Growing up in Hilo, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park was our playground, from family hiking, picnicking, camping and visiting Pele, to the beginnings of understanding of our natural and cultural worlds. Later, with Haleakala National Park, Hawaii Volcanoes formed the foundation of appreciation of the fragility of nature under threat, of the ‘aina as a living, breathing, spiritual being, of our desperate need in this busy world for special places of beauty, solitude, silence, reflection, refuge and peace.
Commercial air tour operations over our 63 national parks and other protected areas are fundamentally incompatible with all this, with the very reasons for which we invented national parks over a century ago. Nowhere is this clearer than in our own parks, where Hawai’i Volcanoes was inundated by an average of 11,376 annual overflights from 2017 through 2019 and a high of 16,520 in ‘17, the highest in our country. Haleakala ranked second at 4,839 overflights, way ahead of third place Badlands at a still-destructive 1,194 overflights. These are not the conditions we intended, need and deserve.
In 2000, Congress, led by our own Sen. Daniel Akaka, passed the National Parks Air Tour Management Act. The law required the National Park Service, responsible for protecting our parks, and the Federal Aviation Administration, responsible for regulating our skies, to work together to set up Air Tour Management Plans (ATMP) for our most heavily-impacted national parks. The process dragged on until 2020 when a Hawaii Island citizens group won a landmark ruling in federal court ordering implementation of the ATMPs. NPS and FAA have proposed ATMPs for Hawai’i Volcanoes and Haleakala, with public comments invited until April 1.
The Hawaii Volcanoes draft ATMP starts by rejecting a no action alternative. It explains in detail how “they would result in unacceptable impacts to Park natural and cultural resources, wilderness character and visitor enjoyment.”
The draft ATMP then lays out three other options. Alternative 2 would prohibit all tours within 1/2 mile of the Park boundaries and below 5,000 feet above ground. Alternative 3 would allow overflights along the coastal and central areas of the Park, with a to-be-determined limit on annual number of flights, and with a minority of days being designated no-fly days. Alternative 4 would focus allowable overflights on the east rift zone (Pu’u ‘O’o) with similar conditions.
True to form, the well-oiled tour helicopter industry, which believes it owns the skies and has no regard for community disruption and other ground impacts, opposes the ATMPs. It claims, in the words of one leader, that “air tours are a valid part of our visitor experience;” “allow visitors accessibility;” will “force aircraft into potentially unsafe conditions;” and “air tours would have to reroute over other parts of the island.”
None of these claims holds up. If we wreck our parks for tourism, then we should rethink tourism, not our parks. If conditions are unsafe, aircraft should not fly at all The implied threat to increase disruption beyond park boundaries if they don’t have free rein within our parks shows why this industry can’t be trusted and why we should act to severely curtail their operations throughout Hawaii.
We should enact full protections for our National Parks and ban tours outright in the ATMP areas. If you agree, your own input is needed now. The comment period for both Hawaii Volcanoes and Haleakala is just days away, April 1. Please note that the NPS asks for “substantive comments,” meaning not just support for one of the alternatives but exactly why that one and not the others. To review the ATMP proposals and comment go here for Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and here for Haleakala National Park or go to the first page of my website at https://case.house.gov and click on the latest E-Newsletter. Our national parks need you.
U.S. Rep. Ed Case (D-Hawaii) represents Hawaii’s First Congressional District, which encompasses urban Oahu. He is a member of the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources and its subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands.