 Aloha and welcome to Eyes on Hawaii. On the Think Tech Hawaii, I'm your host, Carol Cox. Today my guests are Mr. Micah Don, founder and Mr. Jonathan Don, director of Protectors of Paradise. We will be talking about their organization's efforts to educate and raise the awareness of people to help combat illegal dumping, the destruction of natural and cultural sites, and the protection of plants and animals here in Hawaii. So we've talked so many times about the environment here on the eyes of Hawaii, but these two gentlemen that Mr. Don the Dones, I'll call them the Dome Brothers, Jonathan and Micah, the efforts that they do, I've been out there trekking that same area, the west side. So I call it the Renaissance, west side Renaissance. And without further ado and prolonging this, I'm just happy to have them to come on the show on Eyes on Hawaii here at Think Tech and talk about what's going on on the west side. We'll call it why and I or many areas, but I'm glad that you're doing it. And I can't again to tell you, I think there's others will join you because the way you do it now, you're reaching out to people and it's going to be a hard road because people come from outside dumping and whatever, but if we can get them educated. So Micah, thank you Jonathan, thank you for having us on the show. All right, well tell us about Protectors of Paradise first of all and how long you've been in and are you a non-profit and how do people contact you? Let's not lose that before we go and get in deep into this. Well, first of us, thank you for having us on the show. My name is Micah Doan Aloha, I'm the founder of Protectors of Paradise. We are in fact a 501C3 non-profit organization and just a little bit of a brief history about our program. We started maybe about a year ago and we noticed that I guess during the increase of visitors, it was kind of like the social media age as more and more exposure of the leeward coast was being put up there on social media, more and more visitors were coming down and we noticed an increase in abusive behavior, whether it be trash being left behind by beach goers, illegal dumping, people harassing wildlife. We've just seen a major increase in the past I'd say five years or so and we'd go down and whenever we'd visit the area, sometimes we'd talk to the one parkkeeper for that area and it was kind of bad for him in the sense that on Monday mornings after the weekend, it was like he was just buried in trash and debris. So we decided to maybe get some watermen together, some people from that frequent the area and that cherish the area to come together and form a community group to do our part to assist in what we can and whether to be hands-on or whether to just raise awareness and get the word out that you know we have a beautiful coastline on just one of the many beautiful coastlines of Hawaii and because there's not so much attention and focus on you know from the authorities in the state it's kind of really up to us as a community and people to try to police ourselves and just do what is right to take care of the land and its resources. We've been just trying to make efforts in doing that. Micah? Oh, Johnathan? Yeah, yeah. Micah explained a lot and we just you know it's growing up from our young childhood days we went to Makua a lot with because of our family ties there we've you know filled a deep connection to Makua and also just the whole West Side we enjoy going there and for the beauty of it so we just I guess over the years the trash has been potting up and so I mean it just takes away from you know the natural beauty that over there that it has so we just they make us that we're just trying to along with a lot of other you know community members on that side or wherever on the island just trying to do our part to give back you know to mother nature and just to just to continue you know keeping that restore on keeping the beauty and restoring it so that for the future generations are cakey and just so that they can continue to enjoy going on that side now this this place called we'll call it the West Side or the West Coast and some say the negative connotations but I think by far and many of the islands they call one island the Garden Islands of Valley Isles but I'm more intrigued and impressed by the wine I close than pretty much any place because even though it's towering mountains and Cathedral valleys and all of that geological times of informed and the sloughing it's still accessible to people for whereas you go to Hawaii Kai side it's steep cliffs and not as friendly not as usable so the people are more likely to go to be attracted to that and as we see now increasing tourism and some unchecked uncontrolled visitation people chasing the dolphins and it just seems like there's a flurry now the flood gates open and so when I see protectors of paradise I think you get it now you got it you're out there investing your time I know what that's like what are you getting from assistance from your legislators or do they recognize you or have they incorporated you or seek to help you or state agencies or city agencies well in terms of the state agencies I guess over the years since we put in you know along with just a cocoon help from a lot of other people that put in in the time and work at the state there's other DLNR and they have supporting Shona support you know giving us aid and support and help us in a lot of ways in terms of the legislature or you know it's we're trying out that that one takes some time you know there's just so many ongoing issues that you know we work with them and they work with us but it's just we're gonna have to it takes a little more patience and time and more communication I guess to do that yeah well Micah I see this as a no-brainer because we given the fact it's obvious that there's an impact it's obvious that there's illegal dumping burning of cars dumping of fluids it's clear so the city and the state should immediately recognize or an incorporate a befriend you as an entity yeah that participate not wait until you go and find your way to their doorstep because they do have certain grants and they have monies and it's their interests because they're the ones our government officials and legislators actually soliciting greater business and tourism and whatever so you should be in and I would vow for you because I know what big impact it is on practically any turnout and into the bushes alongside of roads potentially becomes an illegal dump site and we're talking about major dumping of materials and chemicals and paints and glass and batteries and tires I want to speak to I think you guys caught someone or someone reported a guy actively dumping tires yeah I believe there was a and there's a lot of controversy to that I believe the truck was stolen by an employee and it went and dumped a bunch of tires on the west side but I think that was handled with HPD and what not but that's just kind of a little indication of what goes what happens there regularly and um it's just because you know if you go from Kial down on to Cana Point there's no residential area there's no businesses or you know everything's just pretty much nature and that's what makes it so beautiful but the flip side of that is you have nobody monitoring the behavior and whatnot and we've been trying to put the pressure on different entities with the city and the state and we've been having a good working relationship with the state parks in the sense that they've been open to the feedback that we've been giving them and I honestly believe that they're trying to do what they can what makes it a tough situation I think is that an area and such as the leeward coast which is we joke about it in the water it's kind of being the last stand for the local people in the sense that on the island of Oahu it seems like the Hawaiian culture part of it is being kind of squashed out and to me it seems like the leeward side is that last little area left and so that's what kind of intrigued me to try to step up and maybe do what we can before it's too late because if people look back at what happened up in the North Shore with the surfing industry and the way that skyrocketed and now people were making money and you know off of it and now the North Shore out you know if you look at the beachfront in Pupukia the land all know there are you know big expensive homes and you know talking with other watermen in the water they've kind of talked about how they could see that possibly you know starting to happen down in the leeward coast and if we don't stand up and step up to hey say we're gonna take the responsibility to take care of the natural resources we have and in the end we might not have very much of a say or a voice you know in it and the hard part is when we've tried to contact our representatives on the basic needs we we haven't necessarily gotten the response to address those basic needs and there's a lot of people that I believe have good intentions to to better the area in the coastline but there are specific basic priorities that we feel that aren't being met so what we can ask people the more pressure you know the community members can put on you know the authorities the state our legislature to try to you know hear their voice as well maybe we you know might be able to get more response speaking of the culture and those things you have also concerns and you're trying to combat and and prevent the desecration of for example the cave at Makua and the upper cave at Makua and the trespassings can you both speak to that real quickly yeah so um we were actually working with the department of defense and HBD to try and figure out a way if we could you know monitor and enforce people that were trespassing on to you know federal property which is the federal jurisdiction and hiking up to the upper Makua cave which is known as the Ngawe cave and just that area from the cultural standpoint there's a lot of cultural artifacts you know I can specifically say where you know but you know just from folklore and history and Mo'olelo so it seems to me that it's just kind of peculiar that there's not more being done to try to protect that area people are going up there and it's to me it's simply for an Instagram shot for a social media shot because we'll watch people go up there and then come right back down I'm nobody's I haven't witnessed anybody going up there for any type of cultural um you know practice or whatnot we witness people graffiti up in the cave uh we've gone up there to clean graffiti and you know when we got in the cave it's crazy it's like nothing but spray paint in there and it's hard to imagine that hey this is you know a cultural site that you know a lot of times you see on the news somebody just created a culture site and everybody's getting all bent out of shape well you know these cultural areas are being disrespected on the daily and it's like it seems like only a few people are you know linking an eye to it well I I think it's really important that the city and the state state agencies do not let this just develop into an all-out uh free fall and that's what's been happening on there okay we're going to take a break hold that thought and we're going to come back uh Micah and Jonathan Dawn with Protectors of Paradise so we will take a break this is Eyes on Hawaii Think Tech Hawaii I'm your host Carol Cox we'll be right back this is Think Tech Hawaii raising public awareness nothing is making sense welcome back to Eyes on Hawaii on Think Tech Hawaii I'm your host Carol Cox my guests are Mr. Micah Done founder and Mr. Jonathan Done director of Protectors of Paradise we're talking about their organization's efforts to educate and raise the awareness of people to help combat illegal dumping the destruction of natural and cultural sites and the protection of plants and animals of Hawaii so again thank you for coming and then sharing because I've been over at Waianae it's a place dear to me I love it it's just that open country and I can't say that those are pyramids the poodles but boy they should allow you to dream when you're driving through there and seeing how beautiful and it's dry and then on the rainy season you see the eight and nine waterfalls coming down off of Mount Kala up in that area it's just stunning so anyway Micah you were telling us about contact how does one contact you or okay or participating in your cleanups and whatever thank you Carol so we are currently we're relatively kind of young groups so right now we're on Facebook and Instagram oh you can email us at protectors of paradise at yahoo.com and a contact number would be 808-469-7333 but we encourage everyone to come and check out our Facebook page and Instagram page to keep up to date on the current events and upcoming events such as cleanups or any type of outreach events we have so we're more than happy to have everyone come along. Jonathan? Yeah um you can just like you said contact us on the Facebook or Instagram and also you can contact my number is 388-3936 for any questions and information on ongoing projects that you know that we may be participating in or may be aware of you know so. Or just anyone that has any um projects or help that they need assistance with or um you know we're here to help to try to just reach out to community members if they're having a problem in their you know nick of the woods you know we've gone to places to help people remove you know rubbish from their house if they're going to get evicted um you know. Because it's likely that it will end up on the side of the road in the canyon so you're being proactive are you? Yeah um whatever we can do you know um there's a lot of good community members out there so as a figure you know the best way for everybody to get together you can move together as one army and get better results. Well again wine is the place for me I the afternoon the colors of the water when the they're backlit by the sunset I mean you see spectacular colors just that alone is is enough cause to preserve it but there's another thing that is troublesome the the harassment of marine mammals the monk seal the dolphins and they come to rest and all can you you have great concerns about that so can you talk to the public or the viewers out there what would you like them to do and not to do? I think basic information and education is the start you know because growing up and going down there and seeing the the spinner dolphins swimming every day you know we had no idea the dynamics of their behavior was going on we said wow there's dolphins out there beautiful but the the weird part about it there wasn't too many people swimming out there I remember the the first two groups that um used to go out on kayaks from the beach and whatnot but um you know as time went on and through the exposure of social media and now it was cool to get a shot to move with the dolphins I started to realize myself like wow there's a lot of people in the water with these dolphins now so I started to kind of read up more and do a little bit of research to see hey how could this affect the dolphins in a negative way um come to find out um that you know the Hawaiian spinner dolphins are one of the only nocturnal um dolphin species of dolphins and so they go offshore and feed at night and the reason why they come to Makua in particular um you know they're at different beaches resting during the daytime but Makua provides a big sandbar for them which allows them they kind of have a safe haven in which um that brightness of that sandbar allows them to see predators coming from a far away so um unless chirping water yeah a little calmer in those bays especially Makua and so you know the over the years the the number of tour boats have increased and you know these tour boats were dropping somewhere between 30 to 50 people right on dolphin pods sometimes you know and um with all that going on now there's also an increase of um people coming from shore to swim with the dolphins you know we wouldn't do in our outreach out there we get a lot of feedback from people like well if I don't go swim up to them and chase them or and it's not really um harassing them and um from what we understand and you know talking with different you know um people on the subject that according to the mmpa or the marine mammal protection act that um any any type of interaction that changes their normal behavior falls under harassment so if I go jump in the water and swim out in an area where I know the dolphins are going to swim through if one comes and checks me out you know I changed his behavior regardless if I think I did or not um I did and the more people can um make themselves aware of what they're actually doing um to these creatures um and you know realize that hey I have a choice that I can make and am I going to make you know the choice to go out there and neglect everything that um is being demonstrated to me or I'm going to just you know make the better choice and situations where we tell people where um like uh a child at night if you tell him hey let's play video games all night he might just do that you know but he won't be able to move and the next zombie the next day so when they go swim with the dolphin if a little baby dolphin comes and checks them out and they think they're playing with them yeah it might be playing with them but the fact is later on that night the dolphin has to go out you know and feed in deeper waters and feed and he has to worry about his fitness and his health and the mother is not getting the rest because they got to stay up all night and watch their kid because he's playing video game now their fitness is not up to far and just these boats traversing so frequently uh and so close the frequency that's given off the sound may have an impact of a mere disturbance so we need to be more considerate of that and and not and I think Noah should be a little more aggressive and and be more aggressive in posting signs and monitoring and walking and talking along the beaches and patrolling that area I know um there have been uh no uh office of law enforcement officers that have been frequent in the area more and um we're able to contact them if it's getting too crazy um they are actually I believe in the process of working on a um a distance rule in which it probably would be a 50-yard yeah well that's a recommendation and I think Noah needs to really grow up and strap on the the rules and start to prosecute people because yeah you see if you read their rules it's just says the general public thinks it's only it's 50 feet and or you'll get fine and arrested but the reality is that's just a recommendation yeah you you know you have to show so we shouldn't have to wait to that kind of yeah and this proliferation of boats and they they have increased but yeah another problem that I know that is very troublesome to you and you guys are working trying to prevent it and clean up is the burning of pallets along the beach yeah I believe in every pallet there's something around like 200 nails over 200 nails we're talking about 280 nails and what are they thinking I mean you you tonight you go and you pilot you know I mean to be honest it's something that you know we've you know we've done in the past of growing up and young and a lot of people have done it in which it's it's a if you're running to the beach real quick and you need to just go get some firewood there's places that have now you do know what that was a confession so you're going to environmental heaven I wish the rest would come so it's just a lot of times like people are then after you know it's I mean it seemed like common sense you know but then you know you realize after you shoot these if we ain't picking up these nails fine then you know what's happening then so before because there wasn't so many people doing it you know one pallet fire here or there I don't think I'm too much people you know made noise about it but now you know I went down there a few months ago on the weekend and it was like a scene from Mad Max road wars where the entire beach is just loads of fires and you got eight eight to ten pallets in a fire and so like the next day you know we do our cleanup to come walk on the air and you can feel the warmth you know dig it up there's not just pallets in there there's a lighter fluid cans there's rubbish there's people are just all that gets into the tide pool yeah yeah just notice a difference I mean from the sand I mean that that line you can see the difference between the white line and there's that charcoal gray it's just extending closer to the ocean you know and so leaching and see last winter there was a huge swell that came in and well eight away a lot of the sand at Makua beach and eight away the sand but was still left was the remnants of a fire and it was just all these rusted nails just now come back over time it stuck together it's like one well before we we gotta be closing here shortly but uh regarding your organization and also are any events coming up soon or participation or or would you you any equipment use asking for donations or some kind of flatbed truck the haul trash or what anything like that yeah I mean any any type of donation or help is more than appreciated you know for the whole first year we were you know operating we've been using our own personal vehicles but as anybody knows you know with this wear and tear and it's tough to use your own car to haul away trash and hazardous materials you need a big car out there you know flatbed would definitely help in the means to try to find you know different types of donations are fun to try to get these types of supplies but everything we've gotten so far trash bags we got from the states but um chainsaws uh gloves um you know whatever we we've tried to acquire our own so any types of any type of help is more than what message would you like to leave the public that's watching this today real quick any any messages please the message that I guess I would leave here is that um you know we live in a very very beautiful state and unfortunately there are certain areas that they are just aren't priorities for um the state or whatever authorities to take care of and manage and so sometimes we have to just take it upon ourselves and um regardless of what anyone else is doing to just take the initiative on ourselves to be responsible and realize that hey I I'm coming to these areas I'm having a beautiful connection a relationship with him it has nothing to do with the state this person that person but just between me and nature I know how I should be treated and if I could just she takes care of us we should take care of her treat the whole island as a sacred you know sacred area if you see somebody doing something bad I mean you don't have to get into a fight with them but you could you know we'd have to learn along the way sometimes you can go up with aloha and tell them hey maybe we can try to I can help you do this in a different way or whatnot but we we got to work together I think as a community because that's the only way to get any anywhere well I really appreciate you guys coming in and thank you so much we haven't even touched the surface here but I definitely I'll be willing to help as always and we'll keep chugging along so thank you guys thank you if you're interested in getting on our mailing list go to think tech Hawaii calm thank you for joining me today on eyes on Hawaii on think tech Hawaii thanks to jay fidel our executive director and our technical support team robert mclean race engeland and nick section I'll see you again in two weeks I'm carol cox aloha