State encourages products with environmental theme

By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer

A gold coin called a Nene, showing the endangered Hawaiian goose?

A credit card with a humuhumunukunukuapua'a swimming by?

Compact discs of native chanting in the Hawaiian rain forest?

The state is asking the business community to market Hawai'i's precious environment with items like coins, stamps and even credit cards and clothing, with part of the proceeds going to the state's Endangered Species Trust Fund.

State Forester Mike Buck said last week that he has drafted a request for bids by private companies to make the first use of a legislative act signed by Gov. Ben Cayetano in June authorizing the Department of Land and Natural Resources to help promote products with an environmental theme.

The first project will focus on The Year of the Hawaiian Forest in 2003, a tribute to the ecosystem that makes life possible in the Islands, Buck said.

"The native Hawaiian forests represent one of our planet's magnificent treasures," he said.

The late Ralph Hosmer, Hawaii's first forester under the territorial government, said that the most valuable forest product in Hawaii is water, not wood, and that conservation of watersheds had to be his chief duty. Hosmer was articulating something Hawaiians had known for generations, as in the old saying: Hahai no ka ua i ka ulula'au — "Rains always follow the forest."

Buck said the request for ideas from private companies is being sent to the Department of Accounting and General Services for review, but that he hopes to be inviting proposals from businesses in a month.

"Some of the people who have approached us already, with ideas for clothing and coins and stamps, have indicated they are ready to move immediately, which means we could have products on the market at the beginning of the new year," Buck said.

Buck said he didn't know how much money the marketing could raise, but was pleased that it could be directed toward preservation of endangered species here.

Reach Walter Wright at wwright@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8054.