Hawaii’s congressional delegation is pushing the Navy to provide more information on its plan to more than double bombardment training on a small Hawaiian Island that the state and conservation groups consider a critical bird sanctuary.
Kaula lies about 23 miles southwest of Niihau and is a nesting ground to about 18 species of birds — including the black-footed albatross — and its shores team with monk seals and other marine life. But since 1953 the island also has been used by the Navy for target practice.
The Navy originally used live explosive ordnance, but stopped the practice in the 1980s and began using inert dummy rounds instead. But as tensions simmer with China and the Pentagon increasingly sees the Pacific as its top-priority theater of operations, the military has looked to step up training in Hawaii and across the region.
In 2024 the Navy advanced a proposal to increase its bombing runs at Kaula from 12 a year to as many as 31, and argued that the environmental impacts would be “less than significant.”
U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, “I think every aspect of training in the state of Hawaii needs to be explained and justified, but certainly when you’re talking about 500- pound objects hitting the side of a mountain and the answer is ‘national security,’ my answer is maybe, but that’s not a thorough enough explanation for what’s happening to be justified.”
The Navy is making its pitch at a time when the military is facing heightened scrutiny over its use of land and environmental impacts in Hawaii, with the Navy in particular working to repair its public image since the 2021 Red Hill water crisis. On Tuesday all four members of Hawaii’s congressional delegation sent a letter to Navy Secretary John Phelan, telling him that “in Hawaii, there is a significant level of mistrust with the Department of Defense as a whole, and the Navy in particular.”
“Doubling the amount of training at Kaula is a significant step that warrants more information on the environmental impacts to the island,” the lawmakers wrote. “The State’s seabird sanctuary on Kaula is home to thousands of seabirds, and the island’s sea cliffs are a resting place for endangered species like monk seals. Despite these known populations of wildlife, the draft environmental assessment does not contain sufficient analysis that impacts on wildlife would be ‘less than significant.’ The public deserves a clear, comprehensive, and evidence-based (environmental impact statement) to demonstrate that the Navy has done its due diligence on the environmental impacts of these trainings.”
The Navy stressed in a draft environmental assessment released in August that it does not seek to resume live explosive training, but rather to increase the frequency of the training it already does on Kaula, which is limited to the small island’s southern end.
But officials from both the state and Kauai County, along with local conservationists, argue that the increase in training could disrupt a unique ecosystem. To make matters more complicated, there is an ongoing dispute about whether the island is federal or state land, and local officials have called on training to stop altogether.
In their letter, the members of the congressional delegation called on the Navy to explain in their formal assessment why training at Kaula is critical to national security. The delegation sought to know how a reduction or end to use of Kaula as a range would specifically affect the readiness of military units operating in the Pacific. They also wanted to know why the Navy has “not already built in more redundancies to address any readiness issues due to a lack of availability of training ranges.”
Moreover, they wanted an explanation of how the Navy had determined that there is “an irreplaceable need for access to Kaula that cannot be fulfilled by an alternative site.”
The delegation also asked that the Navy provide answers by June 16 as to whether the Navy “plans to program specific environmental remediation funding, including to address existing and future ordnance clean up.”
They also asked whether the Navy has plans to ensure regular access to the waters around Kaula by local fishermen and whether the Navy will plan for increased environmental impacts on the southern end of the island. And, the delegation asked for an explanation of what readiness demands and restrictions at other training sites “uniquely warrants this substantive jump in training activity at Kaula.”
The Navy’s proposal to increase training was made in the summer of 2024. Since then President Donald Trump won an election and has established a new team at the Pentagon led by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has vowed to rid the military of “woke” programs and has singled out environmental programs that he argues have “distracted” the military from combat training and obtaining new weapons systems.
That rhetoric has alarmed several community groups in Hawaii. But Schatz said, “I’d like to see what they do rather than what they say. Because so far, (the military in Hawaii) hasn’t been different than other administrations. Certainly, the rhetoric is that they are not interested in environmental stewardship, but a lot of these programs are established by law. So they can not like it, but they don’t really have the option to not do it.”
The senator said that when it comes to how the military does business in Hawaii, issues around its approach to the environment and local communities are long-standing. He said that “the institution of the Department of Defense, whichever (political) party is in charge, has had a hard time with internalizing the idea that they are, in fact, our guests and that they should behave like guests and earn their welcome.”
When it comes to Kaula, Schatz said the Navy “should start with a basic explanation of why they feel the need to do this, (and) that they’ve thoroughly assessed the environmental impacts. I spend a fair amount of time criticizing Trump, and I will continue to do that where it’s appropriate, but I don’t think this is a Trump policy problem. I think this is an institutional position of the DOD (Department of Defense) over many, many decades.”
