Ranch hopes to restore Moloka'i forest
Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Science Writer
POHAKUPILI, Moloka'i — This picturesque bay facing West Maui is botanically trashed.
Jan TenBruggencate • The Honolulu Advertiser
Its dusty slopes are overgrown with alien haole koa shrubs, its shoreline by introduced ironwood.
The slopes overlooking Pohakupili Bay on Moloka'i's eastern shore are overgrown with introduced plants.
The near-shore waters, though regularly flushed by the surf, often are muddy with sediment washed off from bare areas under the scrub vegetation.
Pu'u O Hoku Ranch is hoping to change that.
The privately owned cattle ranch on the east end of Moloka'i has been branching out by offering visitor accommodations in old ranch buildings, ecotourism activities such as biking and hiking and farming 'awa.
The ranch now has embarked on a project of replacing the vegetation in this narrow valley with native plant life of the region.
"We're going to restore the area to what it might have been thousands of years ago," said botanist Lehua Shelley.
She concedes that it may be difficult to do that, since there is no firm understanding of what the native forest of this region might have looked like before humans arrived. The ranch will include plants introduced from other islands that are close to unavailable or extinct species that might have been on east Moloka'i.
Some species, such as the aulu, are components of native forests on other islands and will be included here. And a few species, such as kou and milo that were or might have been introduced by Polynesians, will also be included. Shelley recently was hired by the ranch to oversee the replanting project and has begun growing native plants in a nursery for planting out along the slopes above Pohakupili.
It is envisioned to be the biggest native reforestation effort on the island, and will attempt to create a garden of Hawaiian dryland forest species running up the slopes of the gulch and several hundred yards back from the sandy beach.
Shelley said the overall plan for the project is still being written, even as seeds and cuttings are being collected and grown. There is as yet no timetable for the reforestation, which will require installation of irrigation equipment for getting some of the plants started.
Shelley can rattle off the names of the species she hopes to plant, several of which already have been started in the nursery, next to dozens of young Hawaiian 'awa plants that are part of another Pu'u O Hoku Ranch project — a commercial 'awa farm.
"One of them will be nanu, the Hawaiian gardenia. Only one plant is left in the wild on Moloka'i, but it does not produce viable seed," she said. The reforestation project plans to use seed from mature Hawaiian gardenia trees in The Nature Conservancy of Hawai'i's Kanepu'u preserve on Lana'i.
Some of the planting material is being collected locally. Shelley said she is finding native trees and shrubs on ranch lands and collecting propagation material where possible. A freshly fallen branch from a rare 'ohe makai tree provided the opportunity to make cuttings and attempt to grow them, but Shelley said they were unlikely to root.
"We're looking for things that can tolerate both dry and salt" conditions, Shelley said.
Pohakupili can be blasted by the trade winds whipping into the channel between Maui and Moloka'i, and the arid coastal area presents quite a contrast to the deep green of the 14,000-acre ranch's upland areas. Rolling surf can bring clouds of salty spray onto the shore.
Some of the alien plants of the region regularly wither and lose their leaves in this harsh environment, but Pu'u O Hoku Ranch hopes a forest of natives adapted to the climate will do much better.
