Our goal is to raise $20,000, most of which will be used to hire a summer crew of 4 high school students, to work in the forest controlling ginger.  It’s a win-win-win!  The forest gets a chance to recover from the invasion, the kids gets a great summer work experience, and YOU get some mighty fine perks for your donation.

Just click here http://www.indiegogo.com/kohala-ginger-ninja?a=489768 and contribute as much as you can. You can show your commitment with $5 or $5,000! We appreciate the support and networking! !

Mahalo for your contribution!

For more information about Kohala’s forest ecosystem, about our work, or about the project, visit kohalawatershed.org

These interns will be working as a field crew with a KWP field leader on a part-time basis to control kahili ginger, an invasive weed. Work includes identification of native and invasive plants, and hiking through muddy, wet, rainy conditions to do weed control. Additionally, the interns will have the opportunity to volunteer for training in basic techniques of GPS, scientific monitoring and/or reforestation for watershed management.

For more information, contact the KWP coordinator, Melora Purell, at 333-0976 or via email at Coordinator@kohalawatershed.org

To apply, please complete the application form here and send as an email attachment to Melora or fax it to 885-6707 before May 30. Interviews will take place on June 1. Finalist applicants will be be required to attend one volunteer work day on June 4-6 as part of the application process, and offers of employment will be on June 8.

You will need to comply with all state laws for under-age employment, including getting a worker’s permit prior to employment. This will require proof of age and parent’s permission.

35 adults and children came out on Earth Day to plant with us!

I sing you life, I sing you hope.  I sing you love and strength to grow — today and tomorrow.

– Meloraʻs song for the keiki plants.

What a wonderful month of celebration of our native Hawaiian plants!

More than 75 different volunteers came out to help us reach our goal – to plants 1000 native trees in the month of April in celebration of Earth Day.  We beat that goal and left it in the dust!  We planted more than 1,500 plants in the month, including ʻiliahi(sandalwood), koaiʻa, aʻaliʻi, hōawa, mamane, and kuluī. Mahalo nui loa (thank you very much) to all the great folks that donated their time & energy, and planted our babies with such loving care.

. . . and as we always say to our keiki plants, as we gently firm the native soil around their roots and send them off to live on their own. “Kū paʻa.”  Stand firm!

Kohala’s Native Wildflowers are in Bloom!

The scent of wild roses permeates the air in the Koai’a Sanctuary these days. It’s coming from the blossoms of our native ‘ulei, what I have dubbed the “Hawaiian Rose.” ‘Ulei is a sprawling woody shrub, but lacks the thorns of its continental cousin. It’s little white flowers mature into white berries with a deep purple interior.

Wherever it doesn’t have to compete with alien grasses and is safe from cattle munching, we have our native daisy, nehe.  It has a cool arrowhead-shaped leaf, and makes lots of seeds, which readily germinate with just a little rain.  We have been growing a couple of these at the State Tree Nursery, but they don’t do well “in captivity.”

The Koai’a Sanctuary is near the 5.5 mile marker on Kohala Mountain Road, and is open to the public.  Enjoy the 3/4-mile trail, and take in the sites and smells of a native dry forest.  Get to know the native plants in your neighborhood, and maybe even invite them into your backyard!

It’s been one year since the first phase of the Pelekane Bay watershed project finished, and I wanted to post an update about the 32,000 plants we planted over the course of that first 18 months of work. We have had continued drought, so many plants died.  We have been very conservative with our water, however, and most of the dead plants have been replaced over time with new seedlings.  That way we don’t waste water, dripping the precious fluid to grow weeds!


Here is the tallest keiki koaia that I could find — taller than me! That tree is only two years old, and has survived the severe drought with a modest amount of irrigation each month. Koaia is wind tolerant, a nitrogen-fixer and very fast-growing.  It outcompetes the surrounding grasses, and seems able to utilize the water available in the light mists on this leeward slope. We are able to grow koaia from seed to outplanting in about 4-6 months.

This is a photo of a flowering ‘ilima.  This particular one was planted, but it has at least a dozen neighbors that are germinating from the native seed bank.  Now that is cool. These plants are low, fast-growing shrubs that are very common along roadsides and even sprout in the pastures (where they are eagerly munched on by cattle.) Try digging a couple up along your road and plant them in your garden.



Our long-term objectives for this restoration area depend on the ability of the native trees and shrubs to transform the grassland through creating shade and increasing the organic matter in the soil by dropping leaf litter. Here is a close-up of an aweoweo, full of seed.  The amazing thing is the amount of leaf litter that this little plant has already produced. And, of course, much of that seed will germinate into more native plants!



This is another instance where our plantings are working together with natural regeneration. The taller green shrub is a’ali’i that we planted, and the low growing shrub is uhaloa, a native herb. Uhaloa is another plant you will find growing along the roadsides on the leeward side of the island. Dry the leaves of this plant to make a mild tea that is wonderful to clear your respiratory system when you have a cold.



Clem Lam, a local architect and friend of KWP,took this photo last week after an unusual heavy rain on leeward Kohala.  This is the view of the sediments that got washed into the ocean. Yuck!

The connection between what happens on the land and what results in the ocean couldn’t be more clear. This coast is downslope from some of the worst feral-goat infested rangeland on the island.  The goats eat all the vegetation, and the bare ground becomes so hydrophobic (water-repellant) that a rainfall causes instant flash flooding. It sheets across the surface, pulling along not only the topsoil, but also tons of goat poop.  The thick, nutrient-rich slurry gets dumped into the ocean.  Even with strong currents to carry most of the sediments out to sea, even a fine dusting of grime on the corals can make them sick.

The work that KWP is doing on the Kawaihae watershed will have long-term positive impacts to the South Kohala coast, because we have created a 6,600 acre goat-free watershed area.  Without the goats, and if we can keep fires from taking hold, the land can recover!

Mahalo, Clem, for paying attention to the environment and sharing your images and concerns!

“The best time to start protecting our mauka watersheds was decades ago.
The second best time is now.”

After extensive research and coordination, the folks at the Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) have rolled out an ambitious plan to increase State funding by about 10-fold to Hawaii’s watershed partnerships! It takes great vision and leadership to take an idea like “let’s speed up the protection of our upland forests before it’s too late” and transform it into a plan for action. Now we look to our State legislators to support this vision and find sustainable funding streams for this plan for the next decade.  The exciting thing is that we have the capacity to double the State’s investment because the watershed partnership can match the State’s funds with Federal grants, private foundation funding, and local donations. It’s a win-win!

Now is the time to write a note to your State senators and representatives to show your support for increased funding for watershed partnerships.  Mahalo!

KWP interns and restoration crew after a typical dirty day of work! Summer 2010

We will be hiring two interns for 2012:  a six-month position Jan – June, and a 12-month position starting in January and ending in December.  We are looking for enthusiastic learners who can handle daily physical labor.  Must be able to work with tools, herbicides, and carry heavy loads.

Please fill out the application found here, and send as an email attachment to Melora, KWP coordinator, at Coordinator@kohalawatershed.org.

KWP crew builds fence for the new Hawaii Wildlife Center in North Kohala.

Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success. - Henry Ford

Our funders call it “in-kind donations” and we call it “kokua”.  Either way, it’s how we make things happen in the non-profit world of conservation in Hawaii. When a crew on Maui needs help to get a long stretch of difficult fence line done, we send along a couple of our crew members.  When we need help fighting an invasive tree, the Big Island Invasive Species team shows up with sprayers and workers.  We plant trees on Mauna Kea and build fences in North Kohala, and get help in return with our own planting and fences. We lend our tools and even our spouses. By pulling together, we get more work done — to benefit the environment, native species, and our communities.

These donations of time, expertise, and materials go a long way to “match” the dollars we get in grants, building our capacity to reach our objectives.  Every dollar of volunteer labor or community donation allows us to pursue double that amount in grant funding.

Mahalo nui — thank you very much! — to our community donors and tireless volunteers. You truly make it all possible!

Stenogyne: one of our “mintless” mints of Hawai’i — What’s the story?

Members of the mint family (Lamiaceae) are frequently aromatic in all parts and include such widely used herbs as basil, peppermint, rosemary, sage, savory, marjoram, oregano, thyme and lavender. The evolutionary story goes that the minty-ness of these plants makes them unpalatable to most herbivores; ie. it keeps them from being eaten. As these plants grew in Hawai’i, generation after generation, there was no survival advantage to being strongly flavored, so the genes for that trait stopped being expressed in Hawaiian mints.

For those of us blessed to see these plants flowering in the native forests, we are glad that their showy-ness continues to make them attractive to pollinators! I was lucky to find this plant loaded with flowers on one of our field trips with Waikoloa Middle School students into the wet forest this past spring!