Blending Nature with Development: A New Land Stewardship Ethos Emerges

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Stevens has applied what he learned to a much larger land deal, called Hokukano Preserve, that’s moving toward construction on the Big Island of Hawaii. If the Pace family, long-time owners, had sought the greatest and quickest economic return, they could have sold off their 11,000 acres into 20-acre “ranchettes.” Instead, working with Stevens, they’ve agreed to subdivide only 1,000 acres. Existing sandalwood and ohia forests that stretch from the edge of the town of Kealakekua up the island’s western slopes toward the peak of Mauna Loa will be protected and extended through reforestation of the parcel’s ranchlands. Another 11,000 acres may be added if an adjacent ranch is approved for participation in the Federal Forest Legacy Program (which grants cash while legally obliterating any right to develop the land.)

Stevens has marked-out building sites on the lowest elevations, nearest Kealakekua, by pacing the land and finding spots that offer breathaking views of the ocean and the peak without extending existing ranch roads. On one potential site he repeatedly encountered an angry Io, an endangered Hawaiian hawk. “He would scream at me from about 10 feet away,” Stevens remembers, realizing that he’d better let the eagle retain its claim to the place.

Stevens has also tried to respect ancient notions of land stewardship. “There are all these layers of history and ways of understanding land,” he explains. The idea of scraping the rocky slopes into a flat platform for a home site is “blasphemous” locally. (Historically, flattened sites were reserved for religious structures.) “So our architecture will respect the way a building should sit on the landscape, while taking advantage of the individuality of each setting.”

Yet even those wealthy enough to pay $2 million or more to buy into the preserve will be expected to nurture it. “Residents will have incentives to reforest their land,” explains Stevens, which means that the forest will actually expand most rapidly on the portions of the site that are developed for homes. At least three quarters of each 20-acre parcel will remain in agricultural use or conservation. At Hokukano, fences won’t mark property lines. Rather, they will define wildlife corridors and defend native forest and understory from the depredations of non-native wild pigs.

Parts of the vast site, almost as large in area as the city of San Francisco, will also continue to support coffee growing (tucked into remnant forests), and the ranching of bison and cattle (rotated to inspire forest growth yet keep too much fire-inducing deadwood from accumulating).

The agricultural uses may seem surprising in a development devoted to conservation, but mixing conservation, development, and ranching or forestry represents an evolution in the way humans can be present in precious landscapes. Human activities, clustered or limited, offer income to offset the profits owners forgo when they give up the right to cut forests or build vacation homes. But the reasons run deeper: “Retiring land from human use is more complex than it appears,” says Stevens. Natural systems, he explains, adapt themselves to long-term human use, creating a different kind of environmental diversity than would occur otherwise. Stevens is also concerned that “removing people from the land disengages them from it.“ The people who work a forest or farm know it most deeply. When they leave it behind, they take their understanding and emotional connection with them. Like-minded conservationists, he finds, seek “to move beyond a conventional environmentalism that humans should be separated from the land.”

In the West, it’s possible to assemble huge tracts into the kinds of conservation development Stevens has made his specialty. In other parts of the country, environmental groups find themselves operating on a much smaller scale. Scenic Hudson has succeeding in preserving some 20,000 acres in the last four decades. But in its approach to 23 derelict acres, once the site of an assortment of industrial facilities, it hopes to make a much larger impact by bridging the divide that often splits communities from environmentalists.

“Our mission is conservation,” explains Ned Sullivan, the non-profit’s president. “But we’re working with the business community and developers to try and get it right, so that the valley’s beauty and quality of life are sustained as key assets.” Scenic Hudson has started manning the bulldozers rather than trying to stop them.

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