|
Aloha ,
Envision Laie is all about creating a more sustainable community. Part of that includes an effort to ensure that endangered native Hawaiian plants in our own backyard don't go extinct. The community forest restoration program, initiated by BYU-Hawaii, has made great progress - check out the update below.
If you haven't already done so, don't forget to send in a comment on the city's Ko'olau Loa Sustainable Communities Plan draft, and save the date to attend the December 7 community meeting at Kahuku High's cafeteria. Click here
for more info.
Mahalo,
The Envision Lā'ie Team
|
|
Rare Hawaiian plants battle extinction at Laie fire site |
|
|
Once a semester, Brigham Young University-Hawaii biology students trek to a site in the hills far above the campus called "the battlefront."
Here a war is raging between the native Hawaiian rainforest and invasive plants that gained a foothold since the area was burned by a forest fire in July 2008. (Note: another fire recently occurred in the Laie hills; the extent of the damage is still being determined.) 
Students spend the day fighting invasive species and restoring endangered plants unique to Hawaii. Some are the only plants left of their kind in the world - rare Hawaiian plants numbering from half a dozen to a few hundred individual plants - and some are found only in this little corner of the Ko'olau mountains.
Spearheading the effort is David Bybee, assistant professor of biology at BYU-Hawaii. The project is located along the Ko'olau Summit. Over the years, invasive plants have been slowly climbing further and further up the mountainside, overpowering the native rainforest and leaving it nearly non-existent in most areas. The fire two years ago just made things worse.
Volunteer groups such as Bybee's biology classes - in collaboration with U.S. Army biologists, the Ko'olau Mountain Watershed Partnership, Hawaii Reserves, Inc. and Envision Laie - are fighting to see that native plants don't go extinct.
The hope, says Bybee, is that the project will springboard into more ways that BYU-Hawaii students can work alongside community members "to care for the 'aina on which we are blessed to live."
|
