Fishpond and hundreds of acres are for sale on Moloka‘i. A local nonprofit wants to buy it

MANA‘E — On Moloka‘i’s east end, La‘a Poepoe stands on a bank of ironwood needles and scans the shoreline of beachfront homes next to the 33-acre Kūpeke Fishpond. 

He remembers coming to the beach as a kid in the ‘80s and ‘90s while his grandma picked limu and his grandpa searched for he‘e with a glass box, back when the shoreline was made up of Hawaiian families with a beach shack “here and there.” Now, million-dollar properties with Mainland owners and spacious homes overlook the eroding coastline. 

Poepoe is concerned development will spread to the open land surrounding the fishpond he’s managed for the past six years. So when 300 acres that included the fishpond went on the market last month for $2 million, Poepoe and the nonprofit he leads, Kūpeke Ahupua‘a, were determined to buy it. 

“We’ve been managing it for so long, and it’s going to be really disappointing to lose it to any type of foreign investment,” said Lori Buchanan, who serves as an advisory resource to the Kūpeke Ahupua‘a board. 

The listing comprises 12 parcels, with most of the land owned for generations by members of the Buchanan family. It includes the 33.8-acre fishpond valued at $83,000. The largest parcel in the listing is 253.8 acres, valued at $421,900, according to Maui County property tax records. Both are owned by Namahana Buchanan Estate, Buena Ventura Properties and Clifton Steward; several other parcels are owned by the family of the late Stanwood Buchanan Formes.

The listing also includes a waterfront home built in the 1920s, a utility shed and a public water meter.  

While finding the funding is a tall task for Kūpeke Ahupua‘a, it wouldn’t be the first time that a small community group secured ownership of a loko i‘a, the traditional fishponds used by early Hawaiians to sustainably raise fish. State laws prevent the sale of fishponds on state-owned land, but private owners are free to sell.

And in a community that’s pushed back against previous attempts to alter fishponds for the sake of development, residents are especially wary of outside interests. 

“We on Moloka‘i have learned to be very vigilant,” said Malia Akutagawa, who grew up on the east end and is an associate professor of law and Hawaiian studies for the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. “This sort of public sale is really scary for us, and so it’s important that the community in some way be able to secure these lands.”

‘WHEN YOU OWN PLENTY LAND, IT’S A BIG KULEANA’

Growing up, there were days when Poepoe would have rather gone swimming than trek for miles along the Moloka‘i shoreline, learning about lawai‘a, traditional fishing practices, from his father Kelson “Mac” Poepoe, a respected local fisherman and community leader. But now, that upbringing influences much of what he does.

“It’s the foundation. Like otherwise, I don’t know what I would even be,” Poepoe said.

The youngest of three brothers, Poepoe grew up on Moloka‘i and spent part of his youth on Hawai‘i island, where he attended Hawaiian immersion school and became fluent in ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i. He’s been a county firefighter since 2015 and started managing the fishpond in 2018. He’s also the executive director of Kūpeke Ahupua‘a, which was registered as a nonprofit in 2020 and has a goal of “stewarding the ‘āina with deep kinship and respect.” 

Kūpeke Fishpond is a loko kuapā, a style built on the reef flat with a wall of volcanic rock or coral and a mākāhā, or sluice gate, big enough to allow small fish to pass through but narrow enough for large fish to get trapped. Poepoe says the fishpond’s rock walls were intact when he was a kid, but the Japan tsunami of 2011 sent surges across the Pacific that damaged multiple fishponds along the Moloka‘i coast. To this day, sections of the Kūpeke Fishpond wall still need to be repaired.

Poepoe goes down to the fishpond every day to kilo, to observe, preferring to be hands off and let nature run its course. He checks for the limu that the fish feed on and notes the presence of species like weke (goatfish), ‘ō‘io (bonefish) and ‘ama‘ama (mullet). His practices are modeled after traditional konohiki land and fishery management, in which a chief-appointed head oversaw the ahupua‘a (the traditional wedge-shaped division of land from the mountain to the sea) and the nearshore fisheries.

At times Poepoe uses modern gauges to measure water quality and drones to search for schools of fish, but he says there’s nothing like touching the ocean and knowing the temperature has changed or tasting the saltwater and noting the salinity is different. 

“All this is a development of your relationship, and then you see small circles, big circles, you see patterns — all of those make sense when you stare at them long enough,” he said.

Poepoe likes to joke that “if you ever want to get into arguments with people, just take care of a fishpond.”

His job as the kia‘i loko guarding the fishpond sometimes puts him in confrontation with other locals who want to come and fish. Poepoe sees it as a cultural site where the fish and ecosystem need to be protected so they can recover and thrive. He’s put up a sign: “No steal or else lickens.” But these days he’s more likely to settle a dispute with a strongly worded scolding. 

“Nobody wants to be told what to do in places they feel entitled to,” said Poepoe, who does not fish in the pond.

Lori Buchanan says poaching was one of the main issues when they first started managing the fishpond, which they’ve addressed with surveillance cameras and one-on-one conversations with people, as well as the occasional call to the police. 

Years ago, she says, the land was owned by a member of the Buchanan family who guarded the fishpond with a shotgun that she fired in the air as a warning. Eventually the land was passed down to Formes, who lived in New Mexico. He allowed Lori Buchanan and her husband, who is a descendant of Namahana Buchanan but not an heir to the estate, to look after the fishpond in his absence. They’d hoped to convince Formes to sell them the fishpond, and had even booked tickets to fly to New Mexico to discuss it when Formes died in October 2018. 

At the time of his death, Formes owned 100% of the shares in Namahana Buchanan Estate and was a general partner, along with his wife Sandra Formes, of Buena Ventura Properties, court documents show. 

Stanwood Formes’ property in New Mexico and Hawai‘i was set to be divided between his wife, who later died in 2023, and his two daughters. Amid a dispute over the validity of his will, the parties struck an agreement in 2019 that included asking the court to appoint a special master to sell all of the remaining real property in Hawai‘i, according to court documents. 

Catherine Davis, the special master for the sale, declined to comment. Realtor Jeanne Dunn of Corcoran Pacific Properties said the family declined to provide further information beyond what was in the listing. 

Veronica Fox, Stanwood Formes’ oldest daughter from a previous marriage and a great-granddaughter of Namahana Buchanan, said her father felt Moloka‘i land should always be for local people and wanted “all the descendants of Namahana to always have a place.” 

“My wish would be for what my father’s wishes were that it would go to Lori,” Fox, the great-granddaughter of Namahana Buchanan, said via phone from Pennsylvania. “I would have the trust just be established so that Lori can take possession of the property and be the trustee of the property and proceed with, you know, what she’s doing with the pond.”

Lori Buchanan said the nonprofit wants to raise the funds to purchase all 12 parcels, concerned about what could happen if the parcels were sold piecemeal. They’ve put out the call “to our rich friends” (serious inquiries can be sent to kupekeahupuaa@gmail.com) and are looking at options like working with the Trust for Public Land, which has helped groups on O‘ahu and Kaua‘i purchase fishponds to protect from development in perpetuity. 

Lori Buchanan, also the project coordinator for the Moloka‘i/Maui Invasive Species Committee, is hopeful that a purchase would allow them to also take care of the land mauka, controlling the deer and pigs that cause erosion downhill for the fishpond.

She sees the island’s west end as a cautionary tale, where she says 55,000 acres of former pastureland owned by a Hong Kong-based firm have turned dry and overpopulated with invasive species. Both she and Poepoe are former chairs of the Moloka‘i Planning Commission and care deeply about land management.

“When you own plenty of land, it’s a big kuleana,” she said. “You know, you have to be serious about really wanting to take care of it. … Look at all the millionaires that are buying up land in Hawaii, you know, you’ll never get that. … You just hope they’re good stewards.”

HOW FISHPONDS FELL INTO PUBLIC, PRIVATE HANDS

Akutagawa was just a kid when her dad woke her up early one morning to attend her first protest against the dredging of the Pūko‘o Fishpond in the 1970s.

The owners of the fishpond and the nearby land wanted to build three condominiums with 500 units and two hotel sites with 450 rooms, and fill a portion of the fishpond to create a lagoon, according to state documents. The plan was approved by the state Land Use Commission in 1970, but the courts later found that the fishpond was private property under traditional Hawaiian law and that the developer could not dredge or fill the pond. 

To this day, the clover-shaped scar on the coast is a reminder to Akutagawa of what happens when lands fall into the wrong hands. 

“You don’t let anyone put a foot in that door because they’re going to kick it wide open,” Akutagawa said her father once told her, pointing to the proliferation of Kā‘anapali resorts as an example.

After decades of changing hands and falling into disrepair, the current state of fishponds in Hawai‘i is hard to quantify. A 1990 study by Bishop Museum and DHM Inc. estimated there were nearly 500 fishponds in various conditions across six islands, with close to 75 along the Moloka‘i coastline. Some are publicly owned by the state, and others are in private hands, with some leased to community groups for management.

The state Department of Land and Natural Resources said it currently is “not aware of any database of either active or historic fishponds.”  

Akutagawa, who remotely teaches courses on Hawai‘i ocean and fishery laws for UH, said the chain of events that impacted the ownership of fishponds can be traced back to the 1900 Organic Act that made Hawai‘i a territory of the United States. Under that act, the konohiki who oversaw the fisheries had two years to register them. If they didn’t, the territorial government determined that konohiki waived their rights to the fisheries — with the exception of any included fishponds.

A 1954 report by the Legislative Reference Bureau shortly before statehood estimated that only 100 of the 300 to 400 konohiki fisheries had been registered.

Even those who registered could risk losing their fisheries if the American government decided to condemn it and buy it for a public purpose, Akutagawa said. One example of this was Pearl Harbor, the site of several former konohiki fisheries condemned by the U.S. Navy.

Fishponds fell to different fates. Some avoided being thrown into the public domain when konohiki had to register their fisheries, and they remain in private ownership to this day. Others were included in “ceded lands” — government lands and crown lands that were lumped together as “public lands” after annexation — and became part of the public inventory when Hawai‘i became a state.

Brenda Asuncion, who works with about 60 different fishpond sites across the state as the Hui Malama Loko I‘a coordinator at the nonprofit Kua‘aina Ulu ‘Auamo, or KUA, said some privately owned fishponds are under large landowners like Kamehameha Schools and Bishop Estate, while others are owned by local families. 

For groups that steward the fishponds, Asuncion said ownership is the ideal situation. She said it’s hard for many organizations to secure long-term leases for fishponds they manage, which prevents them from expanding their staff and operations “because they don’t have the stability of knowing that they can be on that land.”

With outright ownership, stewards “can perpetuate the management that they want to see at these places,” she said.

Asuncion said it’s “kind of scary” to think anyone with money but no connection to a place could buy a fishpond, but she’s also heartened by the past success stories of community groups taking charge of fishponds. She said many people who care for fishponds do want to see it feed their communities someday, but that they also need to responsibly manage the resources just as the early kia‘i loko did.

“Folks that take care of fishponds really talk about the reciprocal relationship that they have with that place,” Asuncion said. “It is that health that they’re cultivating that then can feed us back.”

The reasoning, she said, is that when you take care of the ‘āina first, future generations will benefit.