Federal grant to support Nuu wetland refuge

The Maui News
Monday, January 22, 2007
By EDWIN TANJI, City Editor

WAILUKU - A $2.4 million U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grant for Hawaii includes funds to assist in the acquisition of 78 acres at Nuu for a wetland refuge, service officials said Friday.

The state Department of Land and Natural Resources is receiving a share of $18.8 million allocated by the U.S. Department of Interior to 14 states for restoration and protection of wetlands. But the Nuu project is being led by the Maui Coastal Land Trust, which has been negotiating with landowner Kaupo Ranch to set aside and protect the site rich in cultural and well as natural resources.

"This is one chunk of what we will need, but we don't know what the final figure is going to be, or what form protection is going to take," said Dale Bonar, executive director of the Maui Coastal Land Trust, on Saturday.

He said he hoped the federal grant will help to leverage additional funds, in the same way that grants from the state and county helped to raise money needed for the land trust to acquire the Waihee Dunes for preservation.

The important factor is that Kaupo Ranch is cooperating and is interested in protecting the site, he said.

"It is a neat thing. There are a lot of others looking to get involved in protecting the land," he said.

State wildlife biologist Fern Duvall said that the state has been looking to designate the Nuu pond for protection for more than 20 years, after researchers recognized it as a significant habitat for several endangered Hawaiian water birds.

"It's far away from any other wetland, and it has its own breeding population of stilt and breeding population of coot," he said. "And it has attracted a collection of very odd and even rare migrants to the state, so it's part of the state's refuge complex for migratory birds."

He said it's also common for Hawaiian monk seals to haul out on the black pebble beach near the pond.

The grant to the state also will support two other projects, restoration of the Mana Plain Coastal Wetland on Kauai and the Pouhala Marsh on Oahu. The Mana Plain involves 141 acres of sand dune and coastal wetland on the west side of Kauai. Pouhala Marsh includes 70 acres in the Pearl Harbor basin, with the state planning restoration of 40 acres of estuarine wetland overrun by mangrove and other alien species.

The pond at Nuu has been overgrown by kiawe, a tree that can deplete groundwater resources, as well as mangrove. But Duvall said there still is a freshwater spring that feeds into the wetland while the land around the pond contains burials and other archaeological sites.

National Park technicians studied Nuu as a possible addition to Haleakala National Park because of its biological diversity and its cultural resources, but it did not fit under rules requiring that park expansion occur on contiguous land.

Duvall said he was able to win a wildlife grant several years ago that allowed Kaupo Ranch to fence the site, remove some of the nonnative vegetation and begin replanting with native species.

"It was a start of an effort to preserve the area in perpetuity," he said.