10-01-2018, 04:43 PM
From Civil Beat article: "Big Island: UH’s New Rules Would Bring Big Changes Atop Mauna Kea"
HILO, Hawaii Island – Mauna Kea’s summit could be closed to private vehicles, large religious ceremonies and playing in the snow under rules the University of Hawaii wants to implement on public land it leases atop Hawaii’s tallest mountain.
The restrictions would apply to the hundreds of thousands of people Mauna Kea attracts annually...
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I have questions, and I might be wrong in my suppositions: Isn't the history here that the UH and the astronomers did their science for decades without paying attention to much else on the mountain?
Sure they were irritated by tourists regularly stuck in snow and having other driving mishaps on the one road up the mountain. And maybe tourists knocking on observatory doors asking for this and that. But mostly the astronomers quietly went about their business.
And then some years back complaints arose that the UH wasn't managing the mountain properly. As I recall, the UH was slammed pretty heavily on this. And who did that arise from, primarily? Wasn't it environmentalists? And to a lesser degree, native Hawaiians, in part because they objected to observatories on the mountain?
And big pressure arose on UH for a Mauna Kea Management Plan.
Which, now that it has arrived, apparently is being objected to by the same complainants of UH inaction and indifference on regulating the mountain. Is that about right?
ETA: some of the same complainants
https://www.civilbeat.org/2018/09/big-is...mauna-kea/
HILO, Hawaii Island – Mauna Kea’s summit could be closed to private vehicles, large religious ceremonies and playing in the snow under rules the University of Hawaii wants to implement on public land it leases atop Hawaii’s tallest mountain.
The restrictions would apply to the hundreds of thousands of people Mauna Kea attracts annually...
- - - -
I have questions, and I might be wrong in my suppositions: Isn't the history here that the UH and the astronomers did their science for decades without paying attention to much else on the mountain?
Sure they were irritated by tourists regularly stuck in snow and having other driving mishaps on the one road up the mountain. And maybe tourists knocking on observatory doors asking for this and that. But mostly the astronomers quietly went about their business.
And then some years back complaints arose that the UH wasn't managing the mountain properly. As I recall, the UH was slammed pretty heavily on this. And who did that arise from, primarily? Wasn't it environmentalists? And to a lesser degree, native Hawaiians, in part because they objected to observatories on the mountain?
And big pressure arose on UH for a Mauna Kea Management Plan.
Which, now that it has arrived, apparently is being objected to by the same complainants of UH inaction and indifference on regulating the mountain. Is that about right?
ETA: some of the same complainants
https://www.civilbeat.org/2018/09/big-is...mauna-kea/