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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

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

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

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

GINNY BROWN-WAITE, Florida

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

DIANE E. WATSON, California

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

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

(III)

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

(1)

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

2

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:]

3

4

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 KailuaKona, 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.

5

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

6

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. NoVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:32 Dec 21, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\27922.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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body’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, KalokoHonokohau 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:]

8

9

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.

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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 offroad 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

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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.

12

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 KalokoHonokohau 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 handson 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

13

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 AriVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:32 Dec 21, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\27922.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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zona, 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

21

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.

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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——

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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 lastminute 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——

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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——

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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 acquisiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:32 Dec 21, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00029 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\27922.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tion? 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 hisVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:32 Dec 21, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\27922.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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toric 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.

28

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 defiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:32 Dec 21, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00032 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\27922.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
29

nition 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

30

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

31

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

32

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.

33

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

34

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.

35

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

36

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.

37

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

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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 KalokoHonokohau 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 teachVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:32 Dec 21, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00042 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\27922.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ing 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 21⁄2 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 workVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:32 Dec 21, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00043 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\27922.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ing 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

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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

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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 KalokoHonokohau, 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

57

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.

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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.

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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:]

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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

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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 continVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:32 Dec 21, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00073 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\27922.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ually 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 conVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:32 Dec 21, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00074 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\27922.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tributions, 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, conVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:32 Dec 21, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00075 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\27922.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tributions 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, nonFederal 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

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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

74

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

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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.

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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,

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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

78

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.

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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.

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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

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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

82

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.

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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

84

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

85

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 BarVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:32 Dec 21, 2006 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00089 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\27922.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
86

racks 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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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 nonprofits 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.

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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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