Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 26, Number 1, 1 January 2009 — Mālama ka ʻāina [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Mālama ka ʻāina

Last month, Dr. Claire Ku 'uleilani Hughes lamented in her eolumn: "Today, the history and beauty of our 'āina are eonstantly ehallenged. It is

heart wrench- Burgess ing to visit historic sites and to see how man has marred, scarred or obliterated them. . . . losses of special places appear to be escalating without challenge, in spite of laws to protect them." What ean we do to perpetuate our cherished land and eultural sites? The Trust for Puhlie Land (TPL) works to protect land from development. It is a nahonal, nonprofit land-conser-

vation organization. How is it different from the Puhlie Trust? Kāwika Burgess, TPL's Native Lands Program Coordinator, says:

"At TPL we work mainly with private land owners to acquire the fee or a conservation easement on the land to protect the land from development. TPL will often transfer

the title to the land over to a puhlie agency such as the state or City and County, or in recent transactions to OHA. TPL generally does not work to acquire lands that are currently held by the state, whieh are referred to as the Puhhe Trust lands or ceded lands." To learn more about TPL in Hawai'i, visit tpl.org, and look for the states pull-down menu on the left. - Nara Cardenas