Environment / Every fall, in a tradition known as Save Our Shearwaters (SOS), Kauai residents pick up the black-and-white seabirds they find along roads, on hotel grounds, in parking lots and backyards, and place them in small wire cages at aid stations around the island. From there, they are collected, examined and, if uninjured, released with a Hawaiian blessing to begin their life at sea.

In a tradition known as Friday Night Lights, Kauai residents flock to brightly lit county stadiums where they laugh, mingle, eat and talk story. They come to watch young men–friends, family and classmates–play football for the fun of the sport and the glory of their team, their high school and, if they get to the state championships, their island.

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The football tradition is much older than the SOS tradition, which was made necessary in part by Friday Night Lights. The two traditions co-existed for 31 years. Kauai folks were proud of their Warriors, Red Raiders and Menehunes and proud of their efforts to help the Newell’s shearwater, or ‘ao, a native bird on the endangered species list.

This fall the two traditions clashed when Kauai County announced the end of Friday Night Lights. It was due to the bird, apparently, and the way it was distracted by the stadium lights as it made its first flight from its nest in the mountains to the sea. It was also due to the fines that could be levied if the light attraction caused them to crash to the ground, or die, as they sometimes did.

“From that point on I heard nothing but negative talk about the shearwater birds,” said Mark Martinez, the father of a Kauai High School player and a director of the football boosters club

Nothing’s black and white

What nobody heard was a story that’s quite a bit more complicated, as things tend to be; a story that points out that a different ending might have been possible.

Like most seabirds, Newell’s shearwaters spend most of their lives soaring over the oceans, traveling as far as the equator. But unlike other seabirds, they come only to the Hawaiian Islands to nest. Adults, which mate for life, lay a single egg in mountainside burrows and tend the chick all summer. In the fall, the young fledglings make a solo mauka-to-makai journey to the sea, a journey that for millions of years was guided solely by the shimmer of starlight and moonlight on water, but in recent years has been disrupted by the electric lights of urbanization.

“The Newell’s shearwater is unique in that it connects three realms — ka lani, the heavens; ka moana, the sea; and ka ‘aina, the land,” says Kauai cultural educator Sabra Kauka. “It has led fishermen to schools of fish and back home again in the evening for as long as people have been living in Hawaii. The bird precedes us. It is a kupuna species and as such deserves respect, attention and care because it has lessons to teach us. Lessons of life. Lessons of malama ka honua, taking care of the earth and all living things.”

Seabirds in decline

While ‘ao–not to be confused with the much more abundant wedgetail shearwaters –were once likely found on all the main Islands, they’re now reduced to small pockets on the Big Island, Molokai and possibly Maui. Kauai is the final stronghold, with 90 percent of the population, but even there the situation is precarious. It’s already dwindling in numbers–it was thought to be extinct in the 1940s and declared a threatened species in 1975–and its population dropped by 75 percent in just the last 15 years.

The decline is due to a complexity of threats. Introduced rats, cats and barn owls eat eggs and chicks and invasive alien plants disrupt ‘ao nesting habitats. Utility wires stretched across flyways kill adults and fledglings. Bright lights, especially on the coastline, distract young birds en route to the sea. Blinded, disoriented, exhausted from circling, they slam into buildings and power lines or fall to the ground. Once grounded, they can’t easily take off again, and so become sitting ducks for dogs and cars.

While wildlife managers and biologists have only recently begun to learn exactly where ‘ao nest and how they live at sea, they’ve known what harms them for at least half a century. Concerned about the growing casualties from light attraction and line collisions on Kauai, the state Division of Forestry and Wildlife started SOS in 1979 and began urging folks to actively look for downed birds. Soon people were collecting 200 to 300 seabirds each fall.

Moving toward extinction

Meanwhile, development continued, particularly along the coastline, and Kauai Electric (KE), as the utility was then known, began building a bigger transmission line, with taller poles and more wires to keep the lights burning. In 1992, environmentalists filed suit against the utility over a section of line slated for the North Shore’s Kalihiwai Valley, saying it would lead to more ‘ao killings for which KE had no permit. Under the Endangered Species Act, it’s illegal to harm a protected species unless you have an “incidental take” permit that specifies how many you can kill or injure. The taker is generally required to offset the loss through mitigation measures outlined in a Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP).

In a settlement agreement, KE agreed to secure its state and federal take permits and fund ‘ao research by the world’s foremost seabird biologists, which it did in 1993–94. In its 1995 final report to the Electrical Power Research Institute (EPRI), the scientists underscored the perilous plight of the ‘ao: “In the face of decline any source of mortality is a contributing factor of great concern. Ultimately, our results indicate the Newell’s Shearwater population is moving toward extinction at a significant rate.”

In the report, the researchers identified collisions with power line structures, which were then taking some 400 birds a year, and predation in the breeding colonies as the primary land-based causes of death. They advised KE to bury or re-route power lines that stretched across five key valleys (Hanalei, Moalepe, Wailua, Lawai and Waimea), attach the lines to the sides of bridges, reduce the height of its utility poles, shield power lines with rows of trees and switch from a vertical array of wires to a more traditional “T” configuration to reduce the snaring effect on birds.

Preservation efforts, or lack there of

The seabird experts also recommended alerting Kauai business and civic leaders to the problem of light attraction and educating them about how to minimize it, which might include rescheduling sporting events held during the peak fledging periods of October and early November. State and federal wildlife officials were urged to revise the ‘ao recovery plan, review the SOS program, hire a full-time seabird biologist to address the species’ needs and begin restoring breeding colony habitats.

Nine years later, however, the researchers found little had changed–except that the ‘ao had declined further.

“[V]irtually none of these EPRI recommendations were implemented by any of the parties, but looking over them now, we feel that they are all, to the letter, still very viable and highly desirable action items,” seabird experts David Ainley and Richard Podolsky wrote in an Oct. 5, 2004, letter to the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). “The status of the NESH [Newell’s shearwaters] on Kauai has changed from a somewhat abundant (though locally confined) species in the early 1990s to now a rare species.”

Balancing economics

In the six years since Ainley and Podolsky penned their letter, a few more of their proposals have been adopted. The Kauai Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC), which bought KE in 2002, shielded thousands of streetlights and in 2005 began funding the SOS program. But KIUC, citing cost, has consistently balked at making any changes to its existing utility lines. The wires across Wailua River are now being undergrounded, at federal expense, as part of a state project to widen the bridge there.

The state, meanwhile, stepped up its own preservation efforts, which were stymied by a lack of money.

“We are so ridiculously underfunded,” said Scott Fretz, director of the state’s Division of Forestry and Wildlife. “If our society and the government put enough value on this, the money would be there.”

Although wildlife managers charted a significant drop in ‘ao numbers between 1989 and 2001, they weren’t able to secure initial funding for a Kauai seabird recovery program until 2002. In 2005, the state launched an outreach effort aimed at encouraging Kauai County and businesses with significant seabird takes to begin working on Habitat Conservation Plans and modifying their outdoor lighting.

The program was voluntary, although the possibility of fines for noncompliance was mentioned, and state ornithologist Andrea Erichsen said that while some businesses were responsive, others were not.

“All these different entities are balancing economics and real life complications,” she said. “We didn’t want to put a lot of legal pressure on people because we wanted to build a cooperative partnership with them. If we would’ve had money to pass out to people, they would have been all over it.”

Sacred, or serious consequences?

Erichsen said she met repeatedly with the county’s Department of Parks and Recreation–from 2007 to 2008 it was headed by Bernard Carvalho, now Kauai’s mayor–about the lighting at its sports facilities.

“From the very beginning, it became clear that Friday night football was very sacred, so we decided we wouldn’t touch that,” Erichsen said.

Instead, she offered other suggestions, such as not holding games at Vidinha Stadium on the new moon, when the risk of attraction is greatest, and doing public outreach to encourage people to turn off the lights when they were done using tennis courts and ball fields.

The county also was urged to take such simple, inexpensive measures as padlocking light switches at county facilities to prevent their unauthorized use, waiting until morning to clean up after a football game and starting the games a little earlier, as the birds are most active shortly after sunset.

But county officials weren’t especially receptive. “The county operates on its own time,” Erichsen said diplomatically.

Fretz, while saying, “I don’t want to point fingers at people,” confirmed that the state “had been interacting with and discussing solutions with the county for years. We told them what was going on, what would help.”

That included shielding the stadium lights, and in February 2008, the county testified in support of a state Senate bill that authorized money specifically for the county’s HCP and light shielding.

The bill passed, and in October 2008, Gov. Linda Lingle released $1.2 million to retrofit light systems at the county’s sports facilities. The county secured another $3.957 million through a bond fund. But the money sat for two years and the county was only recently awarded a $1.9 million contract to shield lights at six of its sports facilities, including the Vidinha and Hanapepe stadiums.

Work is set to begin this month, according to an e-mail from county spokeswoman Mary Daubert, and should be completed by next fall’s sports season.

“Future light shielding projects for other county park facilities are in the planning stages and the balance of the total amount budgeted will be used for design and construction of these projects,” Daubert wrote.

Dragging their feathers

By 2008, Erichsen said it was obvious that the state’s outreach program was not going to eliminate the light attraction problem and its associated takes. It was also clear that little progress was being on the Habitat Conservation Plans, even though KIUC was supposed to have finished its plan by May 2004, according to a Memorandum of Agreement with the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Wildlife managers decided to re-direct Erichsen’s efforts toward developing an island-wide HCP that would cover numerous entities and generate funds for habitat restoration. Some 15 applicants, including the county and KIUC, have signed up, and a scoping meeting will be held to solicit public comment prior to preparing an Environmental Impact Statement. If approved, the island-wide HCP–the first of its kind in the state–could take effect in early 2012.

Meanwhile, the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) and conservation groups represented by Earthjustice grew weary of what they perceived as foot-dragging.

“We were looking at literally decades of evidence that people were not taking their responsibilities under the law seriously,” Earthjustice attorney David Henkin said. “Sometimes you need a little stick with the carrot.”

This year Earthjustice filed suit against first KIUC and then the St. Regis Princeville Resort, which is the single largest source of light attraction seabird deaths on the island, according to SOS records. The resort settled out of court, agreeing to modify its outdoor lights and contribute $150,000 to ‘ao habitat restoration projects.

The civil suit is still pending against KIUC, which is also facing a Dec. 7 criminal trial on 19 counts of taking protected species without a permit. It’s the first such case in Hawaii, according to data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by Civil Beat reporter Mike Levine, and the feds have filed only nine endangered species indictments against corporations in the past decade.

“Litigative action by DOJ followed a long history of attempts to resolve the issue short of filing suit,” DOJ spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle wrote in an e-mail. “We’re hopeful the outcome of this action is helpful to the successful recovery of the threatened shearwater.”

KIUC has pleaded not guilty and “believes it has good defenses to all of the charges,” wrote utility spokeswoman Anne Barnes in an e-mail.

Football frustration

The DOJ also moved against Kauai County for its unauthorized takes, marking the first time the county has ever faced criminal charges. The county pled guilty to a reduced count of one misdemeanor and negotiated a plea agreement that called for canceling night football games–an idea that by all accounts came from a county that was anxious to ensure that no birds died while it was on probation.

The decision, announced just weeks before the season started, shocked state wildlife managers who said they never suggested such a move, and stunned football fans and families who said they were never consulted about possible alternatives. While some expressed frustration toward the county, others responded with anger toward the birds. A photograph of a Kauai football fan attired in a “buck the firds” T-shirt got national media coverage.

“If there was any train wreck here, it was because the county was asleep at the switch,” Henkin said. “Blaming the birds is not rationale. Now what we need to do is figure out what we as imaginative, innovative human beings can do to restore the natural balance.”

Although the county’s plea agreement cancels football through the 2012 season, the Friday Night Lights could be turned back on sooner if progress continues on shielding lights, creating an HCP and restoring habitat. Those measures may help save the ‘ao from extinction–a task made more challenging because its population crashed in the 15 years since seabird experts first urged action.

“It’s a tough problem, and an expensive one, but that’s what we’re faced with,” Fretz said. “It’s better not to let it get to such a critical point.”