Hawai I Volcanoes National Park Essay

President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill into law creating the thirteenth national park on August 1, 1916. Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, located on the Island of Hawai’i, 96 miles from Kailua-Kona and 30 miles from Hilo, two of the world’s most active volcanoes, Kilauea and Mauna Loa. The park is home to sixteen species of mammals, seventy seven species of birds, eleven different reptiles, four kinds of fish and 1,211 vascular plants; of those,twenty three vascular plants and six to fifteen of the native birds are endangered. The park covers over 333,000 acres and more land is added every day. In 1906 Lorrin Thurston began a campaign to make the Hawaiian volcanoes a public park. Thurstons efforts did not work until he started working with Dr. Thomas A. Jaggar in 1912. Together the two wrote editorials, collared politicians, and promoted the idea of making the volcanoes into a national park. Ten years later since Thurston had started working, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Country’s thirteenth national park into existence. Thurstons and Jaggars work had finally paid off. The Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park is located on the Island of Hawai’i, 96 miles from Kailua-Kona and 30 miles from Hilo. The park covers over 505 square miles, but the volcanoes are adding land to it everyday. In …show more content…
Some of the native birds living in this park are the Nene, Hawai’i Amakihi, and the Hawaiian Hawk. The Nene is the state of Hawaii’s state bird, it is also an endangered species. In the 1940’s the Nene population was almost wiped out by laws that allowed people to hunt them during their breeding seasons when the bird was most vulnerable. Then in 1957 when the bird became the Hawaii state bird conservationist started breeding the birds in captivity, trying to successfully regain the number of birds they once had. There are now over 800 wild Nene birds roaming the Hawaiian Island