The Importance of a Bug, by Shepherd Bliss
"Mauna Kea has the greatest diversity of biotic environments found anywhere in the Hawaiian archipelago," geologists J.O. Juvik and S.P. Juvik wrote in "Mauna Kea and the Myth of Multiple Use: Endangered Species and Mountain Management in Hawai'i." The scientific paper by two U.H.-Hilo professors, published in l984, was circulated at the recent contested case hearing.
The paper documents struggles by conservationists and Hawaiians, as far back as the l970s, to protect the mountain's delicate environment. The current endangered species whose habitat is being destroyed by the observatory is the wekiu bug. Virtually an entire day was spent at the hearing on this insect, moving the testimony from the telescopic to the microscopic.
The endangered Wekiu bug lives only among the cinders near the mountaintop, eating drowsy ladybugs that drift up into this thin and often chilly air-a unique ecosystem. But the weiku bug has no intelligible voice, except the Sierra Club and those scientists who testified to defend its habitat. The wekiu bug's population has plummeted, as U.H. further develops its enterprise. Though U.H. assured the hearing officer that it could protect the bug's habitat while further excavating the terrain, entomologists for the Sierra Club refuted that allegation as untested, untried, highly speculative, and potentially harmful.
"Mauna Kea has the greatest diversity of biotic environments found anywhere in the Hawaiian archipelago," geologists J.O. Juvik and S.P. Juvik wrote in "Mauna Kea and the Myth of Multiple Use: Endangered Species and Mountain Management in Hawai'i." The scientific paper by two U.H.-Hilo professors, published in l984, was circulated at the recent contested case hearing.
The paper documents struggles by conservationists and Hawaiians, as far back as the l970s, to protect the mountain's delicate environment. The current endangered species whose habitat is being destroyed by the observatory is the wekiu bug. Virtually an entire day was spent at the hearing on this insect, moving the testimony from the telescopic to the microscopic.
The endangered Wekiu bug lives only among the cinders near the mountaintop, eating drowsy ladybugs that drift up into this thin and often chilly air-a unique ecosystem. But the weiku bug has no intelligible voice, except the Sierra Club and those scientists who testified to defend its habitat. The wekiu bug's population has plummeted, as U.H. further develops its enterprise. Though U.H. assured the hearing officer that it could protect the bug's habitat while further excavating the terrain, entomologists for the Sierra Club refuted that allegation as untested, untried, highly speculative, and potentially harmful.