U.S. House Rep. Patsy Mink and Kaua’i County Council Chairman Ron Kouchi visited Hanalei Valley Friday to try to verify claims the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to remove taro growers from its 917-acre refuge in the valley. But
U.S. House Rep. Patsy Mink and Kaua’i County Council Chairman Ron Kouchi visited Hanalei Valley Friday to try to verify claims the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to remove taro growers from its 917-acre refuge in the valley.
But a U.S. Fish and Wildlife official on Kaua’i said there “is no truth” to claims the agency is considering such plans or to reduce the acreage used by nine taro farmers.
“We have been farming with those farmers for 20 years, and its second generation for some of the families,” said Hanalei National Wildlife Refuge manager Tom Alexander. “The only time we have asked farmers to leave is when they decided not to grow taro anymore.”
A decision by the U.S. Fish Wildlife Service to remove taro cultivation in the valley would strike a death blow for the state’s poi industry. Hanalei Valley is the largest taro-growing area in the state.
Mink said she plans to contact the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service office in Washington D.C. to find out whether the agency has plans or has no plans to terminate federal permits allowing taro growing in the valley.
She said the situation could be one where the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced plans one day and decided to “retract” them after further consideration.
“So I think we have to get to the bottom of this,” Mink said.
Mink said she, Kouchi, County Clerk Peter Nakamura and Joan Manke, her administrative assistant, visited the valley Friday morning to talk with the farmers after reading a news account that their days in the valley “were numbered.”
“They didn’t know anything about any proposal,” Mink said. They are very confused and shocked.”
The farmers, she said, feel they have been good stewards of the land, “helping to propagate birds that feed on the lo’i.”
It was reported that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service believes its permanent open-pond system is a better habitat for endangered Hawaiian water birds than the taro fields have been for the birds.
The refuge is home to the Hawaiian stilt, the Hawaiian coot, the Hawaiian duck, the Hawaiian Moorhen, all waterbeds, and the Nene, a goose.
Alexander dismissed claims that his agency was planning to shut down the taro fields.
“Taro cultivation is at an all-time high,” he said. “Since I have been the manager (of the refuge) for the past 6 1/2 years, they have had the opportunity to expand their acreage.”
Farmers currently grow taro on 186 acres in the valley, up from a low of 100 acres in the past.
Fewer acres were used in the past because some farmers have quit because “it (taro farming) is hard work and not everybody wants to do it,” Alexander said.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service once issued three-year permits to the farmers. Today, the farmers hold ten-year permits.
Taro farming existed when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service bought 917 acres in the valley for a bird refuge in 1972.
Some of the families have worked the taro fields for 50 years and more.
A biological study sponsored by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is to get under way to look at how the agency has “managed the wetland, how taro is managed and how birds benefit from that,” Alexander said.
In addition to the taro fields used by farmers, the federal agency manages 80 acres of wetlands. The remainder of the refuge lands are primarily wetland pastures and slopes.
