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KUNIA — Dozens of Hawaii’s most powerful players spent Wednesday morning under a clear blue sky and bright white tent in the sun-drenched Kunia Camp, a collection of former pineapple plantation houses surrounded by rust-red dirt a few miles west of Mililani in Central Oahu. They listened to dulcet Hawaiian music, munched on delicious locally grown food and patted themselves, and each other, on the back for a job well done.

Nearly 3,600 acres of diverse lowland forest on the eastern slope of the Waianae Mountain Range is now in public hands. Thirty-five threatened and endangered species call the new Honouliuli Forest Reserve home, and six are found nowhere else in the world.

U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, fresh off his keynote speech at the Democratic Convention, said what had once been seen as “an impossible mission” had come to fruition through collaboration of numerous groups, including some in the federal government that know quite well the considerable influence the Senate Appropriations Committee chairman wields.

State Rep. Marcus Oshiro, who represents the Wahiawa area that hosted Wednesday’s festivities, attributed the momentous occasion to the Hawaii Legislature‘s foresight in 2005 to divert a portion of the conveyance tax to the Legacy Land Fund. Others, like Hawaii Senate President and Congressional hopeful Colleen Hanabusa, acknowledged that they couldn’t have done it alone.

Representatives of state and federal agencies, non-governmental organizations and families, each of which touted their own unique contribution to the cause, took turns at the podium, thanking those who had spoken before them and those who would speak next. Others sat in folding chairs and clapped politely every few minutes.

But the person in charge of managing the land, Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources Chair Laura Thielen, said she’d be remiss if she didn’t remind her “captive audience” of numerous state lawmakers that the department will need funding for the next decade to manage the land.

Two-hundred years ago, Honouliuli was a thriving native forest, but by 150 years ago, it was largely devastated. Although reforestation has begun, the area has not been completely restored. Honouliuli is just “halfway through this multi-hundred-year journey,” said Tony Gill, whose family contributed funds to managing the reserve, encouraging those in attendance to spend the next 150 years working to bring the mountainside back to its former glory.

One Hawaiian proverb, printed on giveaway postcards and repeated by seemingly every speaker, captured the spirit of the day. A ohe hana nui ke alu ia, they said. No task is too big when done together by all.

After years of maneuvering, the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources of the Honouliuli Forest Reserve. The land was purchased by the Trust for Public Land from the James Campbell Estate for $4.3 million in September 2009.

The outright sale of parcels like Honouliuli to public land trusts is, along with the relatively new idea of voluntary , part of a preservation trend that has swept across America and Hawaii in recent decades, said Trust for Public Land Hawaiian Islands Program Director Lea Hong.

“There is a growing awareness that this alternative exists,” she said in a phone interview last week. Rather than waging lengthy land use battles, local landowners and conservationists have begun to work together on finding a better way forward, said Hong, a lifelong Hawaii resident who suffered her fair share of “battle scars” as a land use litigator with Earthjustice before joining the Trust for Public Land in 2006. “I do feel that there’s been a critical mass that’s been hit. The land trust idea has been around for about 10 years and it has matured.”

Such efforts require the collaboration of multiple parties and can be tricky to pull together. The Army Compatible Use Buffer Program, which funds local conservation projects across the country for lands located around Army facilities, kicked in more than 60 percent of the total funding for Honouliuli.

Tad Davis, Army Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environment Safety and Occupational Health, said Wednesday that the program has now saved more than 10,000 acres in Hawaii and 100,000 acres nationwide.

The Hawaii Legacy Land Commission ($982,956.50) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ($627,809) also contributed funding.

“It takes a lot of work, but it is a win-win,” Hong said. “The fruits of the effort are lasting and complete.”

Rather than a victory lap, though, Wednesday was only the starting gun. The proud new owner of the land wasted no time in reminding everyone of that fact.

Thielen, an appointee of Republican Gov. Linda Lingle, used the opportunity to press for the “,” [doc] a proposal that would have used fees and bonds to supplement the department’s budget but was rejected by the Democrat-controlled Hawaii Legislature this year and last.

Fortunately, some have already committed to helping the state manage the land.

A change in absentee landlord after decades of deforestation, watershed mismanagement and general neglect isn’t going to be sufficient. In April, seven organizations joined a the Waianae Mountains Watershed, Oahu’s largest water system. The alliance will work to mitigate impacts to watershed areas, native species and historical, cultural and socioeconomic resources for everyone who relies on the ahupuaa fed by the water from that mountain range. have sprung up across the Hawaiian Islands as a way to manage important lands that span multiple landowners.

Also, the U.S. Army Garrison Hawaii will continue to invest more than $500,000 per year, a press release states. The Nature Conservancy, which managed the area for years while it was still owned by the Campbell Estate, donated another $295,000 to the Hawaii Community Foundation to assist efforts. The Edmund C. Olson Trust and Gill Family Trust added $25,000 apiece.

There’ll be opportunities for the public to get involved, maintaining hiking trails, for example.

“This land is a special place of power and beauty that was here long before we were born. A place where Hiaka, Kane and Kanaloa once walked,” the Trust for Public Land’s Hong said Wednesday. “And with your help and in the future, it will be a special place of power and beauty that will be here long after we are gone.”