The Hakio‘awa watershed is nearly impenetrable. Its rusty slopes of sterile hardpan are scarred with water-eroded fissures that streak toward the Alalakeiki Channel and Maui. Its ravines are choked with invasive flora, and water is virtually nonexistent.
But that’s where a small group of volunteers under the tutelage of Paul Higashino, Kahoolawe Island Reserve Commission’s longtime restoration program manager, was carefully arranging mounds of soil, gravel and rocks last weekend to hold native shrubs and grass seedlings in place. They utilized techniques he developed over the years through a lot of trial and error to give the plants a better chance of taking root.
Many have seen firsthand over the past decade how revegetating the 37-acre area has slowed the runoff of red dirt “bleeding” into the ocean, as some described it. The volunteers have observed Kahoolawe slowly changing from red to green while working at the Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea, roughly seven miles across the channel.
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Kahoolawe’s current state is a foreboding and extreme example of what can happen if Hawaii does not address the effects of severe, climate change-induced weather events.
Maui is only beginning its recovery phase after the Aug. 8 wildfires razed most of Lahaina and burned thousands of acres Upcountry. The community faces landscape-scale erosion, toxic runoff and questions over how to best deal with invasive, fire-friendly flora.
But the work being done on Kahoolawe could provide some answers.
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Key among Kahoolawe’s lessons are resourcefulness, ingenuity and acceptance that not everything will go as planned, something KIRC has learned over the course of nearly 20 years working to rejuvenate the island’s sterile environment.
Hardpan comprises more than 40% of Kahoolawe’s 28,800 acres, virtually unable to sustain life following centuries of destruction. What grows in the remaining 15,000 acres is mostly invasive, generally undesirable given KIRC’s mandate to restore the island to its former, forested native state.
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Alteration of the island’s environment started with the arrival of Polynesian settlers. But the landscape-scale destruction of its resources — which left the landscape barren or overcome by invasive species — in 1783.
“This just shows them what can happen to an island, what is still happening to our islands,” Higashino said. “Look at the number of animals, the erosion.”
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The Resources At Hand
In the pursuit of restoration, Higashino has used plates, hay bales, bedsheets, wooden pallets, logs and branches and mulched office paper to help keep plants in place, attract moisture and catch as much organic material as possible, to prevent erosion.
Keeping rainwater on the island is paramount to protect nearshore waters and revegetate the island, considering the average annual rainfall sits between 10 and 25 inches because the island falls in Haleakala’s rain shadow. That’s about how much rain falls each year in Lahaina, where more than 2,000 acres burned in the August fires.
Higashino, who also has experience doing fire recovery work on the Big Island, doesn’t make excuses. He just does what he can with the resources at hand.
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In gullies, fishing nets recovered from the beaches are filled with rocks to slow the flow of the estimated 1.9 million tons of soil that runs off into the ocean every year off Kahoolawe. In the island’s restored areas, the newly built soils absorb water more than four times faster than on the hardpan.
KIRC has recognized for years that to build up the soil to reboot the dryland forest that was once established on the island, it needs soil, which means the negative effects of some invasive plants may be outweighed by their presence mitigating erosion.
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Because of the extent of contamination with explosives, KIRC could only sit and watch as the fire moved across the island and ripped through a key supply depot on the island’s southeast end, where it destroyed two ATVs and a pair of Jet Skis.
The buffelgrass has grown back and charred kiawe trees still stand, keeping soils in place for now.
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Beyond the leftover bombs, one key difference between Maui and Kahoolawe is land ownership and population. Higashino says he doesn’t have to worry about reaching a consensus with a diverse community of stakeholders like on Maui because the seven-member has already laid out a plan for restoration which he is tasked with implementing.
“We’re all up against different things — money, land ownership, groups getting together and working together,” he said. “I’m glad I’m on Kahoolawe; I don’t have to deal with people or animals. All I have to deal with is bombs.”
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It was the second time volunteering at Kahoolawe for Wendy Tuivaioge, who teaches Hawaiian culture to visitors at the Four Seasons.
“The island has been hurting for so long, so you have to break that cycle,” she said on the 45-minute boat ride over to Kahoolawe from Kihei. “Breaking that cycle means you have to come back and regenerate.”
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And while for new visitors the landscape still appears stark, KIRC staff and repeat volunteers notice a clear difference in the vast tracts of amber earth visible from the deteriorating K-1, the island’s main road.
Crops of native grasses and shrubs pepper the area above the southeastern coast. Some were irrigated, others were not, but seedlings are now growing on their own.
From a distance it appears that bushes are only about as common as rock outcroppings, but longtime volunteer Matthew Eyerman said it’s a marked improvement since he first visited.
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The timeline for restoring the island is often raised, said KIRC Executive Director Mike Nahoopii.
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“The end result is just the culmination of a process of learning how to heal, being energized and learning the lesson that we never should let it get this bad,” he said.
Making Do
Higashino made several comparisons when explaining his methods to attract water and soil. But he said the “fundamentals” of understanding what plants need underpins everything.
“You know right where the pavement meets the cement, or a crack in Costco parking lot, where you got weeds coming up? Soil got there, there’s moisture gathering, you’ve got seed,” he said, explaining where he sometimes finds inspiration.
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The fissures and ravines across Kahoolawe can provide those conditions, but where there is no crack, digging is impossible — both because it’s hard and because of potential explosives.
So Higashino and his volunteers create the conditions with the “layercake” technique, with what was left over by the military or what is already available on the land with a few inputs boated over from Maui on the Ohua, KIRC’s boat.
For the first time in his more-than 20 years working on Kahoolawe, Higashino planted his first ‘ulu tree last weekend in the hope it might yield breadfruit one day.
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It will grow out from the crack, by which time it should be strong enough to withstand the gales that shoot across the hardpan. It’s not 100% certain that it will survive, but Higashino thinks it might have a chance.
Thomas Boeker has planted natives across Kahoolawe on six trips over the course of a decade, some have been successful and others have not.
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Civil Beat’s coverage of climate change is supported by The Healy Foundation, the Environmental Funders Group of the Hawaii Community Foundation, Marisla Fund of the Hawaii Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.
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