Photo By Karen Iwamoto | WAIANAE MOUNTAIN RANGE — Oahu Army Natural Resources Program volunteer Kathy Altz...... read more read more
WAIANAE MOUNTAIN RANGE — High above Schofield Barracks and the sound of Soldiers training, another team supported by U.S. Army Garrison-Hawaii was focused on a different mission: clearing the mountains of invasive weeds to make room for native plants.
In Hawaii, home to some of the world’s most isolated ecosystems and most threatened species, protecting native plants is key to protecting entire habitats.
“Native plants make up the background matrix, the home in which all of our rare species thrive,” said Jane Beachy, ecosystem restoration program manager for the Oahu Army Natural Resources Program. “When that habitat is changed (when invasive plants invade), then the ecosystem and all of the interactions change in a variety of ways that we don’t fully understand – which is why we do a lot of weed control. Weed control is like triage. Our first priority is to protect the habitat around those rare species.”
USAG-HI, through its contract with the OANRP, safeguards hundreds of acres of land on Oahu and ensures the Army complies with the Endangered Species Act, the Fish & Wildlife Coordinated Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
To balance the Army’s training requirements with its natural resource responsibilities, OANRP relies on help from volunteers, many who have dedicated over 10 years to the program’s efforts.
“There is a lot to get done and we are extremely thankful for the volunteer support,” said Kimberly Welch, an environmental outreach specialist with OANRP. Welch, and fellow outreach specialist, Celeste Hanley, led a group of volunteers to Kahanahaiki in the Waianae Mountains on March 30.
U.S. Army Garrison-Hawaii spends more than $6 million per year helping to protect more than 80 different endangered species on Oahu. OANRP staff and volunteers spend over 5,000 hours a year controlling invasive weeds in native forests. Volunteers focus on more accessible areas of the forest, freeing OANRP staff to focus on conservation projects in more remote areas.
On that particular day, armed with handsaws, pruners and bottles of herbicide, they spent several hours clearing non-native strawberry guava trees that were outcompeting native plants for space.
“I feel really passionate about the outdoors and feel it personally when (native plants) are affected negatively,” said Elaine Mahoney, a longtime volunteer. “And I feel elated when we come back and see koa popping up where the strawberry guava used to be.”
Fellow volunteer Roy Kikuta paused to take in the trees and the surrounding view of the mountains.
“I love forests, and Hawaiian forests are particularly nice,” he said. “Native plants have a gentleness to them that I like. I feel comfortable around them. A lot of the (invasive) plants have thorns and sharp edges and pungent smells. Hawaiian plants are nice. Hawaiian plants are understated. And I just really love being out here.”
Further down the slope, volunteer Jim Keenan was tackling another stand of strawberry guava trees.
“The Hawaiian culture is here and each native plant has a story,” he said. “There are multiple stories for them, multiple uses for them, multiple gods they represent. It gives meaning to the forest.
“Through hula, through songs, you learn how they’re used or what god they represent, and as you start learning about the plants you wonder, ‘What does that plant look like?’” he continued. “You can look it up, but when you actually go to the forest and see it, that’s a whole different level of experience.”
By clearing the mountains of invasive weeds, the volunteers are clearing the way not only for native plants, but also for native animals such as the kahuli, or Hawaiian tree snail, and the elepaio, a forest bird. Both the kahuli and the elepaio are endangered on Oahu and volunteer actions help to improve their native forest habitat.
Welch and Hanley described the native forests as the foundation for native ecosystems. Because of Hawaii’s location in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, many species evolved in isolation and thrive in specific environments. They rely on each other for survival.
On April 1, the start of Earth Month, the volunteers returned to the Waianae mountains with Welch and Hanley, this time to clear an invasive weed known as firespike (Odontonema cuspidatum) from Mount Kaala.
Welch described this weed as particularly difficult to tackle because it regrows from cuttings and spreads easily. Eliminating it will take years, but OANRP’s focus for the day was on containing it and preventing it from spreading further into the native forest.
Kikuta and Keenan were there, as were several other volunteers from the March 30 outing. They were joined by some new faces, including Sean Rivera and Joe Hall.
It was their first trip to Oahu’s highest summit, but Hall foundw himself in familiar territory: near by mamaki, the same native nettle that he had planted throughout his own yard in Kalihi with the hope of making it an attractive environment for the state insect, the Kamehameha butterfly. Mamaki is a host plant to the Kamehameha, one of the few that its caterpillars are found on.
Hall had yet to see a Kamehameha in the wild, but he was careful to avoid harming the mamaki as he weeded. Being near them seemed to give him a sense of what he was working to protect, while the view of the native forest spread out below him offered hope for the future of native plants.
“This is like heaven for me,” he said.
He and the other volunteers continued weeding until it was time to break for lunch. They had finished eating and were readying to leave the site when something caught Rivera’s eye.
“Come here, look!”
A Kamehameha butterfly floated by, grazing the mamaki leaves where Hall had been weeding. It paused briefly, and the volunteers got a closer look before it rose up and darted away.
| Date Taken: | 04.21.2017 |
| Date Posted: | 04.27.2017 21:41 |
| Story ID: | 231868 |
| Location: | WAIANAE, HAWAII, US |
| Web Views: | 74 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Volunteers help USAG-HI protect native habitats, by Karen Iwamoto, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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