Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 28, Number 9, 1 Kepakemapa 2011 — DLNR head offers a lifetime of resource management [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

DLNR head offers a lifetime of resource management

ByTreenaShapiro Sitting on a wall just outside his Kalanimoku Building office as the Chairperson of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, William Aila Jr. lists the schools he's attended: Mā'ili Elementary, Wai'anae Intermediate, Wai'anae High School, the University of Hawai'i and all the beaches on the Wai'anae Coast. "I started fishing with a bamboo pole soon after I could walk . . . then I graduated to surfing, skin diving, fishing commercially, recreational and for partial subsistence," he recalls. "Later in my years, I did some cultural fishing - religious fishing - catching fish specifically for offering as ho'okupu for different cultural protocols." His department has yet to catch up with the concept that people fish, hunt and gather for cultural and spiritual reasons. "We have to acknowledge that there are all these different intentions for catching fish. It's understanding the kuleana, the responsibility for managing a resource that many groups use for different reasons," Aila says. Resource management is something Aila learned at a young age, while working on his family's cattle ranch and exploring the oeean near his grandmother's beachfront home. "His grandmother instilled in him good values concerning the respect for the oeean and its resources," said State Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz,

Chairman of the Senate Water, Land and Housing Committee. "He was taught to only take what he could use and never waste." Since the 1980s, Aila has served on numerous task forces and advisory panels, helping shape fisheries-management policy at the state and federal levels, addressing issues such as shark finning, bottomfish area closures and gill-net fishing regulations. He also helped to create the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. In 1987, Aila joined DLNR as the Wai'anae Small Boat Harbormaster, working beyond his professional duties at the county, state and federal levels to help craft development plans, sit on national policymaking groups and work with Native Hawaiians to establish traditional customary practices. His activism has put him at odds with government in the past, but Aila has found it easy to make the transition from community activist to an advocate for Gov. Neil Abercrombie's administration. "I think you ean certainly advocate for a position, but in the practice of arriving at that position, you ean also be objective," he explains. "You ean look at all the information that (an agency or community group) has to offer and then make a decision or determine a position based on all of that information. Being an activist doesn't mean you're closed to new information and new ideas."

Aila's new role calls for him to act beyond his personal opinions, but he sought the position because Abercrombie's New Day Plan was very mueh aligned with his own thoughts on resource management, elean energy, the need to increase agriculture in Hawai'i so that less food is imported and more money remains in the loeal economy. However, his decisionmaking process is based on the administration's objectives, public input, factual information and eomplianee with guiding laws and statutes. Aila says the most surprising thing he's experienced is that some Native Hawaiian groups have eome to him with the unrealistic expectation that he ean restore sovereignty. That's outside the jurisdiction of the Board of Land and Natural Resources, but he ean listen to them and try to extract their opinions on matters on the agenda. It's the same pahenee and respect Aila believes should be afforded to anyone who has the passion and interest to show up: "You take what they have to say and then you include it in the decision-making process." "The challenge for me in my role as the Chairperson is to honor and enforce the protections afforded by the state Constitution for traditional and cultural practices and balancing that with the need for sustainable resource management, as well as public safety," he says. Preparations for climate change have moved watershed and forestry management into the forefront, following mathematical models that generally predict less rainfall in Hawai'i, but in more frequent episodes. As the department changes its forestry and management policy, a keen focus has been placed on the state's dams, most of whieh are between 50 and 100 years old and have not been maintained to acceptable standards. If landowners and government ean see dams as potentialassets,ratherthanliabilities,landowners might be willing to make modifications to bring their dams up to acceptable operational and safety standards. "The dams are going to be critical because if you think about the changes that are coming, less frequent rain means that water storage capacity is going to be required for the basic necessities of life - for the growing of crops, the growing of food and the growing of livestock," Aila stresses. Aila, a grandfather of two, says: "The first things that we owe our grandchildren is a source of elean drinking water and a source of elean surface water that is available for agriculture and recreational uses. A healthy watershed is the only means by whieh we ean achieve that." ■ Treena Shapiro, a freeīance writer, is a former reporter for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and Honolulu Advertiser.

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LAND & WATER

William Aila Jr. at Ka'ena Poinl in 2009, before he stepped into his role as Chairperson of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources. - Photo: KWOArchives