For the final project in the school year for the Hilo High School club Jr. Greenpeace, we decided to undertake one of the most rewarding activities: planting trees. So, once again, we all boarded a car heading along the winding Saddle Road of the Big Island, climbing up between the two giants of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. Through the bumpy Mana Road we went, past miles of desolate, cattle-grazed grasslands and around stark, dusty cinder cones until we arrived at the Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge on the eastern flank of Mauna Kea.
Baron Horiuchi, one of the refuge’s 10 employees, took our group to see the greenhouse they had built. Inside were tiny specimens of many different kinds of native Hawaiian plants to be cultivated in the refuge, some so endangered that the only places they grow wild are in the refuge. Toward the rear of the greenhouse was a small green sea of 6-inch-tall koa seedlings that were to be planted – our work for the day.
We paired off with another group – members from the Sierra Club – and went to work. One person would punch holes into the ground and the other would plant the small trees inside. To our surprise, it was a very fast process. To plant a tree from start to finish took about a minute and a half. It was a tremendous feeling to have planted bucketfuls of trees with such ease and in such a short amount of time. To make matters even better, we looked at other lines of already planted koa. They looked very healthy and most of them had survived. We were actually planting a forest.
What an affirming prospect!
The land, thousands upon thousands of acres that were originally forested, were now dry hills covered by the alien thorny shrub gorse and the prevalent fountain grass. Through the mist you could see skeletons of old, mangled koa trees, isolated in the grasslands and a favorite food for the cattle. A member of the club pointed out, as we were heading towards the refuge, a tiny square of dense trees far in the distance. That island of dark green was almost a sad thing to see, because it only emphasized how immense and extensive the yellowish-brown ocean of the mountain is, and how almost all was barren.
The members of Hilo High Jr. Greenpeace are few, but they are determined. Every project we embark on solidifies our drive to help the environment. This one, helping to replant a forest and reverse the previous destruction, was especially rewarding. Throughout the long car ride we talked about the importance of trees, perhaps a reaction to our longing to see a healthy tree, one defying the rest of the landscape.
To reach a woodland and expand it was the perfect answer to the desert around us. Within the protective fences we were bringing back an extinct forest in the form of this little oasis of koa.
To say you have put into the earth hundreds of new young trees, full of life, that will outlive us all.
— Emma Yuen
Volume 11, Number 1 July 2000
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