PHOTO COURTESY OF BOB CABIN
Mary Vasile, top left, Tiffany Basare and Vince Maceira, undergraduate students from New York, measure a kauila tree last month to see how much it has grown since being planted in 1996 in a fenced area of native dry forest in North Kona.
Research scientists and area residents are quietly celebrating the success of an ongoing eight-year effort to restore a dry-land forest in the Big Island's North Kona district. Dry-land forest groves rebound
By Diana Leone
dleone@starbulletin.comThe Hawaiian term for dry-land forest, wao lama, is not used much anymore, perhaps because more than 90 percent of the islands' former dry-land forests are gone. Yet many of the diverse plants native Hawaiians used for vessels, tools, food gathering, fishing, shelter, medicine and rituals came from these forests on islands' leeward coasts, between 600 and 2,500 feet elevation.
"Most people don't understand that dry-land forests are far more diverse than rain forests and far more in peril," said Yvonne Carter, the Dryland Forest Working Group's volunteer coordinator.
The group, formed in 1995, brings together a variety of federal and state conservation agencies, private landowners, ranchers, paniolos, botanists, conservation ecologists, Army troops, hotel workers and more. Their attention is directed to a 6-acre parcel that is a dry-land forest restoration showpiece and a 70-acre parcel that is the proving ground for practical techniques anyone can use. Both parcels are owned by Kamehameha Schools. Scientific research is going on side by side with restoration efforts at both sites.
Two recent grants totaling $450,000, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Science Foundation, ensure that the research will continue for at least three years.
Meanwhile the enthusiasm of volunteers seems only to build.
"People who go there, they walk into that forest and fall in love with it. They want to come back," said Carter, who began working part time for the dry-land forest group in August, after being a volunteer. "I'm just one of many who feel that way."
Carter trains volunteers so that they know what is at stake during the group's quarterly plantings. Since dry-land forest plants grow slowly, she said, some of the endangered plants that are planted may take six months to a year just to germinate. "By the time it's in their hands, a plant could be a year to a year and a half old," she said.
Carter also emphasizes education about the non-endangered dry-land plants, so people can perhaps keep them from becoming rare. "I've seen in 1950s newspapers statements that certain trees 'will grow anywhere,'" she said. "Now they're endangered."
For researcher Bob Cabin, who lived on the Big Island between 1997 and 2001 while working for the U.S. Forest Service, return trips from his current professorship in New York state are eye-opening.
"It's amazing the amount of work that's continued here since I left," Cabin said in January when he brought 10 New York undergraduates for a week-long field trip to the Kaupulehu ahupuaa.
Cabin's students tasks included measuring plants that were planted in 1996. By tracking how well the plants do in a variety of conditions, they can add to the knowledge researchers are able to pass on.
"One of the goals of the Dryland Forest Working Group is to come up with techniques that landowners could apply on their own land," Cabin said.
For more information, see www.hawaii-forest.org.
