Hawaii forestry's best-kept secret.

Abandoned sugarcane plantations offer a chance to create a sustainable timber

Question: If you're a policymaker in Hawaii, what do you do when your state's No.1 industry--King Sugar--is in a nosedive? How do you replace the lost jobs and revenues? What do you do with thousands of acres of abandoned sugarcane fields?

In search of an answer, the state's Department of Land and Natural Resources hired a consulting firm last year to evaluate the potential of reforesting thos lands for commercial forestry. The firm predicted that growing trees in Hawaii could conceivably offer returns of 19 percent. In a followup, the state is mailing a prospectus to potential investors worldwide.

The pitch: Hawaii's forests grow year-round, meaning less time until harvest an payback of capital investment. What's more, they are under the American flag, which is true of less than one percent of the world's tropical forests.

"Hawaii has advantages such as political stability," says Mike Robinson, executive director of the Hawaii Forest Industry Association. "We can grow tree as fast as anyone in the world, and now we have the chance to create a forest industry as we would like it to be."

What he means is one that ensures a sustainable resource, as certified by a "greenseal" program. Robinson, who earned a forestry degree at Penn State in th early 1970s while "taking time off to participate in Earth Days," views Hawaii' strong environmental consciousness as another of the state's advantages.

His trade association has worked to build bridges to Hawaii's green groups. The association's newsletter describes a "well-managed" forest as one with mixed-age, mixed-species trees that are "in their harvestable prime at anywhere from 20 to 80 years of age . . . and harvested incidentally as opposed to clearcut."

The association, established in 1989, has 130 members ranging from the state's largest landowners to logging contractors and one-man cabinet shops. The member are far from unanimous about what to plant. Some favor long-rotation quality hardwoods, others short-rotation eucalyptus. And they don't all have credential as green as Robinson's. One member, for example, drew environmentalists' ire in 1982 for salvage logging after Hurricane Eva.

The association is only one of the forces working to foster a commercial timber industry. In 1992 U.S. Senator Daniel Akaka sponsored the Hawaii Tropical Fores Recovery Act with the goal of rejuvenating the state's threatened ecosystems. One objective is to identify compatible forest uses.

"If former cane acreage could be converted into the base for a high-value wood-products industry," says Akaka, "we could generate strong new employment opportunities for rural Hawaii."

A task force created under the new law has completed a two-inch-thick draft report. The main recommendation is to establish experimental forests for research. The document's most valuable contribution, however, may be the dialogue initiated among 100 representatives of various interest groups.

"The task force has received compliments on building consensus," says Michael Rains, a U.S. Forest Service associate deputy chief who is serving on the task force. "The cane fields create a real opportunity for a commercial venture. Sugar represents a way of life of making a living from the earth. People want t continue that legacy."

Hawaii's top four industries are sugar, military bases, pineapples, and tourism All four have their woes. Sugar and pineapples, because of high labor and transportation costs, have failed to stay price-competitive. The military is no a promising economic cornerstone in today's climate of defense cutbacks. And tourism, already suffering from the state's image of being over-priced, is feeling repercussions from the economic slumps in Japan and California.

The decline of sugar is dramatic. In 1976 the island of Oahu had more than 34,000 acres under cultivation but is expected to have zero by 1996. Hawaii (th "Big Island") will go from 94,000 acres to none. Kauai will also show a sharp decline. One of the state's two largest newspapers, The Honolulu Advertiser, wrote that "an unprecedented opportunity exists to redirect the course of Hawaiian agriculture."

Truck-farm crops for local markets could occupy 15,000 acres at most, so export crops are the key. But access to mainland markets is restricted by transportation costs and Hawaii's fruitfly problem. What is needed are high-value crops, perhaps for the gourmet market. Some candidates, such as taro and guava, would require extensive market development. Others (macadamia nuts, for example) face low-cost foreign competition. Another--using the land for cattle--offers a low property-tax assessment, but maybe not much profit. The on specialty crop that does bring Hawaii a high return--an estimated $1 billion a year--has zero chance of being legalized.

One alternative to agriculture is development. Land around Honolulu that was once in pineapples is now in subdivisions, hotels, and golf courses. Some acreage on the other islands has also gone to residential and resort developments, but environmental opposition and the present glut of hotel rooms is likely to discourage that option--for a while.

Policymakers are definitely conscious of the impact on tourism if substantial portions of sugar acreage are paved over. One official on Kauai, where 3,000 acres are being eyed as an opportunity for homesites, warns that the island "ca either grow trees or grow condos."

The likeliest outcome is a patchwork of uses, which would broaden and diversify the economic base. A big slice of the pie could easily go to forestry.

In fact, a recent University of Hawaii study commissioned by the governor determined that timber is already a $29-million industry (value-added products, not logs alone) and employs 800 people. Timber ranks sixth in the "diversified agriculture" category (all crops other than sugar and pineapple), making it almost as big as cattle, vegetables, and macadamia nuts--and ahead of fruit, poultry, hogs, and coffee.

Right now, the future depends on resolving tough political and economic issues. A major one is property taxes. In 1992, tree farms became eligible for the tax break that agricultural uses receive. At present, however, Hawaii's tax structure is undergoing re-evaluation, and the forestry rate is in limbo.

A stickier issue concerns endangered species. For an investor to plant quality hardwoods requires assurance that environmental regulations will not preclude harvest, even if the mature trees become habitat for endangered species. In response, the industry is pushing a "right to harvest" bill, and it appears likely to pass.

Mark Smaalders, resource analyst with the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, feels the bill has been gutted of important safeguards. Environmentalists tried to have restrictions written into the bill but failed.

"In concept, the right to harvest trees that you've grown is reasonable," says Smaalders, who views forestry as one of the appropriate uses of sugarcane lands "But if the state decides in 20 years to put in regulations against harvesting next to streams or on steep slopes, the regulations could be challenged by landowners and lead to the state having to pay compensation or else not enforcing for fear of a takings lawsuit."

A closely related issue is causing Hawaii's largest private landowner, the Bishop Estate, to move cautiously. The Estate was created in the late 1800s whe a member of Hawaii's royal line set aside 434,000 acres to support schools. Its present assets of $1.2 billion assure sufficient resources to carry through a long first rotation. The Estate has been responsible, in fact, for planting 1.4 million trees since 1923. A commercial thinning was done at 30 years, another a 40, and a harvest at 50. As a land-based organization, the Bishop Estate is expected to have a stewardship bias.

"People say that the Bishop Estate should be an example," says Peter Simmons, the estate's forest manager, "and we want to do the right thing about reforestation. But we know the risks."

He is referring to thousands of acres that the Bishop Estate put into private"forest reserves," a status that carries a tax break but also constraint on management options that are thought to lower land values. The state planning office is currently looking at reclassifying a significant amount of agricultural acreage into conservation status with similar management constraints. The possibility has landowners up in arms.

Another reason they're running scared is the possibility of environmental group pressing for a boycott on tropical hardwoods, including koa. Acacia koa is the state's second most common native tree, but its lumber is scarce and expensive. Much of the koa grows on protected watershed lands or is vulnerable to cattle, who prefer a tasty koa seedling over grass any day. In the past, koa has always been available for the picking, so efforts at regeneration have been minimal.

Forestry advocates argue that a blanket boycott would decrease demand and depress koa's dollar value. The economic incentive for reforestation would be reduced, so landowners would consider other uses--such as condominiums. Environmentalists counter by proposing a moratorium that would apply only to wood that is not produced sustainably.

When it comes to sugar acreage, the issue is somewhat moot because most of the cane land is too low in elevation for koa. Some acreage would be suitable, however, and the current $2,000 per thousand board-feet for stumpage, says Simmons, "makes us want to put resources into koa instead of a short-term venture like cattle."

The economics of koa and other quality hardwoods pencil out satisfactorily for the Bishop Estate. But another major player,

A FOREST IN DECLINE

* Forests originally covered the Hawaiian islands except for beaches, areas above timberline, cliffs, and recent lava flows.

Among the early Hawaiians, a system of sustainable land use evolved around divisions of territory called ahupua'a, narrow strips of land reaching from the beach to the mountain top. Inhabitants of the ahupua'a were self-sufficient. Fishermen shared their catch with lowland farmers, who reciprocated with taro; mountain dwellers supplied trees for canoes, firewood, and medicinal uses, and tree bark for making dyes and rope.

Forest clearing began soon after Captain Cook's arrival. In 1791 a ship captain discovered sticks of sandalwood--highly prized in China--in a load of firewood he had purchased on Kauai. More sandalwood was cut for the Orient trade, and th islands were soon stripped.

Clearing of large tracts began in the 1850s, when sugarcane was introduced as a commercial crop. Contiguous ahupua'a often provided the basis for plantations and the evolution of a pattern of land ownership in large tracts. Today 1.8 million acres are the target of sovereignty claims by native Hawaiians.

Hawaii's two main environmental problems are dieback of native forests and the introduction of alien species. Native plants and animals have evolved no defenses against invasive newcomers. Seventy-five percent of recorded extinctions in the United States have occurred in Hawaii.

LISTENING TO THE WOOD

* When Bob Hamada was growing up on a Hawaii sugar plantation, his chore as eldest son was to build the fires that heated water for the family's traditiona Japanese bath. One day he noticed the beautiful grain in a piece of firewood he was shaving for kindling. "That was 65 years ago, when I was seven," he says, "and I remember it like it was today."

Hamada has gained national acclaim for the bowls and free-form creations he fashions from Hawaiian native hardwoods. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston owns two of his pieces, and another is in the personal art collection of the emperor of Japan.

Hamada and other Hawaiian woodworkers and furniture makers work with rare woods such as curly grained koa, milo, kou, hau, kauila, and kamani. They use lumber from salvaged trees only.

"I know practically every valuable tree on the island of Kauai," says Hamada. " watch them for years, and when one is about to die, I approach the owner and as if I can purchase first preference."

Hamada would like to see quality hardwoods planted so that master woodworkers 2 or 30 years from now will have materials. Hamada is an organic gardener and believes that planting trees will also help clean up chemicals in the soil left by sugarcane cultivation.

That day years ago when he first saw the beauty in a piece of kindling, Hamada learned to listen to the wood. He says: "It tells me what it wants to be."

Norah Davis, former managing editor of this magazine, writes on natural-resources issues from her home in Washington, DC.