24 May 2008

Upper Limahuli


native tree snail in upper limahuli

The actual grounds that the Garden manages here on Kaua‘i cover two valleys. Our headquarters are in Lawai Valley on the south side of the island but we also take care of Limahuli Garden and Preserve which is the last valley before the road ends on Kauai’s north shore. Just off the road near the visitor’s center there are lo‘i (taro patches) and a beautiful native plant section that the public can visit. Behind, in the lower valley there are restoration projects and some areas with rare plants that we monitor (the shot of “my office” in an older post). But the real gem of the north shore garden is the Upper Preserve.



Above the waterfall in the back of lower Limahuli sits a hanging valley that’s only accessible practically by helicopter. Although the forest of Upper Limahuli was devastated by Hurricane Iniki in 1992 (as with much of Kaua‘i’s forests) the habitat is much more intact than the lower valley. In other words, the area contains a relatively high percentage of native Hawaiian plants.


blurry shot from the helicopter of the upper valley's west side

Unfortunately, even in good native habitat like Upper Limahuli, there’s constant war to be waged against aggressive, exotic weeds. Plants from across the world – like Australian tree fern, christmasberry, paperbark tree, African tulip, octopus tree, and many many more – have been introduced Hawai‘i accidentally and intentionally. A good proportion of forest throughout the archipelago is already dominated by exotic plants and in a highly mobile economy like ours, new ones arrive each day (just think of the garden section at walmart, home depot, kmart, etc). Dealing with these tenacious pests for the sake of native plants – especially in the rough terrain of Limahuli – can be more than daunting.


lehua blossoms 

Well, it’s summertime and the livin’ is easy…or at least we have clear weather, and the Upper Limahuli season is on. Natalia and I are not part of the full-time Limahuli crew, but we’ve been happily roped into the trips this year to help in accessing some of the steeper terrain. The last week of April was our first trip this year – my first trip ever. We dropped a crew at base camp just above the waterfall while Natalia, Emory – part of the Limahuli staff – and I climbed back in the chopper for a quick ride to the very back of the valley. The plan was to drop us off onto the ridge that runs between the two knife-edge walls forming the boundaries of the valley and spend two days traversing the route down to base camp and mapping invasive trees.



Back in the belly of the bird…We come up onto the back of the center ridge rather quickly and begin to circle, looking for the landing site. Emory and I are in the back seats, no doors, our backpacks clutched between our legs, ready for a quick exit. Natalia is in the front seat and the only one of us with a headset to communicate with the pilot. He started off pretty grumpy this morning, but of course without headsets neither Emory nor I have any idea what they’re talking about up front.


top end of the center ridge looking N down the valley


The pilot pulls the bird into a hover above a narrow section where the center ridge sort of S-curves before connecting to the valley’s back wall. As we slowly lower down, I hang my head out the doorway – the left side – as far as my seatbelt will allow and wonder what the hell is going on. The ridgetop is about 8 feet across, with the slope in front and behind us plunging a couple hundred feet into the ravines below. Despite the small clearing just below the bird, a small copse of ohia and olapa trees stands about 8 feet tall, nearly within arms reach to my left. This is no place to touch down.

We hover for another moment, the skids perhaps 6 ft above the ridgetop, and a decision is made. Natalia snaps around suddenly, motions to Emory and points out the door. Her body language is clear: “NOW!” Emory looks to me for a split second, and I point him out too. “GO, GO, GO!” But of course we can hear nothing over the rotor’s roar. He unbuckles, steps out onto the skid, drops his pack and scrambles down for the 6 foot jump onto the ridge. Natalia looks back again. I’m next. I do the same on my side, dangling my backpack as low as I can before dropping it, then lowering my own self off the skid and jumping.


natalia's exit

I land clumsily and get myself crouched down as low as possible and as deep as I can back into the ohia copse. The noise and the downdraft are tremendous. I’m not anywhere as far from the helicopter as I’d like to be. The skid drifts 4 or 5 feet just above my head and I try to make myself small. As Natalia’s foot sets down onto the skid, I grab for the little camera in my pocket and manage to snap off a couple shots of her exit from underneath the chopper. Classic.


liko (new leaves) of Metrosideros waialealae

And in another moment its over. The helicopter rolls off to the west and we’re left on the ridgetop in the sunshine, set down deep in the Hawaiian cloud forest and amping on the adrenaline still surging through our veins. We let the energy of the experience wash over us until breathing returns to normal.

Now the energy of the place sets in – a mix of awe, humility, and respect. The power and grandeur of the mountain demands it, like compulsory meditation, absolutely superceding the human ego. Another, longer breath. One feels small here but so very much alive.







emory with his giant backpack


Cyanea fissa, a very cool  native shrub


look mom, no harness  - natalia descends a waterfall


one of my favorites, Scaevola glabra


the heli ride out along Na Pali coast

04 May 2008

Lehua

Our field trips aren’t always into the mountains. Over the past month much of our time was occupied by two trips to Lehua, one of Hawai‘i’s offshore islets. We're headed back this week...


The last surviving pair of Lehua rabbits can no longer be found in the wild. They were put into captivity as part of conservation efforts several years ago. In fact, the same conservation effort nearly wiped out the entire population, all except the two rabbits that will spend their remaining days in a wire hutch in my supervisor’s garage. While a sad story for the animals, it’s a happy one for Lehua, because the rabbits never belonged on Lehua in the first place.

the northwest tip of the islet


Lehua is the largest offshore islet in Hawai‘i. It is the remnant of an ancient volcanic crater now standing 2 miles across and 800 feet high that has slipped halfway into the sea, forming a north-facing crescent island. Lehua lies about 1/2 mile to the north of Ni‘ihau, the last inhabited island of the Hawaiian archipelago about 25 miles west of Kaua‘i. Ni‘ihau is privately owned by a ranching family and is forbidden except for the families of the 200 or so native Hawaiians that still live there. Lehua, however, is owned by the US Coast Guard who have been allowing biologists to study the plants and seabirds on the islet for years.

nw coast of ni‘ihau

sammy the monk seal

The only native animal inhabitants of Lehua are seabirds and Hawaiian monk seals. Rabbits made their debut over a hundred years ago with the foresight of hungry sailors. They reasoned it would be nice to have some game available on the islet in case of a shipwreck. Over the years the rabbits wrought havoc on Lehua’s already sparse vegetation. Recognizing the significance of Lehua as critical habitat for nesting seabirds, the Hawai‘i State Department of Fish and Wildlife had them eradicated about 2 years ago.

hauling gear through the boobies

Although the plants have been recovering since the rabbits’ removal, Lehua is currently dominated by nonnative grasses and shrubs. This is where the National Tropical Botanical Garden has stepped in. As part of a contract with Fish and Widlife, the Garden has outplanted several hundred native Hawaiian plants. The challenge however is that plants are very thirsty when they are trying to establish and as far as Hawaiian islands go, Lehua is extremely dry. Most of the plants are on an irrigation system, so the actual watering of the plants is fairly easy. The tricky part is getting the water to the island. There’s only two options for travel to Lehua: helicopter and tour boat. Being that helicopters cost $1,000 per hour and aren’t very seabird friendly, our boss has opted for the latter.

crew off-loading water jugs onto a surfboard

The tour boat companies have actually been giving biologists rides out to Lehua for years now. There’s no proper landing at the islet, only a couple reef shelfs on the south side so you’ve got to swim in from the boat with your bags and scramble ashore. Otherwise it’s a pretty plush trip. While onboard, you get to play tourist complete with complimentary breakfast, a cruise along the Na Pali coast and whales and dolphins galore. Then after spending a couple days camping on Lehua, there’s lunch and an open bar on the way back. A couple extra mouths to feed and a little show of the biologists landing for the tourists really isn’t a big deal.

Now imagine arriving at the dock at 5:45 AM and greeting your friendly crew with over 100 gallons of water weighing close to 900 lbs, in 5 gallon jugs to load onto the boat. Those biologists suddenly aren’t so cute anymore. But they tolerate us – especially with the heavy handed tip we provide on the way there and back. We help them load and unload the jugs from belowdeck and when we arrive at Lehua a crewmember uses a longboard to swim about 3 jugs at a time from the boat to shore. Its definitely a production but once on island, as I said, its pretty mellow. We use a portable 4 hp water pump to move the water from the shore up into the irrigation tank and aside from a few plants off the system it pretty much takes care of itself.

ridiculous red-footed booby

Exploring the island is fairly amazing, especially now during the seabird breeding season. The first sight to greet you are hundreds of red-footed boobies nesting in the shrubs and squawking in irritation as you pass. The slopes of the crater are also littered with the burrows of wedge-tailed shearwaters which makes walking anywhere on Lehua sometimes feel like a surgical procedure. Further upslope brown boobies nest on the ground and larger burrows are often occupied by red-tailed tropic birds. Over the ridge on the northern slope, the inner side of the crescent, are black-footed and laysan albatrosses cruising the tradewinds like small aircraft and already nursing chicks this time of year.

Back on the south side is base camp – a weatherport with cots and gas stove. The north shore of Ni‘ihau entices you from across the channel to the south with miles of empty, beautiful white sand beaches. And the humpback whales are all but gone now, migrating back towards the Arctic. But during both our Lehua trips in March and April, juveniles and mothers with their calves constantly cruised and breached all around the island.

base camp

condos for wedge-tailed shearwaters

Our first trip over Easter weekend consisted mainly of weeding, watering, and setting rat traps around the native plants. We also explored the Northwest crescent arm, collecting native plant seeds from the only area the rabbits didn’t reach. On our second trip just two weeks ago, Brenda Zahn, a bird biologist on Kaua‘i, accompanied us and we helped her band albatrosses and red-tailed tropicbirds. Pretty darn cute, those albatross chicks - especially when they start barfing fish oil all over you when you grab them for banding. Its gross and the poor guys are losing the lunch for which their parents have been scouring the seas all day. But the benefits outweigh hungry chicks and stinky field clothes - bird banding enables concrete measurements of breeding success and survival of threatened seabirds like the albatrosses nesting here.

a young whipper-snapper

Conservation efforts on Lehua – the banding, the revegetation, the rabbit removal – they’re all for the birds really. Albatross are hit hard by long-line fishing. Both they and the red-footed boobies nest in only three places on the main Hawaiian islands, and Lehua is the only place where they don’t have to contend with dogs and feral cats. Now that the Lehua rabbits are gone, slated next for eradication are the rats, known predators of seabird eggs. While few could argue against planting native vegetation, killing introduced animals is certainly more controversial, certainly the darker side of conservation.

Natalia and Brenda band another one

On the first day of the our most recent trip, we contour along the southern slope of the crater with Brenda to visit a colony of nesting cattle egrets in a kiawe tree. Another modern introduction to the Hawaiian Islands, egrets are also known predators of seabird chicks. Natalia and I came here on our last trip and threw the eggs to the fishes, but didn’t have the heart to do the same with the recently hatched chicks. With years of intimate work with her seabirds, Brenda has no qualms. The helpless chicks from three weeks ago are now running from us on two strong legs. I grab my first one and feel its heart beating in my palm.
“Cervical dislocation,” Brenda yells over to me as she demonstrates by yanking the head and neck of the egret chick in her hands. “This is brutal,” I say to myself.
I take another look at the red-foots nesting in the same tree as the egret colony. I’m here to help, right? Brenda’s onto her third victim already. Before a second thought arises, I yank the egret’s head. The beating heart stops and I throw the body to the sea. Plenty more chicks are scrambling through the kiawe bush. No rabbits, but more dirty work yet to be done.

black-footed albatross and landing gear

waiting for food
sammy's portrait shot