Barbers Point - Kalaeloa: Big Historic Trees Dying Off, Hacked Up, Arson Burned
by John Bond
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Former Naval Air Station Barbers Point once had some of the largest groves of large historic Banyans and Monkey Pod Trees in all of West Oahu when the base was still in operation.
Today under the administrative control of HCDA, they appear to be dying from what some have called (half in jest?) "Agent Orange Disease"... meaning that their death may be going through an acceleration process...
Now that this valuable land is slated for big development, who needs big trees?
One might think that large canopy trees would be a great land and property asset, especially out in hot and sunny Ewa where they provide great shade and lower ground temperatures. But to some land developers who only think in terms of square foot values or maintenance issues, large trees are a big problem that they really want to have go away.
The nostalgic days of large yards around homes that made up this former Navy housing area are over. Packing in lots of buildings and a few small palm trees would be much more profitable.
How to do it without bulldozing down large canopy trees that doesn't make for good TV news?
Perhaps a slow "Agent Orange Disease" way? Or "allow" wood cutters in to hack up trees and prune them back to near death?
Or what if someone came in and did a really good job of setting off high intensity "grass fires" and the trees all "eventually died" from the inferno?
Big Tree Hugging Paranoia?
I recently asked the Hawaii Community Development Authority (HCDA) representative at a local neighborhood board meeting about the seeming rapid demise of large trees all around the former Navy base now called Kalaeloa (the "place of excellence" according to HCDA's plan for the area), and the large number of tree trimmers out and about cutting down very large historic trees because they were apparently "in the way."
I was told that HCDA doesn't have anything in their "place of excellence plan" for large trees, so they didn't have any problem seeing the big trees go away.
This is apparently because these large canopy trees are "not native," so it is O.K under the "HCDA plan" to make them into charcoal and wood chips.
Out of curiosity I took a look at the history of the very large trees along Roosevelt Avenue in what was a former large Navy housing area using Google Earth, which has a neat History Feature that allows going back, in a certain range of time- usually about 10 years with available color imagery.
What I saw was quite an accelerated die off of large trees in the area, just along Roosevelt Avenue in the past 9 years. Some appeared to be doing just fine, but others just "disappeared" especially starting around 2008 when the big land deals started happening.
I then drove out to the same area to take some photos of these same trees and could count at least 13 large canopy trees missing and at least 5 or more close to death, compared to 2004 (the Navy base closed in 1999).
Here's the comparison of overhead images:
Here's the on the ground view of hacked up trees and arson burns. This is really a very small sampling of what is out there and NOT further in off the road which is generally blocked off:
A lack of regular watering or some mysterious tree disease is likely not the cause of death as other trees appear to be doing just fine.
You don't really know what you've got until it's gone. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
From "Big Yellow Taxi" (Didn't a certain well known politician used to drive a big yellow taxi?)
This Federal property is owned by the US Navy, under the administration of HCDA-Kalaeloa.
http://ewafield.blogspot.com/