A spectacular week

It started off with a nice drive over the Sattle road of maunakea. Then we arrived at our site kawaiokalehua a spectacular place. But wasn't as spectacular in the olden days as I was told, because the kupuna said that from the road that we drove on you could see the ocean but now it's to over grown. That brings us to our duties that we performed which was to clear out all of the over grown bushes of historic heaus. When we first started to clean the area we couldn't even tell what was ten feet in front of us. At the end of the week when we finished it was like trackers went through there and bull doze all of the unnecessary weeds but it was my team members and I by hands that had clear out all of the weeds. It was so neat because we could actually see the place which was a old ancient village instead of bushes and weeds. It was e very spectacular week.

Hard work

Hello, I'm Haku Daniels this past weeks has been the most spectacular weeks of my whole entire life. And it will be the most memorable as well. I came into this Program knowing it's gonna be a lot of hard work and I was corect. We have allready been to a lot of different places that make me feel so at home, but there's one thing that makes me feel so well treated and that is by doing so much work I allways have a tendency to look at our hosts faces to try and tell if they like our work or not and by looking at there face at the end of the day there's allways a big smile. That's what cheers me up and what makes my day. Because I know they like our work.

Kona Hema Preserve

Last week Kona Gold paid a visit to The Nature Conservancy's Honomalino preserve. With base camp located at 4,000 ft above Milolii on the slopes of Mauna Loa, and the preserve's border residing at 6,000 ft, the preserve is a chilly, misty, lush native forest that exemplifies both the diversity and beauty of the native ecosystem and the damage that can be done by external industry.

On the first day the entire team drove up to 5,000 ft, where they began planting native speceis in an old lava channel. Although the area appeared to have plenty of moisture at first glance, Kona Gold soon discovered that there was little water under the soil. Thick mats of invasive grass make it difficult for the now rare native under story species to grow. The team planted all along the channel in an effort to restore the diverse under story.

On the way back, site manager Mel Johansen and his co-worker Lester gave the team a real treat, a trip to to see "Grandmother Koa" a massive Koa tree estimated at around 500 years in age. Along the trail, the team also encountered a deep lava tube where the bones of an extinct native goose had been discovered.

On the second day, the team split into two groups. The first group, consisting of Claud, Haku, Zach, Ka'anihi and Wyatt, continued planting aggressively, and worked their way through multiple elevations. Over the course of the remainder of the week, Mel estimated that they had planted over a thousand new native species. They also took a special trip up to the very top of TNC's property, and got to see rare silverswords.

The second group, consisting of Sylva, Heather, Kimi, Monica and Kieran, went with Stanford PHD student Rochelle Gould, who, for her doctoral studies, was conducting a multi-year experiment with TNC. For her experiment, Rochelle planted Pilo, Naio, Maile, Mamaki and Ho'ava at various elevations, and in different conditions. She theorized that by planting next to trees and ferns, future conservationists could increase the survival rates of their plants and make under story restoration much quicker. Kona team members assisted her by carefully measuring the growth of her plants, the condition of the ferns and grass around them, and the conditions of the plants themselves. This group also got to see a rare native species, as on Wednesday they were joined by a pair of I'o who circled above them while they worked. One of them landed in a nearby tree, and the team greeted it with a rendition of E Ho Mai.

On Thursday, the team reunited in the afternoon for a special tour of the preserve. In touring the lower, more pristine parts of the forest, the team got to see what the species they had planted looked like when they were fully grown and flourishing. After experiencing the powerful diversity of the healthy forest, the shocking monoculture of a nearby mac nut farm, built on land that had once been native forest, served as a reminder of the damage that has been done to these precious natural resources.

Amy Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden

Last week Kona Gold visited Amy Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden in South Kona, and assisted them in landscaping their new visitor center. Run by Peter Van Dyke, Amy Greenwell Garden, or AGG, is a hub for all things native. Their focus on ethnobotany, the study of plants and their relationship with local peoples, has attracted a diverse group of top notch professionals and students to their garden. As the garden staff and a host of volunteers work to preserve extremely rare native species, many of which are endangered or even extinct in the wild, other culturally attuned individuals visit the garden for other reasons. In the short week that Kona Gold spent at AGG, they were joined by a group of College Grad students from some of the most prestigious universities in the nation, an artist who spent his time carving poi boards and a former HYCC member who came back to help out.

Kona Gold was also extremely fortunate to receive a personal tour of the gardens from author and former staff member Noah Lincoln. When Kona Gold first met Noah, they never would have guessed from his warm demeanor and accessible personality that he was one of the foremost experts in ethnobotany, and the author of a book cataloging the garden's numerous plants and their uses. Noah's expertise in the area became clear during the tour, when he gave fascinating accounts of the uses and histories of all the native and Polynesian introduced plants in the garden. Noah's tour made the garden come to life, his insights on the value and rarity of the plants gave the team an idea of what they were working to protect.

However, Kona Gold spent most of their field work time at AGG's brand new visitor's center. While AGG currently resides in an old house up a residential street, the central location of the new visitors' center, next door to Greenwell Park and across the street from the historic Manago Hotel, will make it much more visible and accessible. However, the center had not yet been landscaped, and the slopes bordering the construction area were little more than dirt and weeds, with a few native plants speckled in between. To start, Kona Gold picked, weedwacked, dug and pulled their way through the heaps of invasive and unappealing grasses and weeds the covered the hillside. They then laid out weed mats and irrigation lines to prep the area for native plants. They then planted a lawn of new grass on the hillside, planting bucket after bucket of "centipede grass," a fast-growing grass that makes great lawns.

Then Kona Gold got to work peppering the hillside with young native plants. Along the way they had to contend with fire ants, keep the weed mat clean, and remove large, ungainly rocks from the holes where the plants were to be planted. Kona Gold persevered, however, and soon the hillside was covered with native plants like A'Ali'i, Ma'o Haohele and Aveoveo. During planting, the team also extensively weeded the area, using picks to hack out the invasive and surprisingly resilient ghinny grass. When they were done, the hillside was transformed from a bare construction site to an organized collection of native plants.