The Army has released its finalized environmental impact statement on the prospect of retaining 22,750 acres of state-owned land at the Pohakuloa Training Area on Hawaii island after its lease expires in August 2029.
Situated between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, PTA is the military’s largest contiguous live-fire range and maneuver training area in the islands. The state parcel sits between two federally owned pieces of land, collectively making up 132,000 acres. Army officials call the leased land “the connective tissue” of PTA.
The Army will be negotiating with the state Board of Land and Natural Resources on its request for a new lease. In recent years, PTA has become central to the Army’s new Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center, a series of training ranges in Hawaii and Alaska aimed at preparing soldiers for operations in the Pacific amid tensions with China.
But the Army, which obtained the parcel at PTA and other lands it uses for training for a mere $1 in 1964, has also faced increasing scrutiny of the effects of training on the environment and ancient Hawaiian cultural sites. The state now considers its parcel at Pohakuloa to be a conservation district.
With its rugged fields of lava and volcanic soil, Pohakuloa is classified as a sub- alpine tropical dryland forest — one of the world’s rarest kinds of ecosystems — and is habitat for Hawaii’s state bird, the nene, as well as the hoary bat and several species that exist nowhere else on the planet.
In a news release Friday, the Army said it “will observe a 30-day waiting period before deciding how much land, if any, it will seek to retain. The waiting period for the final EIS will end 30 days after publication of the Notice of Availability in the Federal Register, after which time the Army will execute a Record of Decision.”
The EIS, which follows several drafts that were put up for public review, argues the military needs the land for training. PTA is used not only by the Army but also by the Marines, Navy and Air Force; it is increasingly used by foreign troops as well during international exercises.
Military officials have told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that of the leased lands with leases expiring in 2029, PTA is by far the one most of them view as most important.
The EIS states that “the Army acknowledges the comments received on the Draft EIS and the Second Draft EIS regarding the challenges with obtaining a new lease. The Army understands that the execution of a new lease prior to the expiration of the current lease would be arduous … (and several) could remain unresolved well past 2029, when the current lease for the State-owned land expires.”
The Army has argued that the state’s designation of the land as a conservation district did not apply to its operations, as the military already had the lease and had been training since before the designation, essentially grandfathering it in. But the final EIS seemingly concedes that under a new lease, that would not be the case.
The document states that “although a rule amendment to obtain a special subzone would be difficult and the execution of a new lease would be onerous … for analysis purposes, this EIS assumes that the BLNR would establish a new subzone through a rule amendment that would allow military uses in the conservation district.”
The Army acknowledges potential harm to native species, water resources and soil through live fire and toxic exposures, though the service also agrees to pursue several new environmental and cultural programs on top of existing ones.
WHEN TRAINING isn’t taking place at PTA, only five uniformed soldiers are stationed there. The rest of the workforce of about 200 people is made up of Army civilians and contractors. Among them are scientists working to catalog and preserve native species living on the base, archaeologists looking for ancient cultural sites and firefighters tasked with putting out blazes — whether they be natural or caused by military training.
The training range has had its share of controversies. In 1989, the Sierra Club sued the Army on behalf of University of Hawaii at Hilo botanist Lani Stemmermann. She had visited an area of dryland forest in PTA in search of research sites to study native plants and found Army bulldozers leveling native naio and mamane trees for a new training range.
A 1993 investigation by the Army found that while planning that range, Army officials knowingly cut corners during the survey process, intentionally limited access to scientists and ignored recommendations by Army engineers that called for a comprehensive botanical study of the proposed site.
In 2019, the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled against the state in a lawsuit filed by the Native Hawaiian Legal Corp. on behalf of Hawaiian cultural practitioners Clarence “Ku” Ching and Mary Maxine Kahaulelio. The court found state officials had failed to ensure the military upheld its duties to clean up Pohakuloa and had harmed Hawaiian cultural interests, and that “as trustee, the State must take an active role in preserving trust property and may not passively allow it to fall into ruin.”
The terms of the Army’s lease with Hawaii state the military must “make every reasonable effort to … remove or deactivate all live or blank ammunition upon completion of a training exercise.”
Disagreement over what constitutes a “reasonable effort” has been an ongoing sticking point. The military fires live rounds into the “impact area,” which is on federally controlled land. Because it’s considered an active range, the impact area is regarded as too dangerous for regular removal of ordnance.
THE EIS reported that approximately 17% of the 1,261 recorded wildfires at PTA “occurred or were likely to have occurred” on the state-owned land. Between 1975 and 2011, the Army documented 112 fires within the state-owned parcel at PTA that burned at least 15,047 acres, though the EIS said “the data prior to 2012 is considered incomplete.”
Between 2012 and August 2024, 96 fires were recorded on the parcel, burning approximately 19,328 acres. Of the fires that were greater than 100 acres and “ignited by military activities, or suspected military activities,” five fires burned portions of the state-owned land.
The EIS asserted that 71% of those wildfires were less than 0.1 acres in size. The EIS noted that it predicts the wildfire risk will only increase, saying “increased potential for drought from changes to regional temperatures and precipitation patterns due to climate change may result in increased wildland fires. Rising temperatures and prolonged droughts can dry out vegetation, which serves as fuel for wildland fires.”
The military and the state have spent years preparing for the renegotiation of the leases. With the leases expiring in 2029, the majority of the negotiations will be undertaken by President Donald Trump’s Pentagon team, led by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Hegseth has vowed to drastically scale back environmental and cultural programs, charging that such programs are “woke” and have distracted the military from “warfighting.” However, Hegseth’s Army secretary, Dan Driscoll, promised U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono, D- Hawaii, during his Senate confirmation hearing that he would work with her office and community groups on the land leases and would listen to local concerns about the future of the land.
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