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		The Nature Conservancy in Hawaii Home Places We Protect Forested Watersheds Invasive Species Marine Conservation Climate Change Hikes Get Involved News Room Ways of Giving Contact Us

Save Hawaii's natural and cultural legacy Please join us in protecting nature and preserving life in  Hawai'i. Want to learn more? For more information or to volunteer to help restore Kaho'olawe, visit the KIRC website http://kahoolawe.hawaii.gov/

 

It’s 7 a.m. and a bleary-eyed group of Conservancy staff is arriving at the Kahului Airport. From Maui, we will be flown via Kaho‘olawe Island Reserve Commission (KIRC) helicopters seven miles across the ‘Alalakeiki Channel to our destination, the island of Kaho‘olawe.

 

We have come as volunteers, to assist the KIRC in replanting the island. In previous centuries Kaho‘olawe, the smallest of the eight main Hawaiian Islands, was known as Kanaloa, a Hawaiian deity that represents the ocean, healing, and ultimately life. Today, after centuries of devastation — first by goats and then by bombs — Kaho‘olawe is being reclaimed.

 

During our three-day trip, we are given a brief glimpse of the daily challenges KIRC field staff must overcome in their mission to preserve and restore this precious cultural and environmental resource. We experience first hand the whipping trade winds that bend even the strongest wiliwili trees and blow clouds of red dirt, the islands precious topsoil, into the sea. We hear stories of the island literally melting after heavy rains, not to mention the very real threat of unexploded ordnance.

 

But standing on the upper slopes of Hakioawa Valley there is a feeling of hope. The KIRC staff explains that irrigation and water catchments are improving. And to combat persistent winds, Paul Higashino, KIRC’s senior natural resource specialist, has gotten creative. He uses pili grass bales, cardboard boxes, and mulch to protect fresh plantings.

 

Higashino tells us, “Before you build the forest, you have to give it protection.”

 

Right now, KIRC’s primary goal is to protect and restore the island where it can. According to Higashino, the progress is slow, but visible. Lopaka White, a KIRC specialist, says, “When it used to rain the whole island would look like it was melting. Now, it’s not as bad.”

 

Today, the sky is clear and the land is free of goats and obvious warheads, but for 150 years hungry livestock ravaged Kaho‘olawe. Then in 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor was attacked, the land was leased to the U.S. government. For more than 50 years, the U.S. Pacific Fleet used the island for target practice.

 

In 1976 the first seeds of recovery were planted when a group of nine native Hawaiian activists protested the military’s use. The Protect Kaho‘olawe ‘Ohana was formed and the group filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government. In 1990, thanks to efforts by Senator Daniel Inouye, the bombing was finally halted. Four years later, in 1994, Kanaloa was officially returned to the State of Hawai‘i, where it will be held in trust until a sovereign native Hawaiian entity is formed.

 

It took almost 10 years and $400 million, the most expensive military cleanup in the history of the U.S., for the island to be accessible to average people. But even with its enormous price tag, due to access issues only 70 percent of the unexploded ordnance could be cleared from Kaho‘olawe’s surface.  Of that 70 percent, nine percent was cleared beneath the surface.

 

This nine percent equals approximately 2,500 acres, and it is in this area that KIRC is focusing its replanting efforts. So far Higashino estimates that 300 to 400 acres have been restored during the past five years. “We're doing a lot in a small area,” says Jamie Bruch, KIRC natural resource specialist. “But there is still a lot more to do.”

 

On our trip, we plant 1,000 shrubs and grasses in the upper Hakioawa area. This is the second year we have come to Kaho'olawe, and Suzanne Case, our executive director, says she is thinking of making it an annual event. 

 

Nalu Andrade, a Conservancy field technician on Maui and Higashino’s nephew, has been to Kanaloa more times than he can count. He says, “It’s getting better each year. I know this because on this trip I saw a grove of wiliwili I helped plant four years ago.”

 

To the uninitiated the grove may not seem significant, it’s small and bent by the constant winds. But it is a living reminder of what communities can do if they work together to preserve and replant, a symbol of new life on Hawaii’s smallest, sacred island.

— Corinne Knutson

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Credits:  (top to bottom, left to right): © Grady Timmons/TNC (view of Kaho'olawe); © Jan Eber/TNC (Janice Staab, Kaho'olawe shore, TNC staff replanting); © Shawn White/TNC (TNC staff volunteer work crew).