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Subaru Hawaii to donate to Hawaii Wildlife Fund
Copyright © 2011 MauiFeed.com
November 25, 2011 - MAUI - Have you ever dreamed of owning a wild animal? Of course, actually owning one would be a huge responsibility that includes possible detriments to your health and financial stability. But Hawaii Wildlife fund offers an attractive alternative: you can adopt wildlife from them at fraction of the price it takes to keep these animals wild and safe from extinction. Hawaii Subaru has teamed up with Hawaii Wildlife Fund to help keep Hawaii wild; you will find them at the Maui Island Subaru dealership offering wild animal adoptions on Saturday, Dec. 3, from 11am to 2pm.

The network of Subaru Hawaii dealerships – Big Island, Kahului and Oahu – will donate $250 to the Hawaii Wildlife Fund and SPCA Maui for every new vehicle sold from Nov. 1 throughout Dec. 31 of this year. Their “Share the Love” events will benefit the Hawaii Wildlife Fund, SPCA Maui, Hawaii Island Humane Society, Oahu SPCA and Hawaii Literacy.

Turtle Adoption Saturday December 3. PHOTO: Cheryl King/HWF

“We are delighted to launch Subaru Hawaii’s Share the Love sales event and give back to the community,” said Glenn Inouye, Senior Vice President, Servco representing the Subaru Hawaii Dealers. “We feel that this promotion will be a win-win for Subaru owners, customers and local non-profit partners. Subaru owners are active members in their local communities and with this program it’s our goal to recognize and celebrate some of those varied groups during the holiday season.”

For those not ready to purchase a car, visit Subaru’s Facebook page and vote for one of the five charities in their poll. The winner, announced at the end of December, will win $5,000 from Subaru.

Hawaii Wildlife Fund was founded in 1996 and is dedicated to the preservation of the state’s fragile marine ecosystem and its inhabitants. “It’s tricky to focus on one species over another, we focus mauka to makai,” said fund president Hannah Bernard. “Everything we do on land affects the nearshore. Here in Hawaii everything is connected.” > Read more

Kamilo Beach Cleanup nets 3,000 pounds of trash
Copyright © 2011 Ka'u News Briefs

Kamilo Beach cleanup netted tons of trash over Veterans Day weekend. November 25, 2011 - MAUI - Kamilo Beach Cleanup statistics are in from Veterans Day weekend. Megan Lamson, of Hawaii Wildlife Fund, reports that 66 volunteers picked up 72 extra large bags of rubbish, 27 burlap bags of trash and eight re-used Dacalio Coffee bags to haul away nearly 3,000 pounds of rubbish in seven pickup trucks. A thousand pounds of derelict fishing nets were removed. Some of the other junk that could hurt wildlife include more than 8,000 plastic caps and lids, black tubing, all kinds of bottles, plastic crates, plastic bags and food wrappers, plastic straws and coffee stirrers, rubber slippers, light bulbs and tubes and cigarette lighters. Volunteers even removed micropalstic confetti from the beach at Kamilo. The next beach cleanup is Dec. 10 at Hon`onoua, the southernmost anchialine pond. Another scouring of a Ka`u Coast beach will is set for Jan. 14.
> Read article online

HWF researcher wins award in photo contest
August 31, 2011 - MAALAEA, MAUI — Hawaii Wildlife Fund researcher Cheryl King's photo of a hawksbill sea turtle hatchling entering the sea was awarded the People’s Choice Award in the Maui Ocean Center’s "I Love Marine Life" photo contest.

HWF's Cheryl King took this photo during a rare sunrise hatchling emergence at Kealia, the site that the lawsuit is addressing.

More than 50 entries were accepted and 10 finalists were selected by judges. The finalists work was then displayed at the aquarium for seven days, giving visitors at the park a chance to vote for the People's Choice winner, for which King got the most votes.

The Judges' Choice winner is Tammy Brehio, who took a photo of a hermit crab. The other finalists were: Amita Schmidt, Jenna Long, David Williams, Dawn Eshelman, James Tobin, Steven Jenness and Faith Giesick. Finalists and winners won prizes and had their photos featured at the recent Maui Photo Festival's slide show. > Read more

Groups to sue county for violating Clean Water Act
Copyright © 2011 The Lahaina News
July 21, 2011 - HONOKOWAI — Maui community groups represented by Earthjustice have sent Maui County a formal notice of their intent to sue the county for alleged violations of the Clean Water Act at the Lahaina Wastewater Reclamation Facility (LWRF) into the nearshore waters of West Maui.

HWF's Cheryl King took this photo of a hawksbill sea turtle off of West Maui where water quality is in question.

The groups include the Hawaii Wildlife Fund, West Maui Preservation Association, Surfrider Foundation-Maui Chapter and Sierra Club-Maui Group. The county responded by explaining that it operates LWRF under permits from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and state Department of Health (DOH), and the plant is operating in compliance with all permit conditions and applicable laws.

According to the groups, the county facility in Honokowai injects millions of gallons of wastewater every day into the groundwater via injection wells. Although the water is treated at the facility, it still contains bacteria, chemicals and other pollutants when it is pumped into the ground. “The county has known for many years, and scientific studies have shown, that this wastewater flows through the groundwater into Maui’s nearshore waters, where it degrades the water quality, presents health risks and promotes algae blooms,” the groups contend.
> Read full article online at The Lahaina News

Injection well lawsuit in the works
Copyright © 2011 The Maui News
June 30, 2011 - Four community groups have filed a notice of intent to sue Maui County over alleged Clean Water Act violations at its West Maui injection wells.

The notice claims that treated effluent injected into the ground at the Lahaina Wastewater Reclamation Facility has been seeping into the ocean off Kaanapali, causing pollution that poses a health risk for ocean users and stimulates the growth of reef-choking algae.

The document states that the county must obtain a special discharge permit in order to come into compliance with the Clean Water Act. County officials responded by saying that the treatment plant has been operating legally under U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state Department of Health permits, and that the county had been cooperating with state and federal regulators to be sure it was complying with all of the permits' conditions.

Part of that process has been conducting tracer and seep studies to determine whether the effluent was reaching offshore waters and whether the county needed to obtain a discharge permit, they noted in a news release issued Wednesday.

"Until those studies are complete, any talk of alleged violations is premature at best," the county said in its statement.

The nonprofit Earthjustice filed the notice Tuesday on behalf of the Hawaii Wildlife Fund, West Maui Preservation Association, Surfrider Foundation's Maui Chapter and Sierra Club-Maui Group.

The Clean Water Act requires potential plaintiffs to file a notice of alleged violations at least 60 days before they file a lawsuit.
> Read full article online at The Maui News

Drifting marine debris continues on our shores
Copyright © 2011 West Hawaii Today
June 20, 2011 - Over the past eight years, the Big Island's southern Waiohinu-Ka Lae coast has been the site of 23 intense marine debris removal efforts and the effort's paying off, said Megan Lamson, Hawaii Wildlife Fund debris project coordinator.

When the cleanups began in 2003, Hawaii Wildlife Fund founder Bill Gilmartin instructed volunteers not to pick up anything smaller than their hands. Now that older, larger items have been removed and community involvement has taken off, things have changed to more of a "maintenance" level, with concentration on newly arrived trash. Volunteers are even straining micro plastic from the sand, Lamson said.

Tonight in Waimea, Lamson will discuss marine debris, Hawaii Wildlife Fund's removal efforts and ways to reduce single-use plastics. The Reef Talk begins at 6 p.m. in Thelma Parker Library.

A stewy body of plastic and marine debris floats in gyres, formed by winds and currents in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. The plastic containers, toys, bags, fishing lines and nets discarded on land or at sea float endlessly in these gyres, breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces, but never completely disappearing, Lamson said.
> Read full article online at West Hawaii Today

Data indicates tsunami debris will hit Big Island
Copyright © 2011 Hawaii Tribune Herald.

On April 2, less than a month after the tsunami struck Japan, Hawaii Wildlife Fund volunteers cleaned a debris-filled shoreline on the Big Island of Hawai'i which always attracts floating trash. Experts predict debris from Japan will hit this same beach in three to five years. PHOTO: Megan Lamson/HWF
April 10, 2011 - Computer modeling by researchers at the University of Hawaii projects that debris from Japan's tsunami will reach the Big Island in three to five years. The 9.0-magnitude earthquake March 11 triggered a massive wall of water that surged over coastal towns near Sendai, Japan. Homes, vehicles and even people were washed out to sea. Rescuers worked around the clock pulling out survivors, some miles from where they'd been taken. But left behind were enormous masses of floating debris. That debris is now being carried eastward by the surface current phenomenon known as the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, according to scientists at the University of Hawaii at Manoa International Pacific Research Center.
[Portions of article removed for brevity. Read entire article.]
   As director of research and a cofounder of the Hawaii Wildlife Fund, Bill Gilmartin has worked since 2003 to organize cleanups of the Big Island's shores. At times, he said, it feels like an uphill battle, with some beaches blanketed by garbage just a week after being cleaned. But, he said, he views his mission not as keeping the beaches clean but as removing garbage from the water. "What we're doing is keeping it out of the ocean," he said. "A lot of the material (on the beaches) refloats. The more we're able to pull off the beach, the more we're keeping from going back into the ocean. The goal is to reduce what is going into the ocean."
> Read full article in Hawaii Tribune Herald newspaper

Marine Debris Awareness Week
Copyright © 2011 The Ka`u Calendar.

Beach debris hauled in from the Ka`u Coast includes many plastics.
PHOTO: Hawai`i Wildlife Fund
March 25, 2011 - This is Marine Debris Awareness Week, and the fifth annual International Marine Debris Conference is being held in Hawai`i. Conferees are developing a commitment from international representatives to reduce ocean dumping that would cut back on trash that reaches some of the most remote places in the world, including the Ka`u Coast, where volunteers routinely clean up ... Marine resources expert Megan Lamson of Ka`u is attending the conference, which has the theme Global Lessons to Inspire Local Action.
> Read full article in The Ka`u Calendar News Briefs blog
> HWF Hawai'i Island Marine Debris Removal Project