Management

In this section of the park website, you can learn more about how the National Park Service takes care of Kaloko-Honokōhau for the benefit and enjoyment of the people. Explore the Laws & Policies that govern park management. Find out how basic planning and management decisions are made in the Foundation Document. Discover how to get a Commercial Use Authorization or Special Use Permit. On this page, learn the significance of Kaloko-Honokōhau and how to contact Park Management with your comments and suggestions.

What Makes Kaloko-Honokōhau National Historical Park Significant?

• Ola i ka wai (water is life). Kaloko-Honokōhau National Historical Park preserves intact the historic site of a Hawaiian community sustained largely by groundwater. Without an underground flow of freshwater, the barren and harsh lava landscape would have been unsuitable for human settlement; yet hidden within the land flows this water of life. Water is the dynamic thread that continues to tie the environment and people together.
• Although small in size, Kaloko-Honokōhau National Historical Park contains an astonishing variety of rare, native ecosystems that support threatened, endangered, and candidate species, as well as myriad culturally significant species. From dryland forest, anchialine pools, brackish fishponds, natural wetlands, and coastal strand to coral reefs, the park offers a glimpse of Hawai‘i’s unique, and vanishing, natural diversity and abundance.
• He aliʻi ka ʻāina; he kauwā ke kanaka (The land is a chief; man is its servant). Kaloko-Honokōhau National Historical Park, a rare “cultural kīpuka,” connects practitioners, descendants, community, and visitors to the land and to each other.
• Designated a national historic landmark, Kaloko-Honokōhau National Historical Park features a rich abundance, variety, and concentration of cultural and historic resources in their natural setting that demonstrate a coastal Hawaiian settlement prior to and immediately after contact with Western civilization in 1778. These features illustrate Hawaiian culture and heritage, and vividly portray the traditional relationship between people and nature.
• Kaloko-Honokōhau National Historical Park was established for and remains committed to the preservation, interpretation, and perpetuation of traditional Native Hawaiian activities and culture. The park’s diverse resources represent a Hawaiian way of life and culture that continues to evolve, and uniquely contributes to our national heritage.
• Kaloko-Honokōhau National Historical Park is the only unit of the national park system with three distinct types of loko i‘a (two fishponds: a loko kuapā and a loko pu‘uone); and a loko ‘umeiki (fishtrap). The park’s three fishponds illustrate ingenious engineering, aquaculture techniques, and practices of the past and offer opportunities for Hawaiian aquaculture to thrive into the future.

Contact Park Management

We, the staff of Kaloko-Honokōhau National Historical Park, are dedicated to preserving and protecting this culturally significant site for the benefit and inspiration of all people. Please let us know how we can better protect the park and serve you. Tell us what you think we’re doing right too.

To contact Park Management, please visit the Contact Us page.