The Nature Conservancy has bought 222 acres of land for wildlife preservation adjacent to Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park.
The parcel along Highway 11 is home to several native plants and animals, including the hoary bat.
The conservancy said it purchased the land from Hulu Lolo LLC for $330,000.
Above Highway 11, the land, known as Kahuku Iki, is surrounded by the 116,000-acre Kahuku unit of the national park.
The National Park Service has expressed a "strong interest" in eventually acquiring the property, the conservancy said.
According to the state Department of Business Economic Development and Tourism, an estimated 2 million visitors a year drive past Kahuku Iki from both the Hilo and Kona directions.
"This is a small but very strategic piece of property that could have easily become an agricultural subdivision or strip mall," Jody Kaulukukui, the conservancy’s director of land protection, said in a statement Tuesday. "But with the Conservancy purchase, ag subdivision, clearing and development, which are permissible on agriculturally zoned lands, are no longer a threat."
Native plants growing on the parcel include ohia, ulei, pukiawe, hoawa and aalii. The parcel also has native birds, such as the Hawaiian hawk and the honeycreepers known as apapane and amakihi.
"Acquiring this small parcel would provide the park with greater flexibility in providing a safe and scenic access to the Kahuku unit," said Volcanoes Park Superintendent Cindy Orlando.
She said the park would also explore working with the state to develop a parking area for a few cars off Old Mamalahoa Highway as a trail head to the 1868 lava flow and a rare native dryland forest.
The Nature Conservancy has a long history of cooperation with Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park. In 2003 the two organizations jointly purchased the 116,000-acre Kahuku Ranch as an addition to the park, which became its Kahuku unit. The purchase was the largest land transaction in Hawaii history and increased the size of the park by 50 percent.
Any future sale to the park service would be subject to available federal funding and is at least two to four years down the road, Kaulukukui said. For now the land will be managed as a conservancy preserve.
Because no conservation management has ever occurred on the land, portions of it are overrun by mouflon sheep and christmasberry, an invasive weed.
