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Bette Runs a Green Light

Wed., Aug. 22, 2007 1:41 PM PDT by Joal Ryan

If it's not easy being green, then it's especially not easy being green 24/7. As Bette Midler might attest.

The entertainer and noted eco-booster is looking at $6,500 in fines for cutting down some 235 trees on a property in Hawaii without permission.

"She's very sorry that it happened, and accepts responsibility because she's very active environmentally," Midler attorney Max W.J. Graham Jr. said Wednesday.

Hawaii's Board of Land and Natural Resources will consider penalizing Midler for her "serious" violation, as a state report termed it, at a scheduled meeting Friday.

Midler ran afoul of the green police last October when, per the report, state land and conservation officials spotted trees being cleared on a 1.3-acre property she owns on the island of Kauai. Among the casualties, it said, were 120 Java Plum, 100 Octopus and 10-20 Madagascar Olive trees, all nonnative species.

According to Graham, Midler's mistake was an elemental one: "She didn't understand that they needed a permit to remove the trees."

Midler's intent in clearing the trees was to make way for trees and plants of the native kind. Graham described the property, which Hawaii-native Midler has owned since 1986, as a vacant lot overgrown with the likes of the Java.

According to the state, Midler's camp informed officials in January that it had hired a botanist/conservation biologist to look at the land. Plans to redo the property will move ahead, Graham said.

"We're going to make the property much nicer than it was before," Graham said.

Such vows are keeping Midler in good with the green likes of Ecorazzi, the celebrity-ecology blog. "This all seems pretty innocent," a post said. "Plus, Bette has gone the extra mile in paying the fines, and bringing in a botanist to plant native species throughout. Seems like a win/win."

Midler, who played Mother Nature in a 1990 Earth Day TV special, founded the New York Restoration Project, aimed at trashing trash in Big Apple parks, open spaces and vacant lots, in 1995. Her earth-hugging ways even became fodder for a 1993 episode of The Simpsons, where Bart and Lisa found Midler picking up litter along a highway.

On her entertainment front, the 61-year-old Grammy winner is scheduled to bring her big, bawdy act to Las Vegas next year as Caesars Palace's new house act, succeeding Celine Dion.

Midler and choreographer Toni Basil, of "Mickey" fame, were in Vegas on Tuesday auditioning dancers for the show.

Talent, after all, doesn't grow on trees.