Dropping out of the federal program has not hampered efforts to protect the islands’ marine species, including monk seals, state and federal agents say. For years, the state officers who enforce Hawaii’s conservation laws boosted their patrols and resources under a special partnership that helped their federal counterparts, who are thinly stretched across the islands, enforce their own laws on native species. That “joint enforcement agreement,” or JEA, sent hundreds of thousands of federal dollars to the state’s Division of Conservation and Resources Enforcement each year to help the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association better protect monk seals, spinner dolphins, sea turtles and other marine animals.
However, DOCARE withdrew from the JEA last year because the monthly reporting requirements for those federal dollars had grown too cumbersome. In September, “we decided to take a time-out from the program so that we can recalibrate our process to make sure we can meet the reporting requirements under the agreements,” DOCARE Enforcement Chief Jason Redulla said last week. Now, DOCARE wants back in.
The agency intends to apply by a deadline later this month to rejoin the JEA, Redulla said. If accepted, it would probably resume sometime in August or September, he added. Both Redulla and local agents with NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement described the JEA as a valuable tool to bolster the manpower and equipment used to enforce the Marine Mammal Protection Act.