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.