do it
among--between agencies, and we have an exchange with the
Forest Service at Mount St. Helens. We bring an interpreter
over every summer and we send one of ours there, and what a
wealth of experience and knowledge they bring back to their job
and their agency. So we are trying to make that leap across
agency boundaries.
Mr. Hays. Thank you.
Mr. Souder. Thank you very much for your testimony.
Appreciate the patience. Second panel, if you could come
forward.
[Recess.]
Mr. Souder. If you could just give us your name, please.
Mr. Saunders. It's Saunders, S-A-U-N-D-E-R-S. First name is
Ansil, better known as Sandy.
Mr. Souder. Do you want to spell your first name so she has
it.
Mr. Saunders. Ansil, A-N-S-I-L, Saunders, S-A-U-N-D-E-R-S.
Mr. Souder. OK, I know each of you were here at the
beginning, so let me go ahead and swear all witnesses. Please
raise your right hand.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Souder. Let the record show that each of the witnesses
responded in the affirmative. We'll start with Craig Obey. We
appreciate your leadership in the NPCA and working with us in
the whole hearing process and giving us an overview as we go
into each of these hearings, and just so we have--in the
interest of full disclosure, we all know your dad. And he's a
great leader in Congress, and appreciate your being here.
STATEMENTS OF CRAIG OBEY, VICE PRESIDENT, GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS OF
THE NATIONAL PARKS CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION; SUZANNE CASE,
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE NATURE CONSERVANCY IN HAWAII; GEORGE
SULLIVAN, CHAIRMAN OF THE ARIZONA MEMORIAL ASSOCIATION; AND
CASEY JARMAN, BOARD MEMBER OF THE FRIENDS OF HAWAII VOLCANOES
NATIONAL PARK
STATEMENT OF CRAIG OBEY
Mr. Obey. Thank you very much. I appreciate the
opportunity. As you know, I'm vice president of government
affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association. Since
1919, NPCA has been the nonpartisan voice for the National
Parks throughout the country to protect parks for present and
future generations. On behalf of our 300,000 members, I want to
thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this, which is actually
the seventh of your hearings, including the one held in D.C.,
and those hearings are really unprecedented as far as we can
tell in the history of the park system, very important.
Despite their place in society as the birthright of every
American, our National Parks have been neglected by too many
successive Congresses and administrations. We merely pay lip
service to their trust and responsibility for this remarkable
gift. This malignant neglect places at risk much of America's
birthright and makes me question whether my son and daughter
will have potential for the kind of experience of the National
Parks that I took for granted when I was growing up.
Hawaii is a spectacular place, with some of our Nation's
most compelling national treasures. Hawaii's seven National
Parks include national wonders like Haleakala and Hawaii
Volcanoes that inspire and lift the soul and the spirit. They
preserve examples of our culture, places like Kaloko-Honokohau
and Pu`uhonua O Honaunau historic sites. And they commemorate
the legacy of those who gave their lives for our country at the
USS Memorial--Arizona Memorial, Pearl Harbor.
Despite their distance from the mainland, Hawaii's National
Parks face some of the same challenges as their mainland
counterparts. Parks have faced many years of budgetary
bloodletting that led to a system-wide operating shortfall of
$600 million and a maintenance backlog estimated at $4.5 to
$9.7 billion. Imagine running a business on two-thirds of what
you need every year to operate with your physical plant in dire
need of repair. You wouldn't be around very long.
Far off events are also affecting Hawaii National Parks.
For example, a long overdue joint curatorial facility for the
three National Parks on the west side of the Big Island is
being delayed from 2008 to 2010 because of Hurricane Katrina.
In light of the many challenges that they face, people in the
Park Service deserve enormous credit for holding our National
legacy together, given the difficult challenges they have.
Hawaii's first addition into the National Park system was
Hawaii Volcanoes, including Haleakala. It's a constantly
changing place, which was demonstrated by the bench collapse
yesterday, presenting unique challenges to the park. This
incredible place has become the poster child for one of the
increasingly widespread challenges for many of our National
Parks, invasive species, and has suffered from years of
neglect. The park has produced important results in removing
some exotics, goats, and feral pigs. However, fences used to
keep those animals out are expensive. They cost $30,000 a mile,
and that's money very difficult to come by in the operation
budgets for the parks.
They also face significant challenges with a variety of
other animals and plants. For one example, fountain grass,
which they've done a pretty good job of going after over the
last 15 years in the park. But now with the Kahuku Ranchland
that was just added, which is an exciting addition to the park,
which really has opened up places that have been closed to the
public for 100 years. The park has a challenge of now
eradicating fountain grass in that area, as well as other
exotics. And they've done a very good job creating partnerships
to help accomplish some of these things, but in a park that has
a $5 million operation shortfall, 37 percent of the park's
actual budgetary needs, it's a challenge.
It's also why aggressive funding of the National Resource
Challenge both through appropriations and through your National
Parks Centennial Act is so important, as well as initiatives
like Mr. Case's and Senator Akaka's bill.
Another manifestation of the funding strain at Hawaii
Volcanoes is interpretation. The park recently opened a
terrific new visitor center with interpretive exhibits. You
venture beyond the visitor and you see interpretive signs that
appear to be 25 or 30 years old. Many of them are difficult to
read because they're so weather-beaten. The park is doing its
best with its resources. With the resources as they stand now,
it's likely to take years before the park can even replace the
signs.
Hawaii's National Parks face many additional challenges.
Overcrowding at Haleakala, the bike situation, as you already
discussed this morning, and the challenges facing the Arizona,
which are well documented and I won't belabor you with. If you
visit Kaloko-Honokohau, you'll see what's essentially an urban
park, surrounded by development, that really appears to just be
getting off the ground, despite having been created in 1978.
And invasive plants in the park there challenge not only the
natural environment, but are wreaking havoc on many
archeological sites, and they make interpretation extremely
difficult and non-existent. The past couple fiscal years the
park has received funds to combat some of these problems and
has made some strides forward, but those funds are really a
drop in the bucket compared to what we need.
Mr. Chairman, in summary, the National Parks throughout the
Nation, Hawaii's National Parks, like them, are feeling the
strain of multiple responsibilities, unfunded mandates, and
insufficient budgets. This places the long-term health of our
parks and the experience of visitors to them at risk. Now is
the time to seize the opportunity presented by the centennial,
as you've discussed, to really renew our commitment to these
treasures. We don't have this kind of opportunity every day.
NPCA recently released a report describing the 10 reasons to
reinvest in America's park heritage, but really we need only
one, and that's so we can protect this legacy for future
generations so our kids and their kids can see them and
experience them. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Obey follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Thank you very much. Our next witness is Ms.
Suzanne Case, executive director of the Nature Conservancy, and
also in the interest of disclosure, do you know anybody on this
panel?
Ms. Case. My brother.
Mr. Souder. I heard wonderful things about you, and I
assumed it was from a non-partisan source.
Mr. Case of Hawaii. It was non-partisan.
Mr. Souder. Thank you very much for coming, as well as the
leadership of the Nature Conservancy both here and across the
country.
STATEMENT OF SUZANNE CASE
Ms. Case. Thank you, Congressman Souder, and thank you for
holding this hearing. Thank you also, Congressman Abercrombie
and Congressman Case, for joining us today. I'm Suzanne Case.
I'm the executive director of the Nature Conservancy's Hawaii
Chapter. And as you know, we have uniquely valuable National
Parks here in Hawaii protecting our Nation's natural and
cultural heritage. And so we greatly appreciate your support in
Congress to assure that park needs are met.
Along with the privilege of enjoying our magnificent
natural environment, we humans bear a tremendous stewardship
responsibility for the impact we've made on it. Our experience
as a conservation land manager for over 25 years in Hawaii has
shown that the single greatest threat is survival of Hawaii's
natural environment, including areas under National Park
jurisdiction is the damage done by invasive, non-native species
that are introduced either intentionally or inadvertently by
humans. Virtually all conservation field work in Hawaii is
directly connected with invasive species, whether it's feral
animals, like pigs and goats or sheep, or overgrazed native
habitat in the Kahuku section of Hawaii Volcanoes National
Park, or super weeds like Miconia. And some funding and policy
measures pending in Congress can help address these threats.
Regarding control of the invasive species already in
Hawaii, the Natural Resources Protection Cooperative Agreement
Act will resolve a longstanding problem by providing the Park
Service with the needed authority to expend resources and work
with partners to control threats to National Parks from
invasive species that are still outside park boundaries. The
Public Land Protection and Conservation Act creates an
excellent framework of Federal granting authority to assist
States with assessment and response to invasive species and to
foster partnerships to control pests on and adjacent to Federal
land.
But while controlling pests already in our parks is
necessarily a top priority, by far the most effective and cost-
effective way to deal with invasive species threats is to
prevent their introduction in the first place. Now, invasive
species prevention such as inspection and quarantine activities
at ports of entries in Hawaii may not be directly within the
jurisdiction of the subcommittee, but it is an area of critical
importance to any entity trying to manage invasive species
threats, including our National Parks.
And as a result of--directly from National Park Service
leadership, there's a model for prevention currently being
realized at Kahului Airport on the island of Maui. Recently
retired Haleakala Superintendent Don Reeser early on insisted
on preventing new pest introductions that might result from a
proposed airport runway extension, and the end result of a
collaborative process will be more inspectors and a modern
enclosed inspection facility at the airport.
But formidable challenges remain to developing a truly
effective prevention system, and these challenges go right up
to including the U.S. Constitution and the free market
principles on which this Nation is founded. For centuries this
country has promoted the important ideals of free trade and
open borders to Congress. The Constitution's Commerce and
Supremacy Clauses together with specific preemption provisions
of the Federal Plant Protection Act prevent States from being
more restrictive than the Federal Government in regulating the
movement of plants and plant products in foreign and interstate
commerce.
The State of Hawaii runs directly into this
Federalpreemption if it wishes to implement stricter State
quarantine regulations in order to protect the islands from
invasive species introduction. This can involve a long and
laborious process of securing restrictions on a species-by-
species basis from the Secretary of Agriculture, and to address
this problem the Hawaii Invasive Species Prevention Act, H.R.
3468, has been introduced in the House. This bill would
establish an expedited review process for the State of Hawaii
to impose greater restrictions on the movement of invasive
species. It would allow the State to impose limited emergency
restrictions on invasive species and mandate the Federal
quarantine to protect Hawaii from new pest introductions, and
allow for Federal enforcement of State quarantine laws. These
provisions will help greatly in decreasing the risk of new
invasive species threats to our National Parks.
Thank you again for the opportunity to comment on these
issues which are critical to our National Parks, and I would
suggest that perhaps invasive species prevention systems and
sufficient resources for control could be a priority goal for
the 2016 National Park Service.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Case follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Thank you.
Mr. Sullivan.
STATEMENT OF GEORGE SULLIVAN
Mr. Sullivan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Congressman Case
and Congress Abercrombie, thank you for joining. My name is
George Sullivan. I'm the chairman of the Arizona Memorial
Museum Association. We've been the cooperating association with
the National Park Service for the USS Arizona Memorial since
1979. We're non-profit, and our primary reason for existence is
to assist the National Park Service in education and
interpretation. We think we do this very well.
Just a couple of examples that I would like to take the
time to mention, because similar things came up earlier. We
have a witness to history program that we're doing with the
schools on the mainland. We do a video teleconference into
those schools. They come up with a schedule and set up video
teleconferencing from here to the school. The Navy has been
exceptionally cooperative in letting us use their equipment. We
have a Pearl Harbor survivor participate, historian at the park
participates. The children are able to get a virtual tour of
Pearl Harbor, and then they're further able to ask questions of
a survivor. Both the children and the survivors love it.
Last year and the year before last we ran a teacher's
workshop. We got a grant from the National Endowments for the
Humanities that provided us the money to bring out 100
teachers. We did this in conjunction with the East West Center.
Teachers spent a week in training, getting educated on Pearl
Harbor. The events took place on December 7th throughout the
entire island. Last year we conducted a similar workshop for 26
teachers from the mainland and we included 6 teachers from
Japan to join that teacher's workshop. The first time we ever
did that.
Mr. Souder. Can I ask you a quick question?
Mr. Sullivan. Sure.
Mr. Souder. Have you ever looked at hooking that up online
so other teachers around the country could participate in the
workshop even if they weren't part of it?
Mr. Sullivan. Yes, we have had multiple hook-ups on that
with other schools. We hope to be able to do that on an online
basis and get away from the video teleconferencing, because
that is expensive and not all schools have it, so we're working
toward that.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
Mr. Sullivan. The teacher's workshop last year was very
effective and the teachers from Japan enjoyed it very much.
This year the National Endowment for the Humanities just
awarded us another grant. We'll be able to bring out 40
teachers for two sessions for 2 weeks in August, and we'll also
ask the Japanese--our contacts in Japan to see if we can get
some Japanese teachers here as well. Recently, in fact, the day
before yesterday, I met with the American Consul General--
excuse me, the Australian Consul General and we discussed
interface with the museums in Australia, and we're starting to
work there with the Australians because they have a common
interest in the same history that we have, Pacific war.
Briefly I'll mention about the visitor center, the new
visitor center. First, I'd like to mention the one we have
today. It was originally envisioned by my colleague here, Mr.
Sandy Saunders, and he was the one that pushed it through back
in the 1970s. We had lines at that time and Sandy figured the
best way to overcome those lines was to build a visitor center,
and he got the help of many of his colleagues in the State to
do that. Today we have the same lines because at that time we
were looking at 750,000 visitors and now we're looking at 1.5
million. So the new visitor center will be a much larger
footprint on the property than exists today, and we hope to be
able to accommodate many more visitors.
We'll also look at other methods of reducing the lines,
such as advanced ticketing, which was mentioned earlier. We'll
go on line with that system as soon as the National Park
Service is able to get that system worked out and we're waiting
for that.
We also have to overcome the perception of people coming--
people believing that they have to be there at 7 a.m. to get a
ticket, or earlier, as the case may be. So we would like--and I
suggested to the superintendent that we open earlier, like at
6:30 a.m., to reduce the lines outside, because we can
accommodate them inside for the people who have bought. And
they are going to go to that starting January 2nd. They'll be
going to what they call summer hours all year long, open the
park actually at 7:45--the first movie will be at 7:45. The
park will still open at 7:30.
So we're doing a lot of things to accommodate the visitor
in our planning for the new visitor center, and we think we can
reduce the lines and make the visitor experience much better.
Thank you for giving me the time to talk about this.
Mr. Souder. Thank you. Ms. Jarman.
STATEMENT OF CASEY JARMAN
Ms. Jarman. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Congressman
Abercrombie, Congressman Case. My name is Casey Jarman, and I'm
a board member of the Friends of Hawaii Volcanoes National
Park. And I'm starting my second year as the member of this
board. We are a community-based organization whose mission is
to support and promote restoration, protection, understanding,
and appreciation of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. We support
the park in three important ways: philanthropy to augment park
resources, offering educational programs to supplement the
programs offered by the park, and providing volunteers for park
projects.
In our written testimony I've listed some of our recent
activities, so I won't detail them today. If you'd like a
complete listing, we can provide them sometime in the future
for the record as well. I'd like to take my time here today to
mention two key issues that were raised in our testimony.
First, the Friends has been working closely with the park in
providing the public opportunities to visit the new Kahuku
District addition to the park. Because operating funds were not
included with the $22 million appropriations to buy the Kahuku
District addition, the park can offer very limited public
access to this new area of the park, and this is--if you--I
don't know if you've had a chance to visit there, but this is
an incredibly, incredibly special place.
We fervently urge Congress to fund improvements for the
Kahuku District so the public can have access to this
incredible historical, natural, and cultural area in the park
that Congress was so wise to put our tax dollars into funding
and granting for us.
Second, our Friends group has recently moved into the
philanthropic arena and plans on increasing those efforts in
the future. We now have a development committee which is
currently putting together a fundraising plan for the next 5
years that includes, among other things, trying to approach
major--potential major donors for gifts. We believe the job
will be easier when the park formulates its new general
management plan. As was mentioned earlier, the park is now
operating under a 30-year-old master plan.
And as you also saw from the newspaper article, we just
lost 30 acres of the park. This is a very dynamic park. We now
have a new addition, and updating the management plan, I think,
is a critical project for the park. And having an updated
management plan, I think, will help us as we go out and
approach major donors to let them know what the vision of the
park is for the next 50 years and to help them see how they can
enable the park to reach that vision.
And with relief, I make a short personal statement outside
of my hat as a member of the board. I live a mile from Hawaii
Volcanoes National Park. I consider myself one of the most
fortunate people in the world to live there, and for many of us
who live there we live in the same ecosystem that the park is.
I have the same forest around my house as there is in Hawaii
Volcanoes National Park, but yet I go into the park a couple
times a week. It's just the most amazing, incredible place. I
send people there all the time. When visitors come, I don't
just say, go to the park. I say, let me take you into the park,
and that's how important it is.
And I think for a lot of people who live there and for our
visitors, it's not just a natural place, historic place,
cultural place. It's really a place of the heart. It's--I don't
know, I guess you have to have been there to describe it. But
this is--everybody used the word crown jewels, and I used that
in my testimony, but for lack of a better word to describe what
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park is, and that's one of the
reasons I'm on the Friends board, because that park means so
much to me.
And finally, we'd like to thank you, Mr. Chairman, and
other Members of Congress who have been advocates for the
National Park system, including Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
Thank you, also, for the opportunity to testify this morning,
and I'll be happy to answer any questions or provide any
additional information you might need. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Jarman follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7922.025
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7922.026
Mr. Souder. I know I have lots of questions, but I'm going
to--I know Congressman Abercrombie and Congressman Case are
feeling time pressures here, and I hope you all realize that
getting three Members of Congress in one place for more than 10
minutes does not happen. Our staff have electric shock sticks,
and if we're in one place more than 5 minutes, we're gone. So I
thank them for taking the time today.
Do you have anything you want to say?
Mr. Abercrombie. Quickly, one or two. Ask Mr. Sullivan, are
you content with the pace of the--I'm going to say
negotiations, but the discussions to try to integrate all of
the activities that will have to come around with the
establishment of the new visitor center?
Mr. Sullivan. Yes, Congressman, I believe it is moving
along satisfactorily. We had a meeting with Admiral Vitale on
Monday this week--Tuesday, I guess it was--and as Frank Hays
had mentioned, all the cooperative associations, all the museum
associations were there, and it was a great discussion. I think
the timetable that Admiral Vitale has set up and the National
Park Service has set up I think will work.
Mr. Abercrombie. Has there been any discussion yet or has
anybody come in from the city or from the consultant that's
working on the timetable for the presentation of a rail transit
proposal for the city? Has that come into discussion yet?
Mr. Sullivan. We haven't discussed it. Admiral Vitale
brought the subject up, and we will work with the city.
Mr. Abercrombie. So you're aware of it and it's going to be
incorporated.
Mr. Sullivan. That's correct.
Mr. Abercrombie. Do you agree that could make a big
difference in terms of visitor accessibility and those kinds of
things?
Mr. Sullivan. Certainly.
Mr. Abercrombie. OK. Fine. Thank you very much.
Mr. Souder. Will you work with us for some followup
questions to the city and to the Navy? And we'll get it on
record here because they can be responsive in some development,
and the report will take a couple months to get out.
Mr. Abercrombie. I had one other thing on the question of
invasive species. Do we have--I think we have at this time a
clear understanding of what we're talking about, right, in the
various areas, not just the parks? My point being is in order
to deal with the invasive species question, aren't we going to
have to have it coordinated island by island, which would
incorporate dealing with National Parks, but also, by
definition of the nature of the difficulty, it will have to
involve multiple jurisdictions.
Ms. Case. Absolutely. And it's actually one of the
successes stories, I think, and one that we can be really proud
of, is that the partnerships that are in place among the
various land management/land owning agencies in the forest
areas--there are two significant groups, the Watershed
Partnerships and the Invasive Species Councils, and those are
both cooperative groups. The Nature Conservancy is a member of
them. The National Park Service is a member of them. And those
have a lot of--those focus on invasive species control in the
upland forest, and there's a lot of cooperation in them. I
would say we have a lot of threats, and they focus in on
invasive species control. I think the prevention issues are
more statewide, policy-wide issues.
Mr. Abercrombie. Do we--is it a question, then, of funding
and coordinating of funding?
Ms. Case. Funding is absolutely an issue. You can only do
as much invasive species control----
Mr. Abercrombie. So the game plans are there for being able
to get into the control side. What we need now is the funding
for it.
Ms. Case. Yes. I mean, I think probably there's always a
new threat, so you have to----
Mr. Abercrombie. Yeah.
Ms. Case [continuing]. Come up with a new plan, but a lot
of planning in place and a lot of coordination in place, and
it's resource dependant.
Mr. Abercrombie. Thanks. Thank you very much.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Case.
Mr. Case of Hawaii. Mr. Obey, you have kind of a unique
position here. You work in this area. You've been to a lot of
National Parks throughout the country. You are focused on
policy issues in Washington. Now, taking a look at some of our
parks here, just--so you have perspective which none of the
rest of us have, except perhaps Chair Souder and some of our
guests. Are there special challenges that you perceive here in
Hawaii that maybe we aren't seeing, and also special
opportunities, special things we're doing right in Hawaii
versus the rest of the country where we could particularly
weigh in on the national debate we're having over our National
Park system on the contribution side, as well as make sure
we're factoring them in on the what-we-have-to-fix side that
may not be caught up in the debate if you go into Carlsbad or
Lassen or, you know, wherever?
Mr. Obey. Starting with what you're doing right, I think
the work that Hawaii parks are doing with native communities is
terrific, and it's something that the Park Service in general
has been getting better at over the years. And I think places
like Hawaii and some places like Glacier Bay, Alaska, they're
really at the cutting edge of doing some very creative things.
Mr. Case of Hawaii. You're talking about cultural
preservation.
Mr. Obey. Absolutely. I think in terms of the challenges,
my sense is that the challenges here are not necessarily all
that different from the challenges elsewhere. They may be
different in scale. I think the invasives problem here--it's a
problem that you face all over the place, but here it's
magnified. Half of the species that have gone extinct that were
listed under the Endangered Species Act were from Hawaii. So
it's really--this is ground zero for that issue, and I think
it's something that could also help inform much of the rest of
the parks system.
And the kinds of things--when I was at Volcano yesterday, I
went around and went to an interpretation and he was explaining
some of the partnerships that the park has worked out. He
talked about what they've done with the goats, and you can't do
that alone. You've got to--Mr. Abercrombie's point, you've got
to really engage everyone you can.
So I think--I guess the last thing I would just add is a
lot of those challenges come down to resources. And what we see
continually in park after park after park is interpretation
gets hit and the visitor experience gets hit. The ability to
acquire new lands has been diminishing more and more every
year. It's been evaporating. So there are enormous challenges
that are faced across the system, and I think some of the
things that you're experiencing here in Hawaii are really
excellent examples for why we need to do more in park
operations.
Ms. Jarman. May I add? One of our board members is actually
one of the entomologists for the State Department of
Agriculture and someone in the previous panel mentioned the
rust problem on the ohia trees, and he told me a few months ago
that if that rust gets to the Big Island, it could kill all of
the ohia trees basically in the forest in Hawaii Volcanoes
National Park. The ohia tree is the first tree that regenerates
in a lava field once the lava has taken over an area, and
that's stunning. If that were to get to the Big Island, it's
just indescribable to imagine what that park would look like
and what the area that has ohia trees--which is a good portion
of the side of the island would look like.
So something needs to be done about that. And I encourage
the bill to deal with problems outside the National Park,
because that will come into the park, but by the time it gets
to the park, it's going to be too late. So it's got to be dealt
with while it's on the islands other than the Big Island. Thank
you.
Mr. Case of Hawaii. Well, we have a perfect example of that
with Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, which Ms. Orlando pointed
out when Frank Lucas came down to tour with us a few years ago,
of a wasp, as I recall, getting off of a container ship in
Hilo. Now, the National Park system has nothing to do with
container ships in Hilo, has no jurisdiction, yet that wasp is
now in the National Park killing off the birds that we're
trying to protect. Frankly, that species of bird is probably
history from that wasp. So that's a pretty good example of how
if you want to talk about protecting our National Parks, the
comment that we've got to look beyond the borders of the
National Parks from an invasive perspective is dead on.
Can I just stay with Ms. Jarman? And I want to focus on
philanthropy, because it seems inescapable to me that we're
going to have to look to the private sector much more, really a
realistic matter to do what we need to do. And there are many
people that want to help the National Parks. And I've always
tried to find the way to provide a greater level of
contribution. Obviously if I'm somebody contributing money--the
chances of my contributing money to the general fund of the
United States are pretty low, just as a general principle, but
if I know I can contribute to invasive protection at Hawaii
Volcanoes National Park or to the expansion of the park into
Ka`u, etc., that makes a lot of sense. And I think a lot of
people want to help from that perspective.
So the question is as you get into philanthropy and into
people being ready to give but not necessarily willing, what
obstacles exist to them actually giving and what can we do from
a national, legal perspective, Federal statutory perspective to
provide the encouragement for them to give to the National
Parks, to a specific park? You mentioned, for example, the
linkage, which I hadn't considered, between a management plan
and the willingness to give. We also obviously have tax
deductions available for charitable contributions, and that all
exists from a matter of general principles. I get a
contribution if I give it to you or the National Park. But what
else can we do to encourage people to give either to the
general fund or to the park system or specifically to a
particular park or particular activity?
And in the same breath, can you just answer the question,
can you expand on the linkage between willingness to give and
having an adequate management plan?
Ms. Jarman. In terms of the latter question, if I were as
wealthy as some of the donors that we're hoping to tap, I would
want to know that the money that I am expending is going to be
consistent with what--I want the goals and the values of the
park to be consistent with my goals and values for the park,
and that's what the management plan reflects. It reflects what
are the priorities for that park, what does that park want to
do, where does it want to put its resources, what does it want
to look like. And so I can say, look, here's the vision for the
park. The vision for the park is to--and, say, in terms of
invasive species, we want to eradicate the X from Y part of the
park, and then the park also then has plans in their invasive
species plan through the resource management plan about how
they can do that, but they need the resources to do that.
And we can say the Federal Government is unable to provide
sufficient resources. If they were able to get X, Y, and Z,
they would be able to do this. We need the money for that. And
of course we all follow the Director's orders, because the
Friends groups cannot--I don't think are allowed to build
toilets or roads, those kinds of things. There are limits to
what the Friends group can raise funds for.
But that helps us to put our requests for dollars in the
context of really what the park needs and what the values are.
And if I know that you're interested in acquisition and trying
to improve the overall ability of our National Park system to
include more areas, and if there is a way that funds can
somehow be put to that use, that's what I can talk to you
about, and I can show you how that's consistent with what the
park plans to do. And that's why the general management plan, I
think, is so important for philanthropy.
Mr. Case of Hawaii. It's a marketing tool to get people to
give. Maybe it's time to revisit some of the basic restrictions
that you were talking about. You know, why can't the Friends
group go out there and, you know, contribute sweat equity to
construction of a bathroom.
Ms. Jarman. To the extent that the park is allowed to have
volunteers to put in something, we probably could do that, but
we couldn't go in and ask X person, would you donate so much
money for the construction of this, I'm pretty sure.
Mr. Case of Hawaii. I think that's the point.
Ms. Jarman. There are certain restrictions on the types of
fundraising, and Superintendent Orlando has more expertise on
that.
Mr. Case of Hawaii. But those restrictions come from
somewhere. They come from within the national--I guess the
point I'm making is maybe it's time to think about whether--I
mean, just as an open question. We can deal with it later on,
but, frankly, I think a lot of people would be willing to do a
lot more sponsorship, contributions for a lot of things if they
knew that's where it was going to go. So maybe that's a
productive place for us to go in terms of a big picture
consideration.
Mr. Obey. Mr. Case, could I just add to that. Actually
right now the Park Service is rewriting what's known as
Director's Order 21. That Director's Order relates to
philanthropy and what philanthropists can and cannot do, what
the Park Service can and cannot do in relation to that. So
that's something that I would suggest that you take a look at,
but that's something that's live right now that you might want
to look at.
Mr. Case of Hawaii. We actually, just for the record, have
a State law here in Hawaii that allows people to designate
contributions to the State or to a county government for the
specific purpose of acquiring a piece of property that is
available for purchase, under eminent domain or otherwise, and
the quid pro quo is I'll contribute as long as I know that's
what you'll use the money for. I won't do it otherwise. Now, I
know about that State law because it was one of my only
original ideas in 20 years of public service. To my knowledge,
it's never been used in the State. Nonetheless, it's sitting
there. I think it's a pretty good example of what could be done
to facilitate people with contributing.
OK, I'm going to ask just one more question and then pass
back to the chair.
Ms. Case, we talked a little bit about conservation
easements, and that's the whole other part of this, because
we're obviously kind of having a problem in terms of bringing
that in. So there has to be a much broader level of
participation in terms of private, non-Federal government
entities either acquiring to hold or acquiring to protect the
intention of transferring. Maybe you could just kind of, for
the record, describe the Nature Conservancy's conservation
easement efforts in Hawaii, which I think goes back several
decades.
Ms. Case. Sure. The Nature Conservancy has made extensive
use of conservation easements in our preserves. We have a dozen
preserves in Hawaii, starting about 20, 25 years ago. Waikamoi
Preserve, which is adjacent to Haleakala National Park, is a
conservation easement. The underlying fee owner is Haleakala
Ranch. Kamakou Preserve on Molokai is a conservation easement.
The underlying owner is Molokai Ranch. We have a long-term
conservation lease from the Campbell Estate for our Honouliuli
Preserve in the Waianae Mountains on Oahu.
We have--and some of those are donations. We have several
conservations easements on west Maui from Amfac, A&B, Maui Land
& Pineapple, on Lanai from Castle & Cook, and these are all
creation of preserves. Some of the early ones were purchased.
The later ones were donated. Particularly as we became
increasingly aware of the management expense, it became much
more important to kind of hold our privately raised dollars for
management, and we were able to work with some generous land
owners to donate conservation easements.
And in south Kona, or Kona Hema Preserve, which is adjacent
to the Kahuku addition of Volcanoes National Park, we did it
cooperatively with the U.S. Forest Service under its Forest
Legacy Program. We used Forest Legacy Easements on the three
adjacent parcels. And we plan to use that mechanism elsewhere
in Hawaii because we think it's a fantastic one to add
federally protected areas with a private partnership component.
We have an easement going back to the late 1960's, we've
helped with the Kipahulu extension at Haleakala National Park,
and we have several parcels that are still in the works in
various stages for donation to the park. One of them is a
conservation easement which we hold. It's in a buffer area that
was transferred out to a private landowner. So it's easement
restrictions so that it protects the view plane, and we hope to
be able to transfer the easement to the park so that it is, you
know, part of the protected area.
I think that in terms of the--when you do a conservation
easement, particularly if one is purchased, you're going to go
through a series of analyses of what restrictions are important
to have in that easement and what's left for the landowner. And
of course the more restrictions you have, the more expensive
the easement is or the higher the donation. And at some point
it becomes more cost effective and simpler from a management
perspective to just buy it outright, or, you know, best case,
have it donated outright. So you're always weighing that
factor.
I have often thought that there may be some cooperative
mechanism in here that could help with acquisitions and land
management at the same time, that we're able to either work
something creatively that is consistent with current law or
perhaps some changes in law, for instance, if someone is
willing to donate or sell land for acquisition on the condition
that there be management money set up from another source,
maybe another public source, maybe another private source, or
if there's acquisition money from a public source and the
landowner is willing to take the--to sell the property and take
those funds and put it in a conservation trust fund for the
long-term management, there might be some ways to work together
to solve both the acquisition side of it and start some long-
term management capability. So I think that is one opportunity
we have to look at.
Mr. Souder. Let me start with your last point and work in
some other things, and let me ask Mr. Obey first, just to kind
of help us when we get back to Washington to start working with
the legislation, and not only the Centennial Act but other
potential things we can do either in the short term maybe as
part of the 90th or in the 100th, pursuing this question of
donations and endowment. Ms. Case raised an interesting
question here. In our Boston hearing, and also in what they're
doing up in Arcadia, and when I visited there later, their
carriage roads came with endowment.
Is it conceivable that we could--to some degree, this runs
counter to the whole tax simplicity argument, but at the same
time individuals involved in this could understand some of
this. Is there a way that, A, we could target some of what
we're trying to do with the Centennial Act into an incentive
with endowment? And as we look, at the very least, at how any
kind of legislation has to be put through, that there could be
some match or greater ties, if it includes an endowment, as
opposed to if it doesn't include an endowment.
Because I know where the problem comes in is that if land
donations and easements come tied to the actual fund, which is
a great idea, in one sense, so it isn't going to be drained out
of what we have for the existing operations for the parks,
unless it comes with money for the parks, which you can't bind
Congress to Congress. Could you kind of kick around to--you
know, like there's got to be some way that we can be--
endowments for management are clearly going to be one of the
things that enables us to absorb more land and try to get
around this question of new lands.
Mr. Obey. I think that's an interesting thing to explore.
Clearly money's been evaporating, and that's why we need to do
something. I think what I wouldn't want to have happen in that
context would be for there to be an expectation that you
weren't going to acquire. I think that could be working against
the goal. But I think certainly that's something worth
exploring.
The question of endowments overall, they were extremely
successful, and that's being replicated at Golden Gate, as you
know. I think endowments--I'm not sure if you're thinking of
endowments strictly on the private sector side or also on the
public sector side of funding. On the public sector side, my
experience has been that the appropriators tend not to be crazy
about funding endowments because they'd rather just appropriate
the money. but on the private side that's a source to think
about.
Mr. Souder. What I wrestle with, and nothing's worse than
to come out with an MBA in management and go into Congress,
because first off, you can't do long-term planning in Congress.
In social issue areas it's the biggest nightmare, but the parks
aren't too far behind. We're putting more management systems
in, but it is a nightmare to work through. Because what I would
like to think is that you look across the Nation, and that
there would be a logical ranking of here are the things that we
really need to acquire, you've got a certain amount of points
there, if somebody has a willing donation, you factor that in,
and if they have an endowment, you factor it in, and that
something that's No. 6 may get bumped up if it has money tied
to it, and then you have an urgency loss risk to the system
analysis.
And I think variations of this occur at the park level,
variations occur at the regional level, but then we kind of
subdivide this nationally and say so much money is going to go
to each region so it's not really a national vision, it becomes
equity-based regional divisions. There's a fundamental
unwillingness to some degree in institutions like the Park
Service to make judgmental decisions because, well, every
building ought to be preserved, every species ought to be
preserved, every variation of every species ought to be
preserved.
And when you're unwilling to make qualitative judgments,
then what happens is each of us earmark, and then you go down
through the bill and you find that individual Members of
Congress, based on their seniority or power or access or
whatever, get this or this for their district, as opposed to
having a rational plan. And I'm trying to sort through are
there certain things we could put in, financial incentives,
that would tip a little bit of that balance, understanding that
these are risky tradeoffs?
Because what happens is areas where there's wealth or where
people retire, like Arcadia or San Francisco or potentially
parts of Hawaii, I think would be in a tremendous advantage
over other parts of the country in adding things if we do it
just by endowments and people who give. It also would be--in
effect you could have, which I raised in Boston and informed--
Director Kennedy acknowledged, look, it's a tough question. In
effect, then, very wealthy people get to manage what direction
the Park Service goes. It's no longer a democracy. Those who
have the money to donate certain things, can do that.
Now, as a practical matter, however, if we don't have
enough funds in the public sector to do it, were it not for the
donors, we would be up a creek right now. And along that line,
I would like to talk a little bit about the nature conservancy.
And I think we've had one other hearing, maybe two, but I would
like to develop a little bit from your perspective.
First off, I presume you've been having some discussion
about proposals in potential tax legislation that would
restrict land gifts. Do you want to comment on that?
Ms. Case. I don't know what the current status of those
discussions are but, you know----
Mr. Souder. It would be crippling basically.
Ms. Case. Tax deduction restrictions on donations of land
would be crippling to conservation.
Mr. Souder. And that if we didn't have Nature Conservancy
stepping in many times to purchase these lands or get them
donated, what percentage, in your experience--you named a whole
bunch of things where you have easements and conservancy lands.
Do you expect at a certain point a number of those things to
fall under either Park Service or one of the Federal agencies
and being able to leverage the dollars to come back into
other----
Ms. Case. I would say that roughly speaking half of the
land acquisitions that we have done have been what we call
cooperative transactions where the ultimate landowner is going
to be an agency, particularly the National Park Service and
National Wildlife Service, and we're able to step in and help
the negotiations and advance funding. Funding comes ultimately
from the appropriation and about the other half is from
privately raised money, private or donated land to be held as
private reserves.
Mr. Case of Hawaii. Can I just amplify that point just for
a second? Let's document this for the record in Hawaii. Run the
list here. We just had a huge addition--incredible addition at
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, which we call Kahuku. That
wouldn't have happened unless private entities--it might have
happened, but the Government wasn't going to buy it outright.
So that one might have been lost.
Haleakala National--well, let's stay on the Big Island.
Pu`uhonua Honaunau just had a major expansion which was held
against development pressures. That wouldn't have happened
unless the mechanism was in place. I forget Kaloko-Honokohau, I
think an element of that was similar.
On Haleakala National Park, Kipahulu, the Seven Sacred
Pools were worked on by the Nature Conservancy first to kind of
consolidate clear title. We have a brand new addition coming in
soon, I don't think it's there yet, to the Haleakala National
Park which was acquired, held not by the Nature Conservancy but
by another entity until basically it could be absorbed into the
National Park.
Over on Kauai right now the Fish and Wildlife Refuge is
under expansion of the Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge.
And so this is, for Hawaii, invaluable. This entire mechanism
of donations, of private holding, of private consolidation, of
partnership with the National Park Service is key to what we
have here in Hawaii. And, you know, we want to expand it, not
contract it. So that's just Hawaii. I'm forgetting a few
examples somewhere.
Mr. Souder. I'm worried that in charitable tax reform we're
going to have an unintended bite. I think it's interesting
because, quite frankly, this process has been abused in some
cases where individuals will get a charitable foundation set
up, put their kids in it, and in effect get a tax deduction for
their kids with 80 percent going to the utilization of staffing
and not a foundation. And in trying to address some of these
kind of things in some debated, highly publicized cases around
the United States, I'm worried about something slipping through
unless we illustrate and understand exactly how these holding
patterns are occurring in the National Park Service around the
United States, because our ability to add land is at best
incremental in these fights. And without the Nature Conservancy
and other groups' ability to do that, of which part of the
fundamental question is how critical is the tax code on that?
And my assumption is pretty critical. If it was capped or put
restrictions--and look, some of it is self-serving. I mean, the
celebrated case that the New York Times has highlighted is
David Letterman getting all the land around him in effect
privatized so he can have protection around his estate, but,
hey, if it kept land on Long Island free, I'm willing to let
him have a protective buffer to his house because we'd never be
able to have that land undeveloped if we hadn't done it that
way. And the question is how can we document this?
Ms. Case. Landowners still give up value. They may be
adjacent to a protected area, but they give up significant
development rights when they do that. So without tax
incentives, it would be significantly crippling to private
conservation as well as cooperative conservation, and I can
provide some examples.
Mr. Case of Hawaii. If I could add just one more ingredient
here, and that is regarding condemnation, and all this, that,
and the other important tax advantages for many private land
owners, the key is condemnation, which has tax advantages. Now,
that's not an adverse seller. That's a willing seller, as long
as it's a--but if they get the umbrella of condemnation, they
have a tax advantage which works for them and works for the
Government. So that's another area that under the current
perspectives might be targeted because it's got condemnation in
it, but that's not exactly what's happening, but it's a benefit
for the National Park Service.
Mr. Souder. Do you know if the Nature Conservancy has lands
that you would be reluctant to give over to the National Park
Service because of public access?
Ms. Case. Can you explain your question a little more.
Mr. Souder. In other words, does the Nature Conservancy
have lands that they've purchased that if they gave them or
sold them to the Park Service, might then allow visitor access
and wouldn't be as wild? Have you ever had land swaps where
you've said, look, this has to be wilderness, treated as
wilderness, and not to go into the Park Service?
Ms. Case. Well, the transactions we assist on are
comfortable that the long-term conservation needs are going to
be met. There may be public access provisions, and in some
cases for a National Park that's extremely appropriate. And
that's just a matter of figuring out how to plan for access
appropriately so it doesn't harm the natural resources, but
it's important to get the public into the wilderness as long as
you can protect the wilderness from any associated threats.
Mr. Souder. Let me move to Ms. Jarman, and Mr. Obey may
have a comment on this too. Do you know, do Friends groups--are
there any organized, say, conferences on either fundraising or
shared best ideas that you have together in teleconferencing
materials that are provided through NPS or do you have a
national group? Do you ever do Internet conferencing?
Ms. Jarman. We belong to what's called the Friends
Alliance. Our president of our Friends board for the past 2
years has been to their meeting, and that--the purpose, I
think, of the Friends Alliance is to help--particularly we're--
this is our--we've only had 1 year of philanthropy. This is our
second year in philanthropy, and Superintendent Orlando has
been very supportive in encouraging us in this arena. And she's
the one that has gotten us in touch with the Friends Alliance.
And we can provide you--I haven't been to their meetings, but
certainly we can provide you with more information on what they
do, but I know the president came back and reported a wealth of
information, a wealth of ideas.
And those Friends boards that have been in existence for a
much longer time and have been very successful at fundraising
are now in the position where they're actually working with the
younger Friends boards to help us develop fundraising plans and
to be able to do more. And workshops on Director's Order 21 is
a--that document in and of itself is--I'm a law professor. I
read that and I still--my eyes go crossed. And one of my fellow
board members said, you know, you've got to read that and
summarize it, because I read it and it makes no sense to me
whatsoever, and I said, well, it makes a little sense to me,
but we can do that. But those things end up being very complex.
But these meetings, they teach you what are the basics of the
Director's Order and what you can and you cannot do. So that
mechanism is in place and we are beginning to take advantage of
it.
Mr. Obey. It's my understanding that the Friends Alliance
isn't actually an incorporated entity as it is more a loose
affiliation of Friends groups that come together that have been
holding these conferences, and actually when I was at Hawaii
Volcanoes yesterday, the staff I talked with had just been to
that same conference and talked about how enormously valuable
it was for him because they're trying to figure out how they
can engage in some real innovative work with folks outside of
the park. So he was able to get some ideas there.
Mr. Souder. Is the National Park Service itself allowed to
coordinate meetings of these groups? I would think it would
give National Park Service great benefits to have these groups
formed and know about the technicalities of law, how to do it,
sharing brochures, sharing videos, best practices, how to work
a list.
Mr. Obey. I think that's actually the goal of the Friends
Alliance. I think it was prompted by the National Park
Foundation.
Mr. Souder. So work under the National Park Foundation and
have that portion to followup with that particular angle, how
to interconnect, because clearly that is a good supplement.
Part of the reason there's concerns about how--which we heard
in San Francisco this week about what the Friends group can
fund is that we don't want the Friends groups to take over
basic responsibilities inside the Park Service that the Federal
Government should be doing. We've got to figure out how to have
them be added components. And people would be willing to do
that. If we don't have any other choice, I think that may be
the case, but we've got to be a little bit careful to say this
is what the public sector is going to do. Here's what the
private sector can add to it. Otherwise, in effect, even more
privatize the park question, but----
Ms. Jarman. In addition to the Friends Alliance,
Superintendent Orlando has assisted us in getting access to
workshops on board development, you know, for non-profit
boards. So we had one, what, a year ago and another one coming
up sometime after the first of the year in February that we as
the board didn't have those resources, and Superintendent
Orlando has been able to help us avail ourselves of those. So I
believe within the different Friends groups that's possible as
well.
Mr. Souder. Could you--the Friends group in your area might
be--Hawaii Volcanoes would be a very interesting model question
here. What percentage of your Friends group lives on your
island? Could you get that?
Ms. Jarman. We can get you that information.
Mr. Souder. Do you think it's 20 percent?
Ms. Jarman. I think it's much higher than that.
Ms. Orlando. Probably closer to 100 because that's a
resource that we haven't tapped is off island and the second
homeowners.
Ms. Jarman. Two of our----
Mr. Souder. Madam Court Reporter, how do you want to handle
like when Ms. Orlando just responded there? Do you want us to
repeat what she said?
The Court Reporter. No, that's fine. I was able to hear
what she said. Thank you.
Ms. Jarman. Maybe we should have Superintendent Orlando up
here.
Mr. Souder. We may if we--go ahead.
Ms. Jarman. One of our board--we have two board members now
on, one just went off, who own property in Volcano but live on
Oahu. And they come to Volcano when we have our board meetings,
etc., but I think--we can get you those numbers, but I'm sure
the vast majority.
Mr. Souder. Do you see yourself soliciting part-time
residents of the island and visitors to become part of your
Friends group?
Ms. Jarman. Well, our membership committee now has a goal
of 500 members in the next 3 years. We're at 160 right now, and
that committee is developing a plan to expand our membership
base and to expand it not only beyond Hawaii island but beyond
Hawaii. I mean, we get so many visitors from around the United
States and around the world who come to Hawaii Volcanoes
National Park, and find a way to tap those as well.
Mr. Souder. Do you see yourselves doing a letter in
conjunction with the park to those members to build support
base on needs both public and private?
Ms. Jarman. I'm not on the membership committee, and so I'm
not sure what they're planning, but I could ask them to get
that information to you. We're also putting up a Web site,
talking about technology, and we're finally putting up our
first effective Web site. And we're expecting that through our
Web site--part of it is going to be people can join the friends
board through the Web site. We're going to try to make that
easy and seamless for them, and we think we're going to be able
to expand our membership considerably that way as well, and
offer some of our seminars in a way through our Web site so
people don't have to be in Volcano National Park to come to the
seminar.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Sullivan, I presume your group has broad--I
mean you have a very unusual Hawaiian accent yourself. I assume
you have a lot of diverse membership in the United States in
your organization.
Mr. Sullivan. Well, we do from the standpoint of donors, no
question, across the country. And our membership is made up of,
for the Arizona Memorial Museum Association that membership is
from visitors that come to the park and choose to join on as a
member. I might add that I did attend the Friends group meeting
last year in Portland. There was another one just recently back
in Gettysburg, I believe, and I didn't get a chance to go back
to that but the meeting in Portland I thought was very good.
One of the problems, Friends group do not generally have a lot
of money. So to send a person to that meeting is expensive for
them, as I understand. But I think there's a lot to be gained
from that meeting, and the National Park Service is represented
there as well as National Park Foundation.
Mr. Souder. Would you see yourself participating if
something like this could be fed over the Internet from a main
location with certain speakers and interactive? I mean, we're
moving to wireless and teleconferencing in all sorts of
organizations and universities around the country. I'm sure the
universities here in Hawaii have locations. We usually go in
where anyone can go in and interact without having all the
travel expenses. Would you find that kind of thing useful?
Would you go to things like that?
Mr. Sullivan. Yes, I think so, and of course the
cooperative associations with the National Park Service have
their own umbrella organization. It's called APPL. I forget
what the A stands for, but it's Partners for Public Lands. That
group meets annually. In the spring it's meeting in Little
Rock, and the workshops that were just talked about are
provided during the course of those 3 or 4 days, several
workshops go on for development, how you get a capital
campaign, etc. So that's all laid out, and the members of the
cooperative associations attend those and their board members
attend. So they come away with a pretty good education of what
to do.
Mr. Souder. In an association like yours, do you find--
obviously all association's memberships are going to be older
than the population as a whole, because people will tend--and
it's not like it dramatically is going to change and people 21
are going to join the History Association. What you hope is you
have a steady replenishment of those organizations.
Pearl Harbor just went through a very historic anniversary.
Many of the distinguished veterans, like Mr. Saunders, may not
be around for many more huge type of anniversaries like that.
Not that you're not going to live to be 120, just saying
statistically the odds are decreasing. And this is a big
question on our World War II type memorials. Do you see younger
people coming into your association, younger being--I'm 55--45
to 50, coming in to replace kind of the tier of the so-called
Greatest Generation?
Mr. Sullivan. We have a Board of Directors in the
association and we have 18 members of the board. We just
increased that. Originally, a few years ago, about 5 years ago,
we only had seven members. Then they increased it to 15 and we
went to 18. So the members we just brought in are much younger
than the ones that were there. So, yes, we're finding we're
able to attract board members that are younger.
Mr. Souder. Maybe we could have Mr. Saunders briefly tell
your personal story and then why you think a memorial like this
is so important.
Mr. Saunders. Personal story gets rather involved. My ship
was stationed here at Pearl Harbor about November 1940. In the
middle of 1941 I went home on leave, vacation, and I didn't--I
had my 30 days and I came back and reported in to San Diego for
transportation back to Pearl, and they put me to work jerking
sodas, working in the soda fountain. And they didn't want to
let me go, and I kept asking the lieutenant in charge, I needed
to get back to my ship. Well, this started in July when I went.
Then I reported in there early August. Here it was September,
October.
November decided, hey, I'm really tired of sitting there,
you know, not being able to get back to the ship and not
wanting to do what they had me doing. So I sat down and wrote
the flag lieutenant a letter, and it wasn't very long after
that this lieutenant comes down, and, Seaman Saunders, how long
will it take you to get ready to go aboard ship for
transportation? I said, Lieutenant, my sea bag is packed. I'm
all set to go. I can be there. You got 15 minutes. I'll be
there. OK.
They put me aboard the Shaw, USS Shaw, and so I was on
there for transportation. We pulled into Pearl Harbor on
December 4th, and of course you know when that happened. That's
how come I was back here December 7, 1941. The ship went into
dry dock. The Shaw went into dry dock, and they had to pump the
water out and get the thing settled. And as soon as the thing
was settled, I'm standing on the quarterdeck with my sea bag
over my shoulder, and I saluted the Lieutenant and requested
permission to leave the ship. And I saluted the colors and
walked off the ship.
I looked back and waved at some of the fellows that I had
been visiting with for the past 6, 7 days. Didn't know them
really well, but they had an idea what I was doing. So when I'm
walking away, I'm waving at these fellows, little knowing that
3 days later the USS Shaw would have her bow broken off. The
bow was blown plum off of that ship, and some of the fellows
were killed that I didn't know real personal but some of the
people were killed on the ship.
Well, I'll come back to the Shaw a little later. I got in
what they called--they had a big long--about as long as this
table, I guess, and about the same width--was one of these
mules that you use in the shipyard that were pulling things
around. They were pulling this trailer. It was real low to the
ground where you just step up into it, had benches all over
here, and that was the transportation they used around the
shipyard.
So I went to Ten Ten dock, got over there, and I went on
board the boat and went out to the equipment. I was attached to
the staff, and the staff was on board the USS Rowley. That's my
ship of record. I never tied the boat, never lived on it.
Waited, took somebody from there to someplace else. But the
morning of December 7th I got checked in and I got down to my
boat and back on the job, and I was there. I was so happy. And
the fellows in the boat were just glad to have me back because
they had been shorthanded for about 4 months. And so we tied
our boats up at Aiea Landing. That's where the CINPAC 3
boathouse is now. I don't know if you two gentlemen know. I
know Congressman Case knows about that.
But at that time the landing was just a finger pier going
out into the water. Later on after the war started, quite a
while after, they built this fancy boathouse on there and that
became the CINPAC boathouse. But we used to go in there and tie
up at night, and there would be maybe 8 or 10 boats. You put 12
on one side of the pier and you could put 6 more on the other
side. That's the most boats there at one time, but the boats,
we tie up there and we have a man that would watch the ship,
blinker lights at night.
And so it was unusual for the airplanes to come over
because they had been having mock race. From the time I got out
here in 1940, every weekend you'd have a mock race, planes
would come from Kaneohe over to Pearl Harbor. They'd come from
Wheeler Field, which was Army at that time. We didn't have an
Air Force. We had what you called the Army Air Force. And they
would come down to Pearl, or Pearl Harbor had our office out at
Ford Island and they would be off at Schofield or wherever
else. So every weekend they had all these planes around.
Then December 7th happened here. All those boats were lined
up there and we were about--I think we were tied up to the pier
and had two other boats out. And I'm sitting--I had just got
through washing some clothes and wringing them out and putting
them in my scrub bucket, and I had on my swimming trunks and
all hell broke loose. Explosions were coming from every place,
and even when they come from the harbor there, they were
ricocheting up in the mountains and echoing back. Sounded like
you were right in the middle of the damn thing, you know, the
explosion was right where you were at. It was really terrific.
It was hell, that's all.
Anyway, I'm watching the battleship over there and the
airplanes--well, I saw the Arizona, and I saw some of the other
ships get hit. And from where we sat, where the landing is, you
had a clear view of Battleship Row. There was no bridge there
then, no buildings in between you or anything. So you could
look from the landing right across all the way the full length
of Battleship Row.
When the explosions went off, I'm looking across Ford
Island and here's an aircraft hanger up in the air. I could see
daylight underneath it. The explosion just picked it up off the
ground and set it back down. I heard later that it almost went
back on its foundation but it was off just a little bit. Am I
still all right here?
Mr. Souder. If you can finish, and then I want to ask you
some questions.
Mr. Saunders. Finish? I told you it's a long story. Anyway,
these planes are coming over and one of them come across the
landing where we were at toward Aiea and over in the cane
fields. That's what it was then. There's a city up there now.
At that time it was cane fields. And then they come by. I'm
standing up there gawking, looking up at them in my swimming
trunks, and he tilted over like this and he was firing his
machine gun and one bullet went plunk about 20 feet out from
the pier on one side, then the next one went plunk on the other
side, and I'm in his line of fire here, you know. But we never
saw that plane again.
Then about that time the place cleared out. Nothing was
coming in, and so our man in charge of the boats, name was
Vansteinberg. Now, that was his full name. I forget what his
name was, but everyone called him Van. But Van said--somebody
says, hey, this is a funny mock race. Van looked up and said,
mock race hell. See the rising sun on the side of that zero?
Japan is attacking us. Boom, everyone knew.
He said, OK, let's get out in the boat and go out and see
if we can pick up some of the men, because he had seen them
blown right off the ship, you know. So we got the boat on the
way and went out there, but by the time we got there the
water--there was oil all over the water. And we never did pick
anybody up. There was nobody close to where we were at. And we
got out about as close as the Arizona and another boat had gone
in and had some people in it that they picked up and it was
headed back to the landing. It had a hole in the side of the
boat about, oh, 18 inches long. One of the planks had just
blown out, got hit by a piece of shrapnel. And he was really
making knots making back to the base.
And then we were just about even where the Arizona was and
we looked up and here's a bunch of high flying bombers coming
over Hickam across the Navy yard toward the battleships again.
So we get there and then when we saw those bombers, he said,
we're going back to the landing. This boat is already ahead of
us and maybe just follow them into the landing.
When we got there there was a fellow standing there and he
had his--all he had on were his shorts and his undershirt and
his shoes, and he was talking up a storm. And we tied the boat
up and we were listening to him and he says, I was blown off
the ship. He was a warrant officer off of one of the
battleships. I never did figure out which one he was off of,
but here he is standing there in his underclothes. He says, I
lost all my clothes, and he says, I lost my socks, but I still
got my shoes on. The damn explosion had busted the islets on
his shoes, took off his socks, and these little strings from
the islets of the shoe strings was hanging out.
And so about that time Van says, hey, that's our recall. We
got to go back to the ship. So we all got in the ship. I'm
still in my damn swimming trunks. And picked up my bucket of
clothes and put them down in the forward part of the boat. We
slept right there in the boats. You had four bunks in the
boats. You had 35-footers and 40-footers, nothing like the
boats you see today. But the Navy had barges and so forth.
Anyway, we get in the boat and get underway and go out to the
Raleigh. We operated from the Raleigh as well as the Whitney.
The staff command was split up between the two ships, and we
operated mostly from the Whitney because we were the supply
officer's boat. He was a full commander, name was Shaddocks,
Commander Shaddocks. Our boat was assigned to him.
So--excuse me just a second. I'll be all right. I got in
the boat and we went out to the Raleigh. Now, the Raleigh and
the Battleship Utah were tied up stern to stern, and we had to
go between the two sterns to get around to the officer's
gangway. And when we approached the ship, the enlisted gangway
was underwater. The ship sunk right down. It had taken a
torpedo underneath the liberty launch full of people and went
right into the fire room and exploded in the fire room. But the
kid on watch was--in the fire room was--had hauled up the patch
and had his arm in the hatch. When the explosion took part, it
just lifted him up and set him on his okole. Excuse me, rear
end. That's a Hawaiian word. Set him on his okole on deck.
Nobody on the Raleigh was hurt. They took a bomb down
through the turret, through the magazine, out the side of the
ship, underneath the quays it was tied up to, and exploded out
there. So there were no fires on the Raleigh. It just settled
down and there were no casualties on the Raleigh.
So we took the boat and we went between the two ships, and
as we're passing between the two ships there's a guy on the
bottom of the Utah, go get a cutting torch, go get a cutting
torch. There's a man on the bottom of the ship. We need a
torch. So went up the officer's gangway, told the OD what we
needed. It was no time at all that we had a shipfitter down in
the hole with his cutting torch, striker, and the whole bit,
put him in--right in where the officers ride in the back there
with his bottles and all. You know, this was all nice, had
white covers in there and fancy macrame lace all around in
there, and we put this man down in there.
Now, we backed up. We helped the ship fitter out of the
boat and get on the bottom of the Utah and helped with getting
his bottles up there and all of this gear, and we left him
there and backed up and went back to the gangway to pick up our
passenger, a lieutenant. I don't remember his name or--I just
remember he was on the staff and he wanted to go to the
Whitney. So we took him on over to the Whitney.
Now, we found out later that they did get a hole cut in the
bottom of that ship and they got that man out of there and he--
he's living in California. There's a town there--city up in
Canada with the same name. Well, that's beside the point.
Anyhow he's still living there, and I have never been able to
contact him. We had the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association
meeting out here one year and he came, but I never could catch
up with him. So I've never been able to see him to tell him I
was one of the guys that was involved in getting him out of
that boat.
Mr. Souder. How old were you at this time?
Mr. Saunders. I was 23 years old. I had 6 years in the Navy
when they bombed Pearl Harbor. I'm 87 right now. I joined just
a--like a little less than a month after I turned 18.
Mr. Souder. When you go back to the current site, does it
bring back a lot of these memories?
Mr. Saunders. Oh, yeah. I'm OK--if I take somebody out to
the Memorial, a guest, which I do quite frequently, friends or
family or somebody that's been sent to me from one of my kids
over there--I've got five children--or had five children.
They're all adults now. The youngest one's 47. The oldest one's
60.
Mr. Souder. They're probably adults now.
Mr. Saunders. So they're all adults, and three in between
them. So when I go out there, I'm OK. But if I go out there
when they're having a service, I get all shook up. I get real
emotional. I just get--I just can't hardly wait to get away
from that. It's really touching and it bugs me. I didn't know
anybody on the Arizona, but I saw it go down, and it's--
gentlemen and ladies, it's hard to talk about this. I do it
occasionally, but I'm really worked up. I'm sorry.
But we got the passenger and went back between the two
ships and we went over to the Whitney and we let him off and we
laid off--we laid off from the gangway. We're out there
floating around waiting for him to recall us. So we did that
and then he wanted to go to Ten Ten Dock. Took him over there
and waited for him and brought him back. And that boat engine
was not turned off at all that whole day. It kept running
continually. Good thing you had two 45-gallon tanks of diesel
fuel to keep it going, but we--every time we went by the
Arizona it seemed to be settling just a little deeper, a little
deeper in the water.
And so we finally went back to--we didn't get back to Aiea
Landing for about 2 weeks. We were busy running all over the
harbor and laying off wherever we could. So we went back in
there about 2, 3 weeks later. And they had turned Aiea Landing
into a morgue. That's where they took all the bodies from the
ships, and they had a whole stack of pine boxes, used them for
coffins, and stacked up over on one side of the landing. And we
were trying to pick up some of our gear, because we had a big
tent up at the head of the landing, and we do our laundry and
go in there with our ironing board and iron and so forth and do
all our clothes in there. And sometimes some of the guys might
sleep up there, but we got that done.
But here's one of these boxes and they've got a body in
there, a sailor, and they had dug him out of the Oklahoma. He
was off the Oklahoma, and here he was laying down, his arms
folded. And, folks, that man's skin was as white as that paper,
so help me God. It was completely white, and he wasn't--he
wasn't swollen. He wasn't bloated or anything. He was just--I
guess the saltwater must have bleached him out. Cut him out of
one of those compartments. Oh, man. Please excuse me. I'll get
the rest of it out.
We went back and done what we did. One of the things I
noticed on December 8, 1941, they had a little barge running
around, oh, about half as big as this, from here back, and had
a big tank on it and the engine, and it was propelled, self-
propelled, and they called it the Juicy Lucy. And this thing--
they run it--suck all the oil they could off the water and put
it in this tank and then it would go over and be pumped out of
the tank. And before they--when they got full, they'd open it a
little, because all the saltwater settle in the bottom and they
would drain that out, because they would get some water with
this big vacuum cleaner that they would use to suck up the oil
there. I only saw one, but later on they had 8 or 10 of them
because, hey, Pearl Harbor was black all over, all around the
beaches. The oil was just thick on top of the water. I don't
know how long it was before they finally got it cleaned out. I
know for a long, long time it was there.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Saunders, I need to move on to a couple of
other things, but I appreciate you----
Mr. Saunders. That's almost all of it anyway.
Mr. Souder. I wanted to get this into the record because a
lot of times the history and cultural resources are lost in the
debate over the National Park Service because we think of them
as natural resources and all the beauty and the big buildings,
and quite frankly at Gettysburg, PA, at our hearing there, and
Faneuil Hall in Boston, had we had somebody come forth to tell
their personal story, we'd have known they were a fraud,
because those battles are much older in American history, but
to have the opportunity at one of our hearings to have somebody
here to give eyewitness testimony to what they saw at one of
our most treasured sites was, I think, good to get into the
record, and I appreciate the emotional difficulty of your
recalling that and your willingness to share that.
And you were talking about the importance of sharing it
with your kids and friends and being willing to go back to the
site. One of our challenges in the Congress is how we can keep
this site adequately funded and let people see it, what Mr.
Sullivan's group is working with. And do you feel and does Mr.
Sullivan feel that the site, as it's presently constituted,
gives enough of the accurate feeling that this can be passed on
like Gettysburg and Faneuil Hall in Boston and other sites?
Mr. Sullivan. I think when we complete the new visitor
center that we'll be able to do that, because we're going to
increase the size of the museum by more than twice. And we'll
have a space that is climate conditioned, and right now we
don't have that. And we have many of the memorabilia and
artifacts in another building because we don't have the space
to put it in. So that will help us immensely once we get the
new building, and we'll also have an educational center with
library resource capabilities there. We're going to build an
amphitheater outside so the students when they come,
particularly, or any groups park, rangers will be able to give
lectures as well as the survivors, as long as we have that
national treasure. So I think that the visitor center will be--
--
Mr. Souder. Will you be incorporating some of their video
testimonies like they do at the Holocaust Museum and so on?
Mr. Sullivan. Yes. We have done a tremendous amount of oral
histories, and in fact the Arizona Memorial Museum Association
has produced a DVD-Rom with many of the oral histories on that
DVD-Rom, and it includes a--you put it in the computer and you
can bring up a map of Oahu and you can click on Schofield
Barracks and the survivor will appear and tell you exactly what
went on at Schofield barracks. You can do the same thing at
Wheeler and other places on the island, and then all of the
oral histories are all there in the DVD-Rom for the teachers to
use.
Mr. Souder. Thanks. Mr. Saunders.
Mr. Saunders. Just a short word. I'm sure that we've got
everything laid out to where the history of Pearl Harbor will
be perpetuated for many, many years.
Mr. Souder. Do you feel--I assume you saw the movie Pearl
Harbor. Like Saving Private Ryan--Saving Private Ryan captured
a lot of the chaos at the beach and no movie had been that
realistic. Do you feel that the movie Pearl Harbor captured
some of the chaos you felt that day on the water or is there
still a need to kind of fill that----
Mr. Saunders. I didn't like that movie too well.
Mr. Souder. Too much romance.
Mr. Saunders. Well, it was--it was all right. Some of the--
most of the stuff was OK, but if you really want the true
picture of Pearl Harbor, see Tora Tora Tora. That's the one
that tells you everything. That is the actual--as far as I'm
concerned, it's the closest to actually being there. Tora Tora
Tora, that's the movie to see. Pearl Harbor's a nice movie. It
was interesting, but I didn't----
Mr. Souder. Didn't capture it.
Mr. Saunders. I didn't feel that it done Pearl Harbor
justice, OK? I hope those people don't get that message there.
I'm talking about the movie people. What do they call that
place? Oh, Hollywood.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Obey, in your written testimony--and it's
something I neglected to ask in the first panel, but since you
didn't get a chance to go over it in the abbreviated verbal, I
think we should explore it now, and that's the air tours. Can
you describe a little bit of that, what you had in your
testimony. We have it written in, but much like the bikes, do
you know the status of air tours or how that works currently?
Mr. Obey. The Air Tour Management Act passed 5 years ago
and the Park Service and FAA have yet to produce a single air
tour management plan. That is a real issue in Hawaii. The parks
in Hawaii were the first ones to start to embark on this. They
probably--I would guess Volcano and Grand Canyon are among the
tops in air tours in the country.
Right now operators are operating under an interim
operating authority. And basically what they--what they're able
to do is the FAA has them estimate--give them what their
numbers are in air tours that they run. The experience of the
Park Service has been somewhat different in terms of what they
observe as the numbers, and there are questions about why that
is. And that's something that's worth exploring, but overall
there's a real need to jump start this process. And the Park
Service runs parks. FAA deals with planes, and the two need to
communicate together about both of those things and about being
sure that parks are protected.
When I was at Hawaii Volcanoes yesterday and along the
Chain of Craters Road, I walked out onto the lava to look at
the lava tube. Great day to be there. And I was walking back,
suddenly here's--it was dead silence, just phenomenal. I was
the only person out there, sitting there all alone, and then
suddenly comes a helicopter. It's jarring for people in that
setting. I have taken--I've actually taken an air tour in
Hawaii. I was here in 1995 during the Government closures. It
was the only way I could see Haleakala was to go on a
helicopter at that point, and safe to say I probably didn't
disturb anybody on the ground in the park.
But these are things that need to be managed, managed
appropriately, and what's happening is because of the delay is
that they're not managed appropriately. And we really need to
get our arms around that, and I think Congress really needs to
reengage it.
Ms. Jarman, do you have comments on this? Obviously this is
a huge tourism question.
Ms. Jarman. I think there's two other issues that go along
with the noise and disturbances in the park. One is the safety
issue. Helicopters seem to go down at an alarming rate here in
Hawaii. It's astounding, much more than you ever see planes
going down. So I think the safety issue again, working with the
FAA. And then outside of the park issue, people who live
between where the helicopters take off and where they go in the
park experience incredible, you know, daily noise pollution
from the helicopters going over. So I think that's another
issue that ought to be looked at, and hopefully Congress will
work with the FAA and get the FAA to look at that. And, again,
if the park can push that issue, and, again, look at the
communities outside the park that are impacted as well.
Mr. Souder. Ms. Case, I'm sorry because I'm getting older
and I can't remember what the witnesses in the first panel
said. The invasive species, these forms that we fill out on the
airplane as we come in were designed to protect California, not
Hawaii; is that what I understood?
Ms. Case. Coming into Hawaii you fill out a form that's for
the Department of Agriculture to inspect plants, but they're
really inspecting for plant pests. They're not inspecting for
the invasiveness of the plant itself. So there's a whole system
missing here that we need to be able to prevent invasive plants
from coming in. And there are computer-based interview
questions now and data bases that you can predict whether
something's likely to be invasive in about 6 hours with the
right resources. So we have the tools in place to prevent new
things if we can have the systems in places.
Mr. Souder. Who's the major opponents of being able to do
this? I'm too unfamiliar with the issue. What would prohibit us
from implementing it? Cost? Is it sellers of exotic pests,
certain types of plants, retail associations?
Ms. Case. First of all, I don't think there's a lot of
opposition to this kind of concept. There's a lot of expense
associated with putting up the right prevention systems, but
it's far cheaper--it's expensive, but it will cost way less
than having to control those things. Later some of the
landscape industry people want to make sure that their
businesses aren't, you know, harmed greatly by restrictions on
what they can bring in, and that is, in my mind, why it's so--
such a good opportunity that we have this new review system,
that it won't take a lot of time. Not all plants that come into
Hawaii are invasive. I would say a minority are. And so we just
want to be able to screen out the ones that are going to be the
next Miconia or the next fountain grass or pampas grass.
Mr. Souder. Do you have any comments?
Mr. Case of Hawaii. A comment on California, just to make
clear what's happening. When anybody comes into Hawaii, there
are certain regulations about what can and can't be brought.
Although it's a--what's the converse of a likeness? A non-
likeness. It's--you can't bring these in but everything else
you can bring in. So, first of all, it's letting a bunch of
stuff in that shouldn't be coming in anyway. Second, there's no
effective enforcement of what comes in, either on a cargo basis
or a tourist basis. The only thing that happens to you when you
come on a plane is you fill out that form. If you choose not to
fill out that form or you fill out the form inaccurately,
nobody's going to inspect anything when you get to the airport.
When you go to the airport tonight, or whenever you're
going, and you check your bags--well, assume you check your
bag, you would have to go through a USDA inspection procedure,
which lasts about--I don't know, it's not an inconvenience--in
which USDA would actually look inside your bag to determine
whether you're bringing in plant material.
Mr. Souder. Why isn't that done coming in?
Mr. Case of Hawaii. There's no good reason why it isn't
done. It just wasn't ever done that way, and we never focused
on in-coming inspection versus out-going. The mainland wants it
because we have some agricultural pests here that if they got
to the U.S. mainland, would be harmful to the U.S. mainland
agriculture, and that's the reason for the USDA.
Mr. Souder. And I'm in favor of that. Being in the midwest,
I mean, we get all sorts of things that just devastate us. I'm
wondering why the islands, being vulnerable----
Mr. Case of Hawaii. Because we haven't done it. That's the
only reason. We haven't focused on it. We need to say, let's do
it, because we have a lot--we have just as much at stake. And
who is opposed to it? As Suzanne said, really, the vast
majority of people are not opposed to it. There are certain
industry segments that are fearful of it, initially, because,
frankly, they would be inspected and probably identifying
invasives which are coming into our system. But it would be
pretty straightforward, the same way we inspect outgoing. And
financed from the airport fee, just as the outgoing stuff is
financed. It could be put in place pretty fast. So that's a
pretty basic start to protect our National Parks as well as the
rest of Hawaii.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Obey, let me ask one. I know this has gone
on long. I'm going to wrap up my part here in just a second.
You've heard me talk a number of times about the Internet
and how to view this. Have you ever heard--or if we outfitted
parks with the advance in technology, is there any--have you
ever heard of, other than certain technology purposes, any
reason why, for example, ranger talks couldn't be broadcast
over the Internet, including with video? If you had a certain
amount of investment capital in each park, where you could at
your home tap into the computer, maybe hook it up to your big
screen TV--and who knows, 10 years from now where we're going
to be with this, but that you could look that tonight there's
this ranger talk.
You don't get the smell of the camp fire. You don't get
being out in the woods, or paradise, or Old Faithful Lodge, but
what we've seen from use of the Internet--much like books on
tape or video rentals, the theory was that it was going to
destroy the visits, you know, to the library, it would destroy
book clubs, but in fact people who go to the library go to book
clubs and they go to bookstores. But it probably would increase
park attendance, not decrease park attendance if you could go
on the Internet and say, wow, I have a choice of 150 ranger
talks tonight at 7 p.m. live. Any of this type of stuff, is it
done? Have you seen why that couldn't be done, other than a
technological thing? And we're down to the point where we can
do this technologically for $2,000.
Mr. Obey. I think there's so much more that the Park
Service and other agencies can be doing through the Internet.
One example, I spent the last 3 years, up until the end of the
last Congress, working to expand Petrified National Forest in
Arizona. David Jillet, who is a paleontologist with the museum
in Arizona there who worked with--did a dinosaur dig where they
had hook-ups with schools from around the country. That may
have been international. I'm not sure. But thousands and
thousands of kids. And they were prepped in their classes in
advance. They had wonderful questions. Dave said that when he
would--when kids would be asking questions--it was interactive.
They could actually ask questions. He'd hear other kids
cheering in the background. They were so excited by this
experience. And it's just something that you can't--you can't
even begin to quantify, you know, how important that is.
You know, when you talk to people about what got you
interested in National Parks, you know, 98 percent of them are
going to say it happened when I was a kid. And kids use the
Internet more effectively than probably any of us, and it's
something that really needs to be done more. It can never and
it shouldn't ever be thought of as a replacement for visiting a
park and getting that total experience, but it's something that
can draw people in. And I think it could.
Both that and David Macalla always talks about history and
how historically illiterate we are as a Nation, and he's done a
great deal with the parks in trying to bring history alive for
kids. When it's taught in the classroom, it's by and large one
of the classes kids find dull as can be because just the
dryness of the textbooks that they get. And when you can walk
into Addams House or visit a Pearl Harbor and get that
experience and gain a fuller understanding of this is where
these people lived, this is where they walked, this is where
the bombs fell, or whatever it may be, it brings it alive and
it makes it tangible and connects you to something that's very
important about your own history, about American history. I
think what we can do through the parks, through the Internet,
through overall technology is bring that into the classroom.
Mr. Souder. Because looking at one relatively small event
could conceivably, through either public access in a meeting or
through schools, reach as many people as Pearl Harbor has visit
in the entire year. 1.5 million wouldn't even be an
extraordinary number for hitting some kind of--particularly as
each of these channels get five variations on the channel and
they start looking for unique programming to offer, and through
satellite television this is going to explode, the demand for
youth programming.
And what we're sitting on in the Park Service are resources
that could just--you take a category of volcanoes, a category
of World War II history, a category of--pick an animal. You
know, the military bases that are going into the Park Service,
and just the diversity of the Park Service is overwhelming,
that there are so many different angles.
One thing that I was thinking from the first panel and this
panel is the training of teachers that Pearl Harbor did through
the NEH, that our subcommittee also has jurisdiction over NEH
and the Department of Education, and maybe looking at a
Washington version of this where we pull a number of the
different agencies in with the Park Service, pull them in
together and say, look, rather that stovepiping each year, how
are you cooperating together? And if we could figure out--much
like we've talked about the arts in the parks and when we--the
National Gallery highlights the Park Service and the Library of
Congress with their materials, to do a massive rebuild toward
this 100th anniversary. What can we do to extend the range of
this?
Mr. Obey. I think it would be worth having that
conversation.
Mr. Souder. Do you have any additional comments or
questions?
Mr. Case of Hawaii. No.
Mr. Souder. Maybe if each of you would like to make a
closing statement also. Think of where you have any thoughts,
given what you heard today, where we should be pushing, and
then additional thoughts on the 90th and the 100th birthday.
Start with you.
Mr. Obey. I think these hearings are a great start,
frankly. They're helping to bring attention to this issue. I
think relevancy is incredibly important. Brian O'Neill at your
San Francisco hearing I thought just gave a terrific response
to this question, talking about the need for parks to be
inspirational to people and for excellence and to have parks
really be--that ultimately when you go to a park you expect the
best of the best and it inspires you to bring it home, make it
a part of your life, a part of your community. I think that's a
terrific message about the National Parks to make them relevant
for people in their daily lives and connect them longer term to
what we need to do, why we need to preserve these things, and
not just as an attraction, but something that really matters.
Mr. Souder. Ms. Case.
Ms. Case. I just want to thank you again for holding these
hearings. I think it's a great example of dedication to making
our parks really the lasting heritage they are. I think
personally my commitment to conservation in Hawaii draws very
deeply from my childhood experiences at Hawaii Volcanoes
National Park and Haleakala National Park, and that kind of
experience is invaluable. It's a value for environment. I think
there are significant acquisition opportunities and
opportunities to stem the tide on invasive species. There are
certain things, if we can't do them now, we will have a much
harder time, and I think those are the things we want to focus
on in particular so we can have a great celebration in 2016.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Sullivan.
Mr. Sullivan. A couple of things, Mr. Chairman. Iwould be
remiss if I didn't recognize the East West Center and the
University of Hawaii in cooperation with us on the teachers
workshop. They're very, very helpful. The other point I would
want to make is we are also a cooperative association with the
War of the Pacific Museum in Guam and the American Memorial
Park in Saipan. A visitor center opened there this past
Memorial Day, and they'll open a bookstore there as well. And
we're also over in Kalaupapa. We have bookstore there and open
about 2 hours a day. And our employees are two of the patients
there.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Saunders, do you have anything?
Mr. Saunders. I'd just like to finish here. I mentioned
that I had come back to the--what happened to the Shaw. They
put a false bow on the Shaw, and this was right from the
bridge, if you understand what I'm talking about, that whole
front of the ship was gone. They just blanked it off with a
sheet of metal, welded it in, and it went back to the shipyard
in San Francisco. And when they got the ship there the yard had
already rebuilt another bow and they married it up, and 2 weeks
after the ship got to Hunter's Point in San Francisco, 2 weeks
after it got there it was back out to sea again and it finished
the war. I don't know what happened after that, but I thought
that might be to your interest.
Mr. Souder. Yeah, that's amazing. It's amazing that you
remembered that you didn't finish the Shaw part. Pretty good
memory. Ms. Jarman.
Ms. Jarman. I'd also like to express our appreciation to
you for taking the time to come out to Hawaii, and you and
Congressman Abercrombie for actually attending the hearings as
well. I'd also like to say that I've been fortunate enough to
work with both Superintendent Bell and Superintendent Orlando,
and I'd like to say for the record they are excellent people to
work with. They are stars as Federal employees, and I just
would like to commend them on the record for the work that they
do and how wonderful it is to work with them.
And finally I'd like to address Congressman Case's issue
about adding areas to the park, and the problem--we have
Kahuku, but there's not enough funds to manage it. But another
way of thinking about it is to try to enter into cooperative
agreements with non-profits to help manage. My significant
other is working with the State to manage an area that the
State owns down below Waiohinu, and it's one of the areas I
know you're interested in including in Federal partnership. And
the State doesn't have the resources to manage it, and it's
just this incredible coastal plant communities down there and
very little visitorship because of where it is. And they're
going to pay the Wildlife Fund $1 a year to actually manage to
try to get rid of the invasives and keep the plants.
So another thing I think to look at is going to cooperative
agreements. We have Adopt-a-Highway, Adopt-a-Stream programs,
why not Adopt-a-Hiking Trail in the park? And you can use your
community groups and student groups to help deal with some of
the invasive species and other issues. Thank you.
Mr. Souder. Well, I thank you all. With that, the
subcommittee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Additional information submitted for the hearing record
follows:]
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