Maui News NRXINTLE.HTM
Author: Maui News

# Letters To The Editor

Friday, January 10, 1997

#### Not a desert

Harry Eagar's usually informative column, Off Deadline, was full of errors Dec. 31 when confronting the issue of sugar growing in Maui's central valley. He spreads the fallacy that Maui's central valley was ``naturally'' a wasteland before sugar cultivation.

The natural state of the valley was a thick dryland forest. In this forest, giant flightless ducks, nene and other birds roamed among trees that grew nowhere else in the world. Eagar compares the valley to the Arizona desert. Find me one town in Arizona named for flocks of geese that lived there, as Pu'u Nene is named.

The Polynesians reduced this forest to a grassland by recurrent burning as a means to cultivate grass for thatches. But it was cattle that turned the valley into a dust bowl. Beginning in 1793, for a whole generation cattle were let loose to run over Maui. Cattle, pigs, goats and deer turned virtually all of Hawaii's dryland forest areas into dust. ``A Natural History of the Hawaiian Islands'' edited by E.A. Kay (available in area bookstores), gives abundant details.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to see Maui's forests restored? The state convened a conference in Hilo this week to look into just that -- the potentials of agro-forestry as a replacement for sugar cane. Mauians have far more constructive approaches to ``the sugar problem'' than espousing fallacious myths about Maui's ``natural'' wastelands. Reforestation would bring back one of the great lost pieces of Maui's enchantments.

Lee Altenberg, Research Affiliate

Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology

University of Hawaii at Manoa

#### Wrong for a long time

I would like to comment on the Jan. 5 Letter to the Editor titled ``Decision Wrong.'' The decision by Department of Land and Natural Resources Director Mike Wilson to lease land to Ms. Annette Niles, who was running the ranch with her late father, Stephen Perreira, in Kahikinui, is not new. I was born and raised here on Maui and have complained to every governor for the past 20 years with letters and phone calls.

My protest was basically about the Perreiras using the thousands of acres from the Hawaiian Homes Commission and the land being destroyed by the cattle in the forest. The wild cattle are still in the forest damaging the fragile ecosystem, but the state doesn't care.

Let me tell you why this is being allowed to happen. Political connections, that's why. Check who were and are the Perreira-Niles family, who defends them in court, and you will see that their influence goes right back to state government. Don't be surprised, be frustrated at how your tax dollars are being spent.

Organize your friends and write letters to Mike Wilson, and if enough people write and call him, he will check with people under him who are giving him poor information or are perpetuating the ``Good Old Boy System,'' because really when you look at it, this is how the state of Hawaii is run.

Charles K. Maxwell

Pukalani