Almost 30 volunteers took to Hikimoe Ridge Wednesday, breathing new life to the once tree-filled forest. “It’s great to have the chance to come back and heal the land,” said Michelle Clark, a biologist with US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Almost 30 volunteers took to Hikimoe Ridge Wednesday, breathing new life to the once tree-filled forest.
“It’s great to have the chance to come back and heal the land,” said Michelle Clark, a biologist with US Fish and Wildlife Service. “Who can say no to a chance to come out to Kokee to plant trees.”
Clark estimated she planted about 40 seedlings.
“It’s cool they collected seeds from other koa trees that lived here,” she said. “They have a better chance of surviving.”
Hikimoe Ridge, in the Kokee Area Forest Reserves, was one of three ridges charred in 2012 fire that burned several thousand acres in the Na Pali-Kona, Pu’u’ka Pele Forest Reserves and southern Poki.
“We thought it was out, but then it skipped to three different ridges,” said Patrick Porter, program manager for the Kauai Division of Forestry and Wildlife.
The fires ended with almost 3,000 acres of eucalyptus trees being burned to the ground, leaving officials with the Department of Land and Natural Resources and the Division of Forestry to find a way to rebuild the forest.
Four years later, 800 koa seedlings, found scattered in the burn sites, were planted along two acres of the Hikimoe Ridge.
Volunteers from conservation groups like DLNR, the Kauai Division of Forestry and Wildlife, the USFWS, the Kokee Conservation Program and Kupu Hawaii spread across two acres of the Hikimoe Ridge, planting the foot-tall seedlings.
“It’s a good way to get involved in different conservation efforts,” said Marissa Gordon, an intern with AmeriCorps who was placed with the Nature Conservancy program of Kupu Hawaii.
Replanting is phase 3 of the Kokee Area Restoration and Reforestation Project, Porter said.
Phase 1 involved getting the area back open to the public by removing hazardous trees, controlling erosion and fixing the road. Phase 2 was getting logging trucks into the area, Porter said.
The Hikimoe Ridge is the first ridge to be planted, but officials plan to plant 20,000 seedlings along the entire burn area, said Sheri Mann, state forestry program manager for the DNLR Division of Forestry & Wildlife.
Officials are unsure about the timeline for when all 20,000 seedlings will be planted, but hope to finish Hikimoe Ridge within the year, she said.
The 20,000 acres of seedlings will cover a total of 50 acres with 400-500 trees per acre.
“Hawaii has never experienced fires quite like these, followed by this type of recovery and restoration,” said Suzanne Case, DLNR chair. “We hope in not too many years the scars left by this series of wildfires will no longer be evident, thanks to the replanting efforts and everything that led up to it.”
This is the first time the state has undertaken a project that replaces non-native trees with native ones, Mann added.
Since eucalyptus trees are from Australia, it was important to officials to replace them with trees native to Hawaii.
“We want to support the community, beauty and recreation, but we also want to stabilize the soil and create a habitat for native plants and animals,” Mann said.
Additionally, officials plan to use the burned remnants of trees as a source for renewable energy on the island, which is another first for the state, said Philipp LaHaela Walter, state resource survey forester with the DNLR Department of Forestry and Wildlife.
“This project is special in many ways,” LaHaela Walter said. “With higher temperatures, fires will become a problem in the future, and this is a pilot program for the state to try out some things.”
But while koa is a native species, planting them in the Kokee Forest has some challenges.
Adverse conditions like drought and animals have officials concerned the seedlings won’t grow as easily as they would in some other areas of the state.
So, to combat that, officials are pulling out all the stops, like growing the seedlings in a specialized nursery on Maui and putting the bulbs in a gel that acts as a fertilizer and moisture retainer, to make sure the trees have their best chance of survival.
The total ticket price for the project is about $2 million, which is funded mostly by the state, Mann said.
“This method is more expensive, but we are going to do everything we can to give the koa their best chance to flourish,” she said.
