Progress at Pu`u Huluhulu
Kipuka Pu`u Huluhulu is a lush, large hill surrounded by lava from the two volcanoes it lies between, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa on the Big Island. It protrudes from the flat plain around the Saddle Road, one of the only ecosystems that can support a wide array of plants in that area.
The kipuka was the subject of an article in the October 1997 Environment Hawai`i. In that, Pat Thiele, an employee of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Division of Forestry and Wildlife, told of the struggle to eradicate German ivy and other alien plants from the pu`u, while trying to replant natives. “I don’t think we’ll ever get it out,” Thiele said of the German ivy. “My best hope is to select areas where there’s a good chance of native generation if we pull the ivy out.”
Three years later, and I checked up on the state’s progress.
German ivy is a non-poisonous vine that was introduced to Hawai`i in 1909 and infests only the Big Island. Its most concentrated areas are along the Saddle Road, just where Pu`u Huluhulu lies. The staff taking care of the kipuka decided it was the worst pest in the area and focused their efforts on cutting it out of the forest. They would drive up every third weekend of a month, usually with five to six volunteers (on occasion, 30 or more). With scrubby clothes, gloves, clippers and machetes, they would chop down the vines entwined in the native flora.
With these volunteers, especially the West Hawai`i campus of the University of Hawai`i at Hilo, they have succeeded in killing off almost all of the invasive vine. “The vine is now around 90 percent cleared from the kipuka,” Thiele says, but he is still not very optimistic about its total eradication because of the transfer of one of the kipuka’s regulars, Bryan Stevens. Stevens, an employee of the DOFAW’s Natural Area Reserve program, would take volunteers up to the kipuka. He recently moved to Kaua`i, and Thiele is able to visit the kipuka only “once in a while, when I have the time.”
What Thiele needs is volunteer groups with at least six people to schedule a time when they can pull weeds or cut new areas of German ivy. With such help, the kipuka could soon be rid of its longtime invader, and once again be a native forest and refuge for endangered plants and birds.
In addition to the work on German ivy, other improvements have been made to the kipuka. DOFAW workers have laid down stones forming a nice, short trail through the forest and have planted endangered species such as Delissea undulata, a lobelia, Spermolepis hawaiiensis, and Silene lanceolata.
Thiele and his co-workers have put up interpretive signs around the area that told visitors how they were working on removing the German ivy. Unfortunately, some people misunderstood the signs and “helped” out by removing natives.
“We had taken out an area of the ivy and were very pleased to see the native Hawaiian cucumber (Anunu), previously out-competed by the ivy, coming back strong,” Thiele said. “But then some people who read the signs about the eradication of the vine decided to volunteer by themselves and they cut out a lot of the native cucumber vine, mistaking it for its alien competitor.” He asks that visitors to the kipuka please be aware of the need to be careful.
The number to call to volunteer is 808 974-4221.
— Emma Yuen
Volume 11, Number 3 September 2000
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