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Some 23 miles southwest of Ni’ihau lies Ka’ula, a remote islet teeming with nesting seabirds, monk seals and marine life that also happens to be the last Hawaiian island used by the military for aerial bombing and target practice.

The Navy has trained there for decades even though the state insists it is the rightful owner and has tried to protect wildlife under a . Now, the Navy looks to increase its exercises on the uninhabited islet as international tensions grow with China and the military shifts more focus to the Pacific. 

The Navy says it doesn’t expect the added non-explosive bombing and gunfire to significantly impact the 18 or so bird species known to nest on Ka’ula, including black-footed albatross, or have any other major environmental impacts. 

But the move faces growing concerns and objections from local community members and some key state officials. Hawaii conservationists say that far more rigorous environmental scrutiny is needed than what the military has put forth so far. 

On Friday, Division of Forestry and Wildlife Administrator David Smith said his agency has called on the Navy to stop target practice altogether on Ka’ula.

“The main issue in the short term is the use of the island for target practice. DOFAW does not consider that to be a compatible use based on the resources on the island,” Smith said in an email. “This is the last island in the Hawaiian chain to still be used for target practice and it (is) time for that to end and the island be put into wildlife sanctuary or refuge status.”

Ka’ula, with its steep cliffs that climb high above the ocean, could become more important to Hawaii’s migratory seabirds as they lose atolls and other low-lying nesting habitats to rising seas caused by climate change, conservationists add. 

Some Native Hawaiians and other critics have criticized the Navy’s push to more than double the number of exercises in which fighter aircraft drop inert or non-explosive bombs on Ka’ula as desecration of a culturally significant site. The proposal calls for such bombing runs to increase from 12 a year to as many as 31.

The move, critics say, is poorly timed given the recent history of the Navy’s Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility leaking and contaminating part of Oahu’s water supply.

The Navy stressed in a released last month that it merely wants to increase the frequency of training activities already happening and that those exercises are limited to the islet’s southern end.

The training runs could occur during the day and at night, according to the environmental assessment.

“Increases in training and testing activities are needed to ensure the U.S. military services are able to organize, train, and equip service members and personnel to meet their respective national defense missions,” the Navy added in an emailed statement Friday.

The Navy held a earlier this month on Kauai to present its assessment, which also proposes more frequent training exercises at the Pacific Missile Range Facility on the northwestern shore of that island. The draft had been released Aug. 30.

Conservation groups such as the Sierra Club and the environmental legal advocacy group EarthJustice have joined with locals on Kauai to try and inform more island residents about what’s being proposed. However, the official period to provide public comment on the Navy’s plan ends Monday.

The Navy, in its statement, said that a “decision-maker” with the U.S. Pacific Fleet will likely decide how to proceed in early 2025 after the environmental assessment is finalized. One option would be to conduct an environmental impact statement, a more rigorous study than an environmental assessment.

The Navy should consider moving forward with the full EIS so the public can better understand its effects on Ka’ula, said Hob Osterlund, founder of the Kauai Albatross Network, which monitors those seabirds’ nesting patterns.

“I’m hoping the Navy can come up with another creative way to do what they need to do,” Osterlund said. “I understand they need training. I’m not opposed to that. I’m opposed to them bombing our native sea birds.”

A Lighthouse, Then A Land Dispute

Ka’ula, roughly the size of Honolulu’s , has been used for target practice since 1952. The Navy originally used live ordnance in those exercises but discontinued that practice in the early 1980s. 

Unexploded ordnance from that era may still exist on the islet along with debris from the inert bombs and bullets, the Navy said Friday. The public is prohibited from going ashore there, and there are restrictions on accessing the waters within 3 miles of the islet.

The military’s track record of cleaning up after itself makes it a hard sell for Andre Perez, who cleared unexploded ordnance from Kaho’olawe for seven years. 

The US Navy used the island of Kaho’olawe as a target for decades before turning it over to the state in 1994. The federal government set aside $400 million to clear explosives and debris but at least 25% of the island remains uncleared.   

“It litters the land with a bunch of aluminum, steel and brass that they normally don’t come back and clean up,” Perez, project director with Native Hawaiian , said. “I think it’s still completely spiritually, morally, against Hawaiian values.”

Meanwhile, the Navy’s environmental assessment calls Ka’ula U.S. property, while Kauai County property records say that .

The origin of that dispute dates back to the 1920s, when Hawaii’s then-territorial government allowed the U.S. Coast Guard to build a lighthouse on the islet, said Peter Young, who served as the state’s Department of Land and Natural Resources director from 2003 to 2007.

Typically, the state gives a right of entry to another government entity when it requests state-owned land for a specific use, but it doesn’t transfer the ownership outright, Young said.  

“It’s not like, ‘You can have the property now, Coast Guard — it’s yours,’” Young explained. He suspects that the Coast Guard eventually assumed ownership of the islet and then passed that on to the Navy in the 1950s after the lighthouse had been removed. 

The state and the Navy have clashed over which of them owns Ka’ula ever since. While the Navy used it for target practice, the state designated the islet a sanctuary for the estimated 100,000 seabirds that visit there, many to nest.

Smith, the state forestry and wildlife official, said his agency has requested a new opinion from the state attorney general regarding the ownership dispute. 

Prime Fishing Grounds

Fishermen have prized the waters around the islet for many years, and questions remain about what the Navy’s increased activity would mean for them, said Leina’ala Ley, a senior associate attorney with environmental legal advocacy group EarthJustice, in a virtual panel on Thursday. 

The islet was once well known for its tuna stocks, a mainstay for Hawaii’s fishing fleet. But one fisherman, Koichi Masaki, noted impacts of the military’s activity . “When they bomb that island, you can’t catch one tuna,” he told a reporter.

William Wong, a lifelong Kauai fisherman and resident, added on Thursday’s panel: “Leave it for the fishermen, the birds and the fish in the ocean.”

Wong recounted visiting Ka’ula years ago and observing one of the Navy’s inert bombs miss the island by about 300 yards, hitting the water instead. Wong and those with him had not notified the Navy in advance of their visit, and Navy pilots likely didn’t see their boat because it was close to a sea cliff, he said.

In 1965, the Navy also mistakenly bombed Ni’ihau instead of Ka’ula, .

A Sacred Place

Osterlund, with the Kauai Albatross Network, said that seabirds nest year-round on Ka’ula, so there’s no optimal time for the Navy to conduct target practice there. Even if the adult birds can fly away from the bombing and the gunfire, fledglings and eggs remain, she said.

Target practice away from nesting sites could still lead the adult birds to startle and accidentally destroy their eggs, Osterlund added.

An environmental impact study could prompt a more thorough survey of all the bird species using Ka’ula, she said, including those that burrow and can’t be seen from the air. 

Young, the former resources department head, said that the Navy’s draft environmental assessment fails to address whether the bird population would increase without the training exercises.

“What if you weren’t training? That should be part of the analysis,” he said. “I’m not saying they can’t and shouldn’t train,” but the draft assessment is “too simplistic.”

The site holds large cultural and historical significance. In Hawaiian mythology, Ka’ula is considered the seventh child of , and a sea cave there was considered the original home of Kuhaimoana, the Hawaiian shark deity, according to Manawaiakea Cummings, a Kauai resident and cultural practitioner.

The islet also serves as a reference point for traditional Hawaiian navigators as they guide canoes up and down the Northwestern Hawaiian island chain. It’s among the first five islands spotted by Capt. James Cook in 1789 when he arrived in Hawaii, .

Because Ka’ula is so far from Kauai, few locals have been there aside from the occasional fisherman, Cummings said. She added that she hopes more of the island’s residents might eventually visit and connect with the culturally important place.

She also hopes there can eventually be a community-driven effort to clear the islet of munitions debris and any unexploded ordnance, similar to the ongoing efforts to restore Kaho’olawe after years of overgrazing, bombing and burning.

But that can only happen, Cummings said, if the Navy stops using Ka’ula for target practice.