Visiting Hakalau Natural Area Reserve

A few weeks ago on September 13 I had the opportunity to attend the annual Find Your Wild open day high on the slopes of Mauna Kea. This event happens only once a year and is limited to 500 people, but it allows members of the public to access the Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge (part of the Natural Area Reserve System, or NARS) and see the rare plants and birds found there. Since we work in a fellow Natural Area Reserve and know many of the people working at Hakalau, most of us from work went as a group.

There were a variety of events going on over the course of the day, with the mains ones being a several-mile-round-trip hike through the woodland in the process of being restored, a tour of the greenhouse where plants are propagated (though we missed out on that), and lots of booths from various conservation organization around the island and state. Judging by the photography equipment a lot of people were there to see the rare native birds, such as the ʻiʻiwi, ʻapapane, ʻakepa, ʻakiapōlāʻau, and ʻelepaio (and others I'm forgetting). We see those birds occasionally in the Puʻu Makaʻala Natural Area Reserve where we work, but on the older slopes of Mauna Kea where the forest has had more time to turn lava rock into nutritious soil the sheer number of birds we saw was incredible. These birds no longer exist at lower elevations (where most of the island's population lives) due to mosquitoes and the deadly avian malaria they carry, so few people get to see or hear them without taking trips to high-elevation woodlands.

Part of the hike. Other than a few trees the entire area was clear-cut just a few decades a go.

Speaking of plants, we also got to see some rare varieties of those. Some of them appear at Puʻu Makaʻala, but again there were some Mauna Kea-specific species which I hadn't seen before. We got to hear from a conservationist there about one particular plant in the mint family, Phyllostegia brevidans, which was first described in 1862 and then disappeared from the record and was thought extinct for around a hundred and fifty years. Sometime earlier this century a single specimen was found by an exploring conservationist. He took some samples, which took six years to be identified from leaf samples in the Bishop Museum collection, after which he was able to return to the same individual plant to try to collect seeds. The plant was half-dead, with a single bunch of moldy fruit, but the seeds he got (remarkably) sprouted, and with some care and attention (and an ungulate-free enclosure to grow in) the plants were returned to the wild and many individuals are now thriving.

However! P. brevidans was previously pollinated by the nectivorous ʻiʻiwi, whose long, curved bills perfectly fit the plant's long, curved flowers. But its numbers had dropped so low for so long that ʻiʻiwi simply passed it by when it was replanted; they likely hadn't seen any in generations, and had completely lost the part of their cultural knowledge that told them it was edible. Thankfully, after some years they eventually figured it out again, and as of a few years ago are once again feeding from (and pollinating) their long-lost symbiotic flora. I can't tell it nearly as well as I heard it, but it was a truly inspiring success story of conservation.

I couldn't get a good photo of the several ʻiʻiwi I saw, so here's a gorgeous 3D-printed one! (Life-size.)

Overall it was a really interesting experience, and was a great way to see some rare and endangered birds and plants. It's a long drive to get there along Mana Road, but it offers some great views that I hadn't seen before. We'll see how often I get to go again (as it requires signing up before slots fill up), but I enjoyed the experience a lot. A hui hou!

A Hawaiian pie

It has been a very busy month here for me, which is why it's been so long since my last post. Some of the busyness has been pleasant (birthday parties!), some…more neutral (being in a hotel while my apartment building was tented this week), but all of it left me with little downtime or drive to write.

One exciting development is that last week I finally managed to make the pie I've been meaning to since about May! The idea was sparked by a comment from a coworker about how one could theoretically bake a pie using ʻākala (native Hawaiian raspberries) and ʻōhelo (native Hawaiian blueberries). The ʻākala ripen earlier (around May/June), so while I had some in the freezer ready to use for a few months it wasn't until late August/early September than the ʻōhelo really started ripening in significant amounts. Once they did, though, I was able to pick a lot – easily a few cups of berries in a quarter-hour's work. I ended up with so many that I didn't even use them all up making the pie, and will have to find some other use for them…

Thankfully, the pie came out well! I used the recipe I mentioned in my previous post (where I made it with raspberries and blueberries), and only added about a fourth of a cup of additional sugar. It wasn't an especially sweet pie, but it wasn't tart as I had feared the ʻākala would make it. (It's interesting to me how red the filling is – while related to blueberries, ʻōhelo are generally more red or reddish-purple in color.) I ended up making it after a particularly draining day at work (an arduous protocol that involved much tromping through the forest, under a sky that rained off-and-mostly-on all day) so I didn't get too fancy with the crust, but I did scratch the unofficial D20 logo into it. (It was also our last day doing that protocol this year, so it served as a nice celebration for finishing it.)

Anyway, just a quick post today as I'm technically still lodging at the hotel even though my place was cleared for re-entry this morning – the gas company won't come out to turn on the gas until Monday so I don't have any hot water or stove. I've got some interesting photos from visiting the annual Hakalau Natural Area Reserve open day last week, so look forward to those when I finally get a chance to catch my breath (hopefully this week!). A hui hou!