STAND. COM. REP. NO. 3244

Honolulu, Hawaii

RE: H.B. No. 1802

H.D. 1

S.D. 1

Honorable Ronald D. Kouchi

President of the Senate

Thirty-Third State Legislature

Regular Session of 2026

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Water, Land, Culture and the Arts, to which was referred H.B. No. 1802, H.D. 1, entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO CONSERVATION MITIGATION BANKS,"

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose and intent of this measure is to:

(1) Authorize the Department of Land and Natural Resources and certain public or private entities to operate conservation banks, subject to approval from the Board of Land and Natural Resources, for situations where a person or entity is required to provide compensatory mitigation to offset adverse impacts to threatened, endangered, candidate, or proposed species as part of an approved incidental take license and habitat conservation plan;

(2) Add the Associate Director of the United States Geological Survey, Ecosystem Mission Area, to the membership of the Endangered Species Recovery Committee; and

(3) Require the Endangered Species Recovery Committee to review applications and proposals for conservation banks and conduct subsequent reviews and oversight.

Your Committee received testimony in support of this measure from the Department of Land and Natural Resources; Hawaii Reef and Ocean Coalition; Climate Protectors Hawaiʻi; Earthjustice; Tawhiri Power LLC; Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi; and The Nature Conservancy, Hawaiʻi and Palmyra.

Your Committee finds that conservation banks provide long‑term, landscape-scale protection to the State's threatened, endangered, candidate, and proposed species. Conservation banks may also be used by incidental take license holders with habitat conservation plans to boost the populations of the species to a healthy level before a take occurs. This measure will support and incentivize the protection of biodiversity by ensuring the consistent creation and operation of conservation banks.

Your Committee has amended this measure by making technical, nonsubstantive amendments for the purposes of clarity and consistency.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Water, Land, Culture and the Arts that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of H.B. No. 1802, H.D. 1, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as H.B. No. 1802, H.D. 1, S.D. 1, and be referred to your Committee on Ways and Means.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Water, Land, Culture and the Arts,

________________________________

CHRIS LEE, Chair