Final Comprehensive Conservation Plan - U.S. Fish and Wildlife ...

Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge
Comprehensive Conservation Plan
County General Plan (2006) identifies 19 sites that are listed on the Hawai‘i Register of Historic
Places and 10 sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places. These include burial areas,
Kamehameha Hall, a courthouse, churches, theaters, residences, and other historic buildings (County
of Hawai‘i 2007). Keolonahihi State Historic Park and portions of the Kohala Historic Sites State
Monument are not open to the public (DNLR 2003).
Compared to coastal, lower elevation regions, there is a low density and number of historic and
cultural sites in upland areas (such as the Hakalau Forest NWR). As a result, most formal cultural or
historic studies are restricted to these areas. In addition, a large number of historic sites have been
either destroyed by agriculture, urban growth, and natural changes in landforms. (DNLR 2003).
In a traditional Native Hawaiian context, there is no division between nature and culture. The land,
water, and sky were the foundation of life and the source of the spiritual relationship between people
and their world. Native Hawaiian traditions express the attachment felt between the Native Hawaiian
people and the Earth around them. “Native traditions describe the formation (literally the birth) of the
Hawaiian Islands and the presence of life on and around them in the context of genealogical
accounts. All forms of the natural environment – from the skies and mountain peaks, to the watered
valleys and plains, to the shoreline and ocean depths – are the embodiments of Hawaiian gods and
deities” (Maly 2001).
The ‘ōhi‘a-koa zone was used by Native Hawaiians for specialized resources including bark for
making fishing nets and māmaki to make kapa cloth. Native Hawaiians may have used the area for
temporary camps while collecting natural resources or en route to a higher elevation adze quarry and
associated surface work sites. Native Hawaiians had knowledge of shelter caves, overhangs, and
water sources. In the dry māmane woodland, pili grass may have been collected as a special resource
for thatching structures, as well as māmane wood for making adze handles, house posts, and hōlua
sleds. Within or above the māmane zone, nēnē, ‘u‘au, and koloa maoli may have been used as a
source of meat. Radiocarbon dating of bird bones from caves located in the saddle region between
Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea indicate that Native Hawaiians were obtaining juvenile ‘ua‘u and
collecting bird feathers between 1000-1450 A.D. (Dougherty and Moniz-Nakamura 2006).
The Refuge contains cultural/historic resource sites that have been inventoried in areas where
management actions could have impacted these sites. This inventory will continue to ensure
protection of these important resources. The Refuge allows cultural/historic resource investigations
of sites by universities, researchers, students, and/or cultural practitioners.
Several cultural and archaeological sites do exist on the HFU. The Douglas Historic Monument,
located north of the Refuge administrative site, is a monument to the famous naturalist David
Douglas who traveled through the Hilo forest in 1834 (Stine 1985, Tomonari-Tuggle 1996) and died
on the slopes of Mauna Kea. Two historical buildings also occur on the HFU. The Pua ‘Ākala Ranch
is a complex of ranch structures built in the late 1800s; the Pua ‘Ākala cabin (or koa cabin) on the
ranch has been nominated for the National Register of Historic Places. Nauhi Cabin was built at
roughly 5,100 ft in the 1920s by the Hawai‘i Sugar Planters Association. This cabin was part of the
Nauhi Gulch Experiment Station (Tomonari-Tuggle 1996, Schuster et al. 2002).
5-18 Chapter 5. Social and Economic Environment