Pohakuloa Training Area hosted its annual Experience PTA Day on Thursday after a three-year hiatus due to the pandemic.
Approximately 40 Hilo High School students and a dozen members of the community participated in workshops and learned about the environmental, cultural, and community work taking place at PTA.
“The military’s relationship with the community is critical,” said Lt. Col. Kevin Cronin, PTA garrison commander. “Our mission here is to train our nation’s men and women to achieve the highest levels of readiness, but a lot goes into supporting that training from an environmental, emergency response, recycling and public works perspective.”
This year’s event featured police and fire departments, the Center for Environmental Management, the Cultural Resources Program and the recycling sector of PTA, along with vehicles and military equipment for visitors to see.
“I would very much classify us as stewards of the land here from an environmental perspective,” said Cronin of the 230-member team. “We have a greenhouse that protects endangered plant species, 80 miles of fences that protect 40,000 acres of land from ungulates and we do fire breaks and fuel breaks to protect the environment.”
The Center for Environmental Management is a program run jointly by PTA and Colorado State University since 2003 that monitors five environmental aspects: botany, invasive plants, wildlife, game management and ecological data.
“There’s a balance of different land uses that occur at PTA,” said Senior Program Manager Lena Schnell. “So there’s a robust conservation effort happening for these threatened and endangered species, overlaid on top of the military mission. Both of those things can happen together simultaneously, for a net benefit to both land uses.”
Within PTA, there are 25 threatened and endangered species including 19 plants and six animals. Due to its 132,000-acre size, PTA has more endangered species than any other U.S. Army installation.
Previous and ongoing conservation measures include 86 miles of fencing to protect 37,300 acres of native habitat from ungulates such as goats, sheep and pigs, along with the installation of a greenhouse, 14 fuel breaks to protect against fires and several invasive plant surveys to target weeds at landing zones, trails and roadsides.
“You’ve got these species of plants and animals that are in some regards found nowhere else in the world,” said Threat Management Coordinator Paul Regretto. “If we don’t provide this protection, they may just disappear. Sometimes, we’re the last line of defense for some of them.”
The Environmental Management team provided workshops for visitors including the chance to make wearable buttons out of leaf etchings.
The collaboration between PTA and Colorado State University includes a Cultural Resources Management Program as well.
Over 1,000 archaeological sites have been documented within PTA including the Bobcat Trail Habitation Cave, listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Excavation sites have contained artifacts like ipu or gourds, kama’a or ti leaf slippers as well as pictographs and petroglyphs.
“We have a team of specialists up here that are dedicated to the preservation of the archeology here,” said Project Director Ana Tejeda, who works alongside Lyle Auld in the Cultural Resources Management Program. “Our main intent is to document it so we can tell a story about what people were doing here and how long they’ve been here. We can learn from the past about how to manage our resources.”
The duo hosted a workshop for students to create their own etchings for a collaborative pictograph.
Additional workshops allowed visitors to practice with police and fire department equipment and gain insight on PTA’s recycling program that diverts 60% of all solid waste away from the Hawaii County landfill.
“We have a team of dedicated professionals who have outstanding relationships with their partners on the island and in the state of Hawaii,” said Cronin. “We’ve had about 40 students from Hilo high and various members of the community attend this year and we’re planning to be even bigger and better than ever in 2023.”
Email Grant Phillips at gphillips@hawaiitribune-herald.com.