Rare Species, Tourists Find Refuge in Hawaii

Ranger Dan Moriarty’s day was off to a typical start. There was an injured albatross in his bathtub and a dead sea turtle at his front door, both probably the victims of roving wild dogs or cats.

Moriarty is manager of the Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge in the northernmost inhabited part of the Hawaiian Islands, a 45-minute flight from Honolulu.

Crowning the crest of Kauai Island’s sheer lava cliffs, the refuge is dominated by a now-dark lighthouse listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

With its dramatic coastline, pounding surf, jagged precipices and jade-green rain forests, the refuge once attracted few visitors because it was so hard to reach. Now nearly 300,000 tourists a year come to visit.

They can train their binoculars on thousands of birds, including four endangered species and a few elusive aviators nicknamed “gooney birds,” albatrosses that mysteriously have been coming all the way from Midway Island to nest since 1976.

If the ocean is not too rough, the visitors may also catch glimpses of Pacific green turtles, humpback whales that swim from Alaska to bear their young just offshore, endangered Hawaiian monk seals and spinner dolphins frolicking in the turquoise waves.

Moriarty also presides over two other nearby refuges, neither of them open to the public. Hanalei National Wildlife Refuge, established in 1972, set aside 917 acres of the Hanalei Valley where farmers with federal permits grow the native vegetable taro for commercial sale. Hanalei taro is now served in some of Kauai’s best restaurants.

The smaller 240-acre Huleia preserve offers unique river-bottom habitat for endangered water birds.

With only two full-time employees, four part-time workers and a growing corps of volunteers, Moriarty must stretch his $400,000 annual budget to groom, protect and enhance the three sanctuaries.

“This is a very busy refuge. We’re running all the time, but it’s such a beautiful place it stimulates you to try and do the right thing,” said Moriarty, 49, who joined the Fish and Wildlife Service in 1976. In 1989 his efforts were recognized by the National Audubon Society with its annual Conservation Award.

Thanks to nearly a century of protection, there are more than 14 million birds of 18 species living in the Hawaiian and Pacific Islands national wildlife refuges.

Moriarty believes many birds stayed at Kilauea because the lighthouse keepers protected them and their habitat. Since 1913, when the lighthouse was built, dogs and cats have been banned from the area.

“There are 50 generations of feral cats out there just ready to destroy the only sea bird colony left in the state,” Moriarty said. “Rats are also a very big problem here. The rats got into the sugar cane and ate it, and over the years they threw cats out into the cane to control the rats and mice. One of our biggest jobs is to make sure the fences surrounding this whole place are not breached or broken.”

The grounded albatross in Moriarty’s bathtub was probably attacked by a dog or cat that had managed to sneak beyond the wire barrier. Because seabirds have no natural predators on the outer islands, they have no fear of other creatures or man, and are easily killed.

As for the sea turtle, which had been decapitated, Moriarity speculated it, too, fell victim to an alien predator.

“In the past 10 years all our populations are up, because of the fencing, but it’s a never-ending battle,” he said.

Before Capt. James Cook discovered the islands in 1778, Hawaiian natives also probably ate the birds. Dogs, cats and mongooses imported to kill rats also decimated the flocks. Nearly every threatened bird population except the one at Kilauea withdrew to the central Pacific.

Today there are five wetland refuges on the main Hawaiian Islands and six remote island sanctuaries that stretch all the way to French Frigate Shoals and Howland Island, a mere dot in the ocean 1,700 miles southwest of Honolulu.

Kilauea’s original 31 acres were transferred from the Coast Guard to the Fish and Wildlife Service in 1976 when the old lighthouse was deactivated. For 63 years it had served as the main Hawaiian landfall light for ships passing from the Orient to the West Coast.

The refuge’s acreage multipled in 1988 when a land developer donated 101 acres and sold an additional 38 for $1.6 million. The addition extended the refuge 1 1/2 miles east along the coast to include the magnificent Crater Hill, home of a major red-footed booby rookery, and Mokolea Point. It also encompasses the remains of Kauai, a volcano that has been dormant for more than a million years.

Last year a new $1 million environmental education center opened just a few hundred feet from the old lighthouse. It offers a 180-degree view of Crater Hill and the nearby meadow where the Laysan albatrosses run and tumble downhill until they gather speed for a graceful launch into flight above the roaring ocean.

The huge birds, which have a mature wingspan of 7 feet, are native to the northwestern Hawaiian archipelago but were rarely seen until they showed up near Kilauea in 1976.

Since then, few chicks have survived because of predators or immature mating. Last year on the refuge grounds there were 18 albatross nests, but only nine chicks hatched--and all of them were killed by wild cats.

“This year, we had 46 eggs, but only 16 hatched,” Moriarty said in late February. “So far, cats have killed half of those chicks, but we have trapped 21 cats including a very big tomcat we just caught, which we think was doing most of the damage, so hopefully we’re gaining on it and some of this year’s chicks will survive.”

Moriarty, who earns about $31,000 a year, now lives alone in the small stone house allotted to the chief ranger. His wife and three children have moved to an apartment in Honolulu until the children graduate from high school. The oldest is a freshman, the youngest is in third grade. Sometimes they come home on weekends, or he flies over to Oahu to see them when he can get a weekend off.

To chase away the silence, Moriarty recently bought his first television.

“But the stuff is awful,” he said. “So most of the time I turn it off and just come back to the office to work.

“I’d rather be with the birds any day than listen to most of that TV stuff.”

Kilauea Point: Endangered birds, historic lighthouses and tourists from everywhere coexist on a lava cliff in mid-Pacific.