Posted on: Tuesday, June 13, 2006
$500,000 to help native plants, animals
Advertiser Staff
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has awarded private landowners grants totaling more than $500,000 for a range of conservation efforts on four islands.
The service's Private Stewardship Grants program, which has been under way for four years, distributes funding to private sector projects that tend to threatened plants and animals.
Matt Hogans, acting assistant interior secretary, said in a news release that the program "builds partnerships with private landowners to do what the federal government cannot do alone,"
Recent awards include:
The Lana'i Institute for the Environment, which received $245,000 to build a fence around land dominated by native plants and creatures at the island's summit, Lana'ihale. The fence is designed to keep grazing animals, such as deer, out of the area and allow native species to recover from damage caused by grazing animals.
The area includes numerous species of native plants and native tree snails that are candidates to be listed as endangered species.
Kualoa Ranch will use $111,035 to plant four endangered species of cyanea and a candidate for endangered status in the psychotria genus. The 10-acre planting site will be fenced.
The Tri-Isle Resource Conservation and Development Council and East Maui Watershed Partnership received $82,500 to continue their work to control the presence of hoofed animals and weeds that threaten the habitat for a dozen endangered plant and animal species in the Ha'iku Uka area of East Maui.
Yamanaka Enterprises received $73,250 to improve hawksbill turtle nesting sites on the Big Island for protection against mongooses, rats, cats and dogs, and invasive plants. The project also aims to minimize human activities at the nesting sites.
'Ohu'ohu Ko'olau received a $26,532 grant to care for five endangered plants and to improve habitat for the O'ahu 'elepaio, an endangered bird, on the leeward slopes of the Ko'olau Range in east Honolulu.
