The National Science Foundation's decision to cut funds for the Thirty Meter Telescope planned for Maunakea on Hawaiʻi Island is a setback for the project.
The NSF will instead be continuing support for a competing telescope project in Chile, the Giant Magellan Telescope.
TMT Project Manager Fengchuan Liu, in a statement, said, "We are disappointed that the NSF's current budget request does not include TMT, but we remain firmly committed to finding a path forward for TMT."
The TMT project has been controversial for years, including protests at Maunakea in 2019. Many Native Hawaiian groups who oppose the TMT are hailing this latest development.
Healani Sonoda-Pale, who is with Ka Lāhui Hawaiʻi, called the decision "the beginning of the end."
"This will, I think, give a lot of hope to kiaʻi who have been kind of waiting. It's been very quiet the last few years, but people haven't stopped working on this issue. There's a lot of Maunakea kiaʻi working to address the issue of the Thirty Meter Telescope and whether or not it's going to go forward," she said.
Sonoda-Pale said that she thanks all the people who sent in requests to be part of the Section 106 consultation process for the NSF under the National Historic Preservation Act.
Section 106 is a review process part of the NHPA that requires federal agencies to "identify and assess the effects its actions may have on historic buildings." Under this section, federal agencies also "must consider public views and concerns about historic preservation issues when making final project decisions."
"Letters went out to the National Science Foundation from hundreds of people saying that the proposed project to be built on Maunakea would have substantial and significant and adverse cumulative impacts on this sacred mountain," she said.
"So it wouldn't have been in their best interest to go forward with Thirty Meter Telescope, because if their funding has been cut, and they really are in dire straits in terms of funding, then I think for them, it looked like the Magellan telescope was going to be a better investment."
She said this is a great victory for Maunakea kiaʻi.
"It's not just one thing. It's going to be a whole list of things that's going to actually be the death of this project. But this is the beginning of the end, I feel, because the NSF was supposed to provide more than half of the project funding," Sonoda-Pale told HPR.
Hawaiʻi County Mayor Kimo Alameda, who also sits on the Maunakea Stewardship and Oversight Authority, questioned how funding the GMT in Chile and not the one in Hawaiʻi helps “Make America Great Again.”
"That was a shock and a bit disappointed, just because it's not just the Thirty Meter Telescope, it was also Keck Observatory and some other telescopes, even the one on Maui, the Daniel Inouye telescope," he said.
Alameda said the loss in funding is not only a blow to science but also to Hawaiʻi and Native Hawaiians.
"I've always felt like the Thirty Meter Telescope, while it's really good for science, I saw it also as a leveraging tool, something that we could utilize to help us negotiate, to make the mountain better. You know, that's my whole take, and that's why I was a protector, still a protector, but I was up there in 2019 because I didn't like how it all played out," he told HPR.
"I'm a protector, just like them. I don't know what their plan is to make the mountain better, unless they're thinking, remove all telescopes, and then how does that make Hawaiʻi better? I'm a Hawaiian, too," Alameda told HPR.
Alameda said he's trying to create economic opportunities to bring back Native Hawaiians.
"I'm trying to create an economic opportunity for Native Hawaiians and utilize the revenues that would come from this compromise to the Native Hawaiian communities, to the homestead, to the charter schools, to the immersion programs," he said.
"So unless I can hear another plan on how to make the mountain better, if it's just total decommission all telescopes. I don't think that's going to work either."
Kealoha Pisciotta, president of the group Mauna Kea Anaina Hou, said that if the mayor is saying that the TMT project could make Maunakea better, he needs to talk with the kiaʻi.
"He went on live television in the OHA [Office of Hawaiian Affairs] mayor's forum and basically called himself a kiaʻi, and if that's true, then he ought to be talking to the kiaʻi, rather than I don't know who's talking to, TMT representatives who don't actually have a good handle on Hawaiʻi law," she said.
Pisciotta said since learning of the decision Friday, members of her community have been going up to the mountain to give thanks.
"I felt very thankful and blessed that they made that decision. I want to say that it was largely really a function of all of the work that the kiaʻi had been doing throughout the years, including building alliances and networks in California that could show up to the university and talk to them about the impacts to not only our land but our people and yeah, so I am feeling thankful," she said.
However, she shared that there are still other issues that need to be addressed.
"I do know that there are a lot of other issues that are stacking up on us, including the long-term leases for both Maunakea and Pōhakuloa. So those are next on the list, but trying to just maintain our ʻāina and protect the interests of the Hawaiian people in general and the public as well," she said.
Supporters of the telescope have highlighted the scientific benefits. However, Pisciotta questioned what difference in science the TMT will bring.
"In the name of science, who is benefiting from it? It's not the Hawaiian people, you know, it's not Hawaiʻi either," she told HPR.
This story aired on The Conversation on June 3, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Tori DeJournett adapted this story for the web.
