Episode 2 - Division of State Parks

Join us for a conversation with the leadership of the Division of State Parks: Administrator Curt Cottrell and Assistant Administrator Alan Carpenter. Cottrell and Carpenter share their career journeys that brought them to the Division. Learn the backstory of managing Hawaiʻi state parks and the significant community partnerships that help protect our precious cultural sites.

Transcript

Hawai'i Conservation Kuleana Episode 2 - State Parks

[Music]

 Dan: Aloha. Welcome to Hawaii conservation. Kuleana, brought to you by the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources. I'm Dan Dennison.

Patti: And I'm Patti Jette. We're here to explore conservation issues from land to sea with expert insights and stories from the field.

[Music]

Curt Cottrell: At the end of the day, I look at what we've been able to improve, and that feels really good. It feels really good to go we made that park unit better.

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Dan: Today we're talking about Hawaii's fabulous state parks with Division of State Parks administrator Curt Cottrell and Assistant Administrator Alan Carpenter, we'd like to really just start learning more about you so the audience gets a sense of who you are and where you've been and what you've done. So Curt, let's start with you. Tell us about your background, your ohana, and your early life and what brought you to Hawaiʻi in the first place. 

Curt: Okay, that's about a two hour discussion, so I'll try to squeeze it down. So in ʻ83 when I graduated, I my girlfriend at the time, and I did a planned a one month backpacking trip here in Hawaiʻi, primarily to go do the Kalalau Trail. Did a side trip on Maui, hiked into Haleakala, where my girlfriend sprained her ankle, and through weird circumstance, the Park Service was there. They had a helicopter. They air lifted her out. I ran back out, and we took a side trip to Hana for her ankle to recover, where I met a gentleman who offered us a job taking care of his ranch. That triggered me living in Hana for about four years, and in Hana, I was introduced to Hawaiian culture on a very fundamental level. In the ʻ80s, Hana was still a real small, sleepy town. I did construction with local Hana stone masons and was taught how to build dry stack stone walls for the Hana Hotel. Learned how to paddle waʻa or canoe, and was gifted with an incredible experience on the anniversary of Mitchell and Helm’s departure from from the planet with their Kahoolawe protests. A group of us paddled a canoe under the guidance of Parley Kanakaʻole from Hana to Makena, took us all day, and I didn't realize how significant the celebration was going to be, because the next day, we went out in several koa canoes, threw lei into the ocean and essentially commemorated Mitchell and Helm’s disappearance 10 years earlier. Anyway, that was my my foundation in the state, and I was very lucky that I got that. Other things happened, I ended up in Makawao, you know, doing, doing landscaping, and I got a job at the state legislature from a friend in Maui. Got a job working for Mark Andrews. And since I used to live in Makawao, which was his district, I was finally able to break the cycle of outdoor manual labor and apply my degree. Finally, you know, at the state legislature, and it was perfect, because his committee was planning energy and environmental protection, so all the skill sets I had in college that were kind of atrophying, I got to apply. And while at the legislature, I was introduced to varieties of state government, and at the time, met Mike Buck, who was the head of the Division of Forestry and Wildlife, who then offered me a position running the Oahu Nā Ala Hele trail and access program. Was a mixture of being back out in the field doing trail work with volunteers and crew and budgets and environmental assessments, etc, etc. Then I became the statewide Nā Ala Hele program manager and learned about how to protect and take care of ancient Hawaiian trails, particularly on the Big Island. And then right about the time of Obama, so around during the recession, 2008-9, I applied for and became the assistant administrator for state parks. And then in 2015 when Dan Quinn retired, I was able to apply for and become the administrator. So my career path is very circuitous and incremental, but it follows, in hindsight, a pretty distinct pattern, and I just kept able to just hang on with my skill sets to get to the next level. But I do want to end it all with it's a gift and quite a privilege and honor to be in charge of resources such as Nā Pali Coast State Wilderness Park that initially brought me here in 1983 and not a day goes by when I don't think of that and realize just how fortunate and it's very humbling to be in this position.

Dan: Alan Carpenter, I know your background is as rich, but somewhat different than Curt's 

Alan: same, but different.Wait, that's the podcast is over, right? 

Dan:Yes, we're done, yeah. (laughing)

Alan: So, yeah, I guess you could, you could look across this table and ask yourself, well, how did these two California kids end up running the state park system in Hawaii? So yeah, my story is same, but different, born in born and raised in Oakland, California. I always tell people you know, I'm a parks guy, so my earliest memories are, on the one hand, living in an abusive household with an abusive father, and camping in state and national parks, right? And so, you know, it's the memories that stand out are the traumatic ones and the ones that are really, you know, powerful and good. And so, you know, I think about this sometimes. And you know, I was a poor kid from Oakland. This, of course, led to my parents were divorced when I was five. And the true silver lining to that was that both sides of my family camped every year, so I got to go twice to everywhere they camped. Yeah, so my early life experiences, I'm a city kid, but I was surrounded by wilderness, and my family had a tradition of camping in Yosemite since long before I was born, I went to Sequoia School, which was right at the top of my street. And in front of the school were these two 50 foot tall sequoia trees. And again, when something wasn't right at home, I would go and I would climb into the top of these trees and and just sit up there and ponder life. So the wilderness was kind of, you know, still found within the city. And my front yard also had a a giant sequoia tree planted by my great grandfather. So, you know, that was, that was my early life experiences. And I ended up, you know, going through Oakland public schools, ended up at University of California, Berkeley for college. So I stayed close to home, was pre-med for all of one semester, until I took chemistry and realized I didn't want to be pre-med anymore. Wound my way through this system for six and a half years. And in the end, it turns out that, you know, sort of archeology and anthropology chose me because I didn't know what major I was going to be, but by the end, I had fulfilled all the requirements to be to get an anthropology degree. And in my my final year at Berkeley was also the first year of really influential professor, Pat Kirch, who basically wrote the book on Hawaiian archeology. You know, his message to us was, you know, hey, go out, go out and try things in the Pacific. And that is exactly what I did. I came out and I got a job with the Bishop Museum right after college as an archeologist, worked on one terrible project, which was the H3 which was, we were like thrown into this, you know, valley for a controversial freeway project, 100% you know, mainland transplant crews working in isolation. But that led to a couple of phenomenal projects. I got to work on southwest Molokaʻi, full local crew in all ways. And they were our they were our field guys, and I somehow ended up the supervisor of, you know, this hardcore group of of Hawaiians and locals. The next project I worked on was on Lānaʻi Kaunolu, which is a phenomenal Hawaiian Village on the south southwest coast again, local crews working with us, a great introduction to just- that's where I learned to spear fish. And we would map sites all day and then hop off the cliff into the water after the at the end of the day, and, you know, fish still dark, drive home and pick pineapples on the way. You know, it was, we were there for the last pineapple harvest in the transition of Lānaʻi from one tiny Hotel Lānaʻi to the two massive hotels that's that are still there today. So a nice time of transition. While I was on Lānaʻi the this job was advertised for the state parks archeologist position, and I applied for it, and thankfully interviewed well and got it. And really, that has made all the difference, because I, when I came over to Hawaii, you know, I figured I was just coming over for the summer to get a little experience, and I'm still waiting for the season to change, you know, still summer. And that introduction to get me into the park system, for a kid who considers themselves a parks guy, that was, that was my dream job. And so I've been with Parks my entire career, basically 33 years now, the vast majority of it was as an archeologist. And so I like to tell people I know the parks from the ground down, and I had other opportunities, but I didn't pursue them because I loved being that field guy like Curt talking about Nā Pali. I've spent a year's worth of nights on Nā Pali, right, being paid. I mean, what an amazing journey that is, right, eventually, you know, I went back to school, I got a Master's in Public Administration deliberately, you know, because I knew I wanted to be somewhere and move this division forward down the road. And it took a while, you know, and that was, that was, that was like seven years in, and I think I eventually took a promotion 20 years in, to a planner, did that for a brief period of time, and then somehow had a bit of a meteoric rise up to this deputy director position, which is where I am today, working with this guy to try to make things better.

Dan: Great. And we'll talk more about that shortly.

Patti Absolutely so. Yeah, the next question is for you both, but we'll start with you. Curt, what, what exactly is the division responsible for? What is, what is the Division of State Parks managing? What kind of assets? 

Curt: That's a really good question. We have a really diverse portfolio of both cultural and natural resource assets, very different from the continental park directors that you know we've met with and spoke with. We're very unique, as we all know, here in Hawaiʻi, primarily, you know, we have like, 30,000 acres of park responsibility, and we have what I've said, we probably have what is like the prime filet of the best, both scenic and cultural resources. You know, in the state, our charge ranges from moving from Kauaʻi, where we have our most acreage with the Nā Pali Coast state Wilderness Park, and as I mentioned, the Kalalau Trail, which is a global bucket list for serious backpackers from all over the planet. But in addition to those iconic natural resources, we're sitting on what are considered the most valued and iconic Hawaiian cultural resources as well. And so our, we're not just recreation. Like a lot of the park directors and the park systems on the mainland, they have endemic Native American reservations and interests in some of their park units, but not to the degree we have where, you know, we have Iolani Palace, the only palace in the United States that you know, hosted our monarchy until the overthrow. And we have the Royal Mausoleum State Monument, where virtually most of our monarchs are entombed. Right? Those are incredibly humbling kuleana pieces for us to take, to take care of. And then, you know, the more the iconic Diamond Head, which is an image that is global and burnt into the cortex of everyone knows, you know when they see that that profile, you know, you know what that is, our resources, like on on the Big Island. You know, west side is highly sought after beaches and cultural resources, and Alan can speak better on on the you know, those assets. But in addition to the features we manage that are complex and diverse, you know, people, we are the tip of the spear for a lot of the attractions for the Hawaiʻi visitor industry. So, you know, for us, in addition to these incredible assets that we manage, we primarily are dealing with managing the flow of humans into them and managing large amounts of people, and, you know, trying to protect the resources while also enhancing everyone's experience, and of late, which we can get into later, how we're trying to recalibrate that to reduce visitation in some of these big parks, so that our local residents also get a piece of the pie as well, because they've been shut out, you know, for so long. But Alan can, can amplify, you know, the diversity of our resources as well.

Patti: Yeah, tell us a little bit more Alan and and more about the kuleana of protecting these resources.

Alan: Sure. So Curt did a really good job of giving you the overview. And I agree. We have the, what we call we have, like the haves and the have not parks, right? And we have the Nā Pali’s and Diamond Heads. Nā Pali is a place that is, you know, it's a view from the air, by helicopter, by boat tours that go by and people who traverse it daily. That's a big ticket park. It's known as a scenic place, but honestly, and you see this sort of mantle of trees and green covering it. Underneath all of that is this tremendous cultural landscape that not many people get a feel for, even though they're walking over and through it all the time, kind of blows you away. We have some areas that were set aside specifically for their cultural values. As Curt alluded to, I think of a place like Keolonahihi, Keākealaniwahine which is right in the heart of Kona, right on Aliʻi drive, split by Aliʻi drive, one of the most important cultural complexes in the state, chiefly residents, female chief, really important story. We don't know how to allow people in there,it's so sensitive, right? So it's, it's, it's effectively not open. We have a few places like that, kind of hiding here and there that are there. They're in our purview, but they're, they're so sensitive and so critical to protect. It's a real challenge to find a way to actually teach people about them, right? You kind of got to keep people out to protect it. Or, you know, we work with lineal descendants and people to tell the stories in unique ways. But I do hope that we can get the folks from those places on the land working with us, right, and that's the best way to manage these places, right is working with the folks who they mean the most to. Another really critical thing about our parks. And this goes back to early in my career, when I first started as an archeologist, I had a unique friendship with. Edward Halealoha Ayau, who is he was the head of the state burials program at the time, and so we already knew each other through another mutual interest. We were friends, and so that was among my early forays into being trusted to participate in Hawaiian culture. He was the burials program specialist. He circumnavigated the globe, working with institutions, museums all over the world to bring back iwi kupuna, Hawaiian skeletal remains, that have been taken long ago by scientists and museums and collectors and bringing them back. And because parks are protected in perpetuity, if there was no known precise provenance for these places, for the remains, we would accept them. And so we have throughout our park system, a number of what we call reinterments, right, which is bringing these iwi back to the places, putting them at permanent rest, taking them off of the shelves of institutions and back into the ʻāina, where they belong and where they came from. So that's another kuleana that we have, which is protecting these, these things that no one should ever see and that should remain protected and even secret, right? And that's another really critical balance, right, that our places are revered and known as traditional cultural spaces, and they are the appropriate place to have these things happen. And, yeah, that's another, another humbling aspect of what we do. 

Dan: Let's go back to the Nā Pali Coast State Wilderness Park for a moment. At the time of this recording, you have just reopened the Kalalau Trail, or sections of the Kalalau Trail due to a unprecedented outbreak of norovirus, or the cruise ship virus, as they call it. From a communication standpoint, we were deeply involved in, you know, messaging that and all, and thanks to the help that State Parks gave us. But what lessons did you as State Parks administrators, learn from from that health crisis, for lack of a better word, that that may be applied to future management of the Nā Pali Coast State Wilderness Park in future?

Curt: Well, I have an honorary degree in epidemiology now, as a result of that event, I learned a lot, very quickly about the norovirus. But in terms of lessons learned, what we have learned is that humans transport this virus, right? So it wasn't endemic to Kalalau or our campground, somebody came in that had it. There's various means of transmission, either through our composting toilet units or in this case, the wet cave on the other side of the beach was tested by DOH, and we determined it had traces of the norovirus. We did a huge cleanup, just it was good time to do it anyway, because we closed, we got everybody out. I know there were over 50 cases, I think, of people that recorded had the symptoms of it, and we cleaned, painted, sanitized, but we learned it wasn't our management or the condition of our features that created the outbreak. It was transmitted through touch and either food transmission, water transmission, but it was a good wake up call, you know, in terms of being prepared and aware of, like, how do you respond in the future, you know, to something like this? And when I went to the National Association of State Park directors meeting early September in Alabama, I brought this up with the other park directors. And nobody else had, they hadn't dealt with this, which was surprising, you know, to me, they'd had, you know, giardia and, you know, standard things like you have on the mainland. So this was an isolated, odd case. And what I found kind of really fascinating is 30-40 years ago, when we had the huge population in Kalalau where sanitary conditions were nonexistent, none of this happened. And now that we have it, you know, managed and cleaned up, and you know, a lot less of the squatters are in there. This thing broke out. So I think moving forward, it's it's just, we're going to up our game a bit on the management of the composters, because our budget is better now, we can afford more helicopter trips, because, unfortunately, 11 miles in the only way to get the human waste out, because the composters, due to a variety of conditions, don't work the way they're supposed to. Our crew has to shovel it into barrels and fly it in helicopters to take it to a tertiary treatment plant, you know, over on Kauaʻi. So, and I did hear that Maui had, there was some, some folks that had symptoms of norovirus, and so was it a cruise ship? You know, who knows? But that's, that's what we learned. You know, moving forward, it was an anomaly, though, definitely.

Dan: So Alan, any other continuing issues that you're dealing with currently, that that you can think of?

Alan: I think Curt, Curt said it well, what I hope this leads to is the norovirus outbreak. Definitely, you know, it came in from a person, but it exposed our sort of poor maintenance regime. And I hope it will change that moving forward, right? And so one of the things I've been saying in terms of how we manage is that we're very reactionary, right? And that's a function of having a really understaffed, underfunded division, although that is we're currently on a great upward trend that way, funding wise, not so much staffing wise. But it would be nice if we could take a lesson like this, create a schedule so that we don't ever if something is like this happens again, and it probably will. The they're not going to point the finger and say it's because of your toilets, because of your lack of maintenance, right? That's something that norovirus or no norovirus, we should do better, yeah? And, you know, we should have trail crews that work that trail and not have to wait for someone to post something on social media telling us there's a dangerous spot, yeah? And then we fly in to fix it, yeah, right. We should be fixing things before they're broken, 

Curt: Yeah, but, but to point out, even if we had daily cleaning or weekly cleaning of those composters, the surface transmission even on, because it happens in cruise ships which have spotless, you know, bathrooms, right, it still would have transmitted, but, Alan brings up a good point, and we are using it as leverage to incentivize our crews because we have the budget going. Here's what we learned. So let's take away variables, at least we can take the fact that our maintenance is not contributory, that it would be some other, you know, outside vector that brings it in. So, you know, I'm really fond of making lemonade out of lemons, and on my door, I have the kanji for crisis and opportunity, and I firmly believe and Alan nailed it. We're very reactionary. We're getting better at reacting quicker because we're just nimble now. But that was a good lesson, you know, and we exported it statewide to all of our managers in terms of how we look at managing our comfort stations. 

Dan: Just to give a little bit of contextual credit, state parks, along with Division of Conservation Resources Enforcement, for really, the past decade, have put a lot of focus and attention on call allow and the Nā Pali Coast state Wilderness Park, which has resulted, and I've been there, as you know, a number of times, has resulted in much less trash, fewer squatters, and so despite what happened with norovirus, there have been some significant improvements in that park over the past decade. 

Curt: That was a huge commitment, and I'm very fortunate, Alan and I, our management goals are in almost total alignment. You know, moving forward, as you've seen, Dan, it's way better than it used to be. It's not perfect, and our goal, both Alan and I agree, we need permanent staff on site, with sat phones, with direct communication with law enforcement. And if we can muster up and get you know, staffing that can do that, that will completely crack that code, because if we can get enforcement and citations on a frequent basis, social media will now become our friend, and word will get out, and it will be managed as a true Wilderness Park worthy of its global reputation. 

Patti: So speaking a little bit about crisis and opportunity, you alluded to this a little bit before, where we have all these visitors coming from really all over the world. Some have no awareness of the unique culture here. Some do. And then, at the same time, state parks serves our local residents. Tell me about the partnerships that you have been able to form with some local groups to manage some of those really popular toured sites. 

Alan: Perfect question and a great segue from what we just discussed relating to Nā Pali, because part of the success for Nā Pali is what we have done at Hāʻena, which is the gateway. And at Hāʻena, we have partnered with community group Hui Makaʻāinana o Makana who has been working with us for going on three decades now, most of it as volunteers, right? And long ago, they endeavored to create an organization that is built from the traditional families of Hāʻena and lineal descendants, and they decided that they would rather work with us than against us, and they knew we needed help managing and they have become those partners. More recently, they have transitioned from a full volunteer organization or curator stewardship group to co-managers, and so we now have staffing, and I would say, guardians at the gate, educators. They're restoring both the cultural landscape at Hāʻena, as well as managing the visitors for us. And this is part of our new model, right, which is, it's kind of residents first. I mean, we still are allowing a significant number of people there, but we cut it down from 2-3,000 visitors a day, and set an upper limit of 900 and part of this model, which now requires reservations at our high use parks, advanced reservations only for non-residents. And so they fund this model through parking and entry fees. Residents are free. They can come and go as they please, and we always hold back a commensurate amount of space to meet local demand. So locals who felt pushed out of their cherished spaces for years because the hordes of tourists, we’re now inviting them back in through these management models. And this isn't the only one, but this is the only one that's really run by the community. I mean, basically their mantra is community led, government supported, right? It is a true partnership, and we've exported that model, but not so much the community part, just the management of visitors part, yeah. And so that's our that's our new thing. And it's, it's not only made the the user experience much better for visitors and locals, it's put $15 million a year into our coffers because of the fee structure. 

Curt: And to amplify what Alan said, we have about 30 volunteer agreements throughout the state, ranging from like 808 Cleanups, just on the ground specific park areas, to things like Hāʻena or we have another partner so we can move the discussion away from Kauaʻi, because we have other partners throughout the state. So Hui Aloha Kiholo is another version of a success story of a very collaborative partnership. And I would say they probably do more for us than we do for them. They manage Kiholo State Park Reserve. They have staff on site. You know, we run the camping website, but due to their outreach and their their commitment to that park unit, that park is very well managed. We closed it for about eight weeks several years ago, way before the pandemic, because we had a huge, huge groups of people camping, kind of illegally, kind of a smaller version of Kalalau and we shut it down, got everybody out and that partnership with Hui Aloha Kiholo, they remodified our campsites and put in stone barbecue, kind of grills that they did, made by hand that are like awesome, helped clean up all the campsites, designate The campsites Kiholo now is a gem of management. The beach is recovering, and we're very engaged, and we want to replicate those kind of relationships. So I'll segue over to the other other side from Hāʻena is Kealakekua Bay State Historic Park. I'm working with the KapuKapu group, who were set up and helped funded our Community Action Plan with The Nature Conservancy, in addition to our recently completed master plan, EIS working with Hoala Kealakekua, and I'm trying to bring up their capacity to replicate what happened at Hāʻena and I've even had like Chipper Wickman from ʻOhana meet with them to show them the recipe. Now, Kealakekua is way different. Hāʻena, single point of entry control is much easier. Kealakekua there's many. It's porous, so that man- and it's an ocean that needs management too - boats and kayaks and whatnot, but incredible cultural landscape. You know, we have heiau. We have the place where Captain Cook was went make, right? We have the Kaʻawaloa Trail, which is a historic, very historic trail. It's a marine life conservation district. So it embodies, I think, all of the things that represent state parks under culture and recreation, where you have incredibly pristine snorkeling, marine life conservation district right next to one of the most historical pikos in the state. You know, where Captain Cook was was slain, and most importantly, it's still a living cultural village, right? There's lineal descendants there that can trace their genealogy back. So history didn't stop. It's still going on there, right? And so we're hoping, from what we learned at Hāʻena, to migrate these these concepts, to the communities. Because we can't do it alone, and we're in a position now where we can kind of share that income and empower the communities, where, if we don't have staff and management, they can do it and but it costs money. And one last thing, for these models to work, particularly with reservations, you got to have somebody at the front door. Otherwise it's not going to work. You can't just stand up reservation systems. The visitor will learn how to game the system. So it's very important that we either have private sector staff or community staff, monitoring and making sure that people have paid and they, you know, they have their reservation slot and to let the local residents through and go, Oh, okay, you're local. Go here, here's your spot, you know.  

Dan: We've talked a lot about the challenges that the Division of State Parks. They. Is Alan for you. Is there anything that really invigorates you about what DSP is doing? And I would suggest that probably state parks, in terms of public facing for the 11 divisions in DLNR, is probably the most obvious, because it touches so many people.

Alan: Well, I think you know, I speak for both of us. We love what we do. We love the challenges, I do. I was thinking about this. We recently went to the National Association of State Parks directors conference in Alabama, and I never, ever thought I'd be saying this. But we need to be a little bit more like Alabama. They have this. So they have 21 state parks, about 45,000 acres. We have 54 state parks, 35,000 acres. We're not that different in terms of the amount of land that we manage. They have at maximum employment during high season, 800 park employees to manage that. Their budget is about the same as ours. Like $42 million operating budget. They put it all into people. We have about 100 employees right now, and they have half as many visitors as we do, right and so they've got eight times as many people to manage half as many visitors. That was, that was eye opening. And you know, we can't just let people roll into our spaces unguided, unescorted. And, you know, would it be so bad if, if a goal is to have every time someone rolls in, they they see someone in uniform who can answer a question and guide them and help them? I took some inspiration from a state that I really thought, you know, yeah, was not going to be something that I would be thinking about, but that is something to aspire to, right? Yeah, their environmental protection, I think, exceeds ours. I keep saying, you know, we got nowhere to go but up. We're on the rise. I think we're, we're on the, on the cusp of being able to grow appropriately, to better manage the spaces we're in, because they're pretty phenomenal. 

Curt: Yes, so to segue from that, yeah, I made a list of some of the challenges. And ironically, we are at the height of an operating budget in the history of State Parks that was primarily driven by our fee increase in 2020 during the pandemic, when we shut for nine months, we decided to reboot our fee system during that hiatus, and tourism came back quicker than we thought, and now we're in a position where you can start addressing over a $40 million backlog of repair and maintenance. One of my goals as the administrator, which I've told the legislature, is I want to allow state parks to be more self-funded on our repair and maintenance and rely less and less over time on asking them for capital improvement project funding and our our salary budget was stabilized during the pandemic. We had 48 positions that were special funded, and we had no income coming in, and I was looking at layoffs, and the legislature stepped up, and they converted those positions to general fund. So now our budget on the salary side is completely stable. It's all general funded. And we also get a couple mill for basic reoccurring utilities and fuel everything else, though, as time goes by, we can take care of ourselves, you know, with our funding. But the flip side of that, which is really ironic, after years of advocating for more funds for state parks, like trying to get the transit accommodation tax, et cetera, et cetera, retention and recruitment of staffing is a growing challenge, and when we met with the park directors on the continent, they have the same problem. For us moving forward, in addition to the recruitment and the retention, it's not just the type of people that we can try to recruit and get to and try to get better recruitment notices out there, instead of the conventional ways. Our pay scales are dismal, and unless we change and up our game on on paying our employees, as time goes by, it's going to be harder and harder for us to keep, keep people. The other challenge that this we're facing at our state parks is our workforce. We have an aging workforce, and so there's a lot of people that are cycling out. I'm going to be losing one of my best park superintendents on Maui to retirement, and I have several admin staff that could retire at any time. So we have big pukas looming, and Alan and I have had discussions on succession, right? How do we do that? So that that's probably our biggest challenge right now, at the height of being able to get things done. Now, we're running out of people. 

Dan: And good luck with succession planning. Having come from the private sector for 40 years, that was really ingrained into our mentality. I have not seen that in government succession planning really. Just so bully for you guys to really be thinking to that. 

Alan: Well, we could both walk out the door at any minute. 

Dan: That's right. Yeah, but you're too young.  

Curt: Yeah, I just got Medicare, right? So, okay, well!

Patti: Let's not start counting those days. So the last question that we're asking everyone, and we've, we've covered a lot about your experience, your education and your passion. What draws you to the Hawaii DLNR?

Curt: Oh, well, you know, as Alan said, we both love what we do, and we go to our park units. I take my kids. I have been a park person and a trail person virtually my entire life. And so being able to now take my avocation and my passion and convert it into improvement of resources that I cherish. That's what gets me out the door every day. But there's plenty of humbug that comes with this. At our level, we pretty much deal with the triage and the problems, right? But that's what you got to do in order to keep, as I say, the you know, we're paddling a canoe right now. I'm steering a canoe. I'm short several paddlers. The canvas is ripped, but we got money now to fix it, but we're still bailing water that's coming in faster than we can get it out, and we're kind of trying to re rig the canoe while we paddle it at the same time, but the public on the sidelines is going, why are you not going faster, right? And that's kind of the metaphor that that I picture as we navigate through this, these challenging times of people and whatnot. But it is an incredible opportunity and privilege to be in this position. And I don't take it lightly. I know Alan, that's where we're like, we feel the same way, you know? And so a lot of the trivial things that we deal with, with personnel all that, you know, it's erosive on, on your spirit, but at the end of the day, I look at what we've been able to improve, and that feels really good. It feels really good to go we made that park unit better. 

Alan: Yeah, yeah. So for me, I love the overall mission of DLNR, and it's, I'm, I say I'm a parks guy, but I also, you know, I'm a nature guy. I like, I like solitude. I like getting outside, much like climbing into that sequoia tree when I was a child. I enjoy being alone in in nature. And our places give us those opportunities, right? So I'm a park user. I've had the privilege of, you know, crawling inside of lava tubes with blind insects that are only found there, or being out at Kaena Point, and watching the albatross raise their chicks, or the sheerwaters come out of their nests at dusk. You know, those experiences I also cherish. And so it's much broader than managing the people. It's knowing that those kinds of places are going to be here after I am and, you know, I want that for my children. I want that for visitors. It's the whole package. DLNR has a massive mission. We have a lot of people who are really trying to, you know, combat the hordes of people and protect against those impacts. But man, there are some special places here, and if you know how to find them, and you can get there all by yourself. It's just a, it's a it's a profound thing. 

Dan: As we wrap up, I'd be remiss in not giving credit to Division of State Parks for enabling the technology that we're using today to start producing our podcast. So we really appreciate your financial contribution to this effort. If people could see us, we have four microphones and a board and headphones and everything, and without you guys, we couldn't have done it. So thanks. Curt Cottrell and Alan Carpenter from the Division of State Parks.

Patti: Mahalo, to you both. 

Curt and Alan: Mahalo, mahalo.

Patti: Mahalo to our listeners for joining us today. Next time, we'll talk to Megan Statts and Todd Tashima from the Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation. For now, I'm Patti Jette.

Dan: And I'm Dan Dennison. Our theme music is provided by Kawika Kahiapo. Thanks for tuning in to Hawaʻii Conservation Kuleana. A hui hou. 

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