Audrey and I went to Kauai a few weeks to work on a story about Friday night football games and how an endangered species of birds has threatened a traditional and community way of life.
The story appeared all over the country and you can read it here or from here. The New York Times ran it on their web page but you have to sign up to see the story.
I won’t repeat what Audrey wrote about but I will mention something she did not. In my opinion, much of the community in Kauai seems split on how outsiders, namely mainlanders and haoles, have come to the Islands pushing their (righteous) ideas of what is good for the state with little regard to what the citizens of the state want. Yet, we surely can’t allow the peoples to just get whatever the majority wants. The birds are endangered and do need some protection from us; however, how far will environmentalist go to ensure we protect the earth from ourselves? Many would advocate such radical policies that we’d go back to the stone age so there has to be a balance. All in all, the County dropped the ball on not placing proper lighting into the existing stadium (the County can’t get a guarantee that the lights will be a solid solution so why spend the money on what might not work–and still be responsible for dead birds) but the county disregarded the feelings of the community.
You sometimes have to wonder who has the smaller brains, us or the birds…
VOTE.