Grazel Caceres, the lead wildlife biologist for Pūlama Lāna‘i, says she and her team work in forests, on mountains and other terrain on Lāna‘i to establish and protect local wildlife so the animal and plant species can survive and flourish.

For example, they keep predators out of an area on Lāna‘i that is one of the most important remaining habitats for ‘ua‘u, an endemic and now endangered seabird also known as the Hawaiian petrel.

Caceres finds ‘ua‘u fascinating and loves their resilience and instinctive nature, and their biological and cultural history.

“They are long-lived birds – 35 years or more – and become lifetime nesting partners. They were useful for voyagers in navigation and were a food source for Hawaiian royalty. Their guano, or excrement, provides nitrogen in their colony areas, which is important for the health of our native forests,” says Caceres.

“They’re easy to study and protect for future generations to experience. It is part of our history that still exists.”

The ‘ua‘u tend to nest in burrows on steep slopes. Despite the challenges, Caceres and her team carefully examine their breeding habits and successful nest hatchings, and observe behavior and seasonal variations that can dictate breeding locations and migration patterns.

They also work with ‘ua‘u kani, better known as wedgetailed shearwater, kāhuli (the Hawaiian tree snail) and ‘īlio holo i ka uaua, the traditional name for Hawaiian monk seals, which translates to “dog that runs in rough water.” Caceres’ team conducts surveys and rehabilitation for those species and traps pests such as stray cats and rats.

Without the work of her and her team, Caceres says, many species might not survive on Lāna‘i.

Though Caceres and her team primarily work with native animals, they also support native plants. “They bring a lot of life to our island and play a big role in keeping our watershed healthy,” says Caceres. “They also provide good ground vegetation for ‘ua‘u.”

She has seen much damage to native habitats from invasive plants such as strawberry guava.

“This tree plant is fast-growing, difficult to control if not done properly, and collects so much of our water to feed itself. Out in the field, they will out-compete the native plants on the landscape,” she says.

Caceres wants everyone to know the impact that plants and animals have on local ecosystems and traditions. Preserving native species not only protects the land but provides connections to Hawaiian culture, roots and history.

“Every native plant or wildlife individual that you see out in the field tells a story because it had importance to the people that inhabited these islands. These resources were key components to survival and their way of life.”

Caceres wants local communities to learn about and participate in conservation and says youth can learn much from hands on exercises.

“Sharing our knowledge about our resources can take many forms, from hosting a formal presentation to just talking story about our work. Allowing youth to be present in the work we do gives them a chance to understand its importance.”

Caceres found her passion for conservation during a high school internship, when she helped remove invasive plants from native species’ habitats. During summers as a teenager, she worked for the conservation nonprofit Kupu and gained experience in habitat control and restoration, predator control, native wildlife monitoring, education and outreach.

“I learned why vegetation clearing and invasive species control was so important; not only to protect our watershed or keep it for the future generation to see, but to also protect and take care of all species that play a role in providing a healthy ecosystem,” she says. “Everything made sense to me.”

Today, she says, she loves seeing the seabirds grow in numbers, native plants flourish and reclaim habitats, and Hawaiian monk seal pups feed and then wean off their mothers. She loves the work, even when it means challenges like an exhausting hike on a humid day.

“I understand that our species are not abundant and without the proper care to protect them, they will likely become extinct. If we lose these species, we will also start to lose our connection to the land, the history that connects to the species that exist and the life that the island depends on.”

Unlike in other parts of the United States, wildfires have not been a longtime feature within Hawai‘i’s ecosystem. But changes in land use, population and climate have escalated fire risk in the Islands, “literally in two generations,” says Andrea “Nani” Barretto. She is a co-executive director at the Hawai‘i Wildfire Management Organization, a nonprofit based in Waimea. “In terms of our behaviors and understanding, we have a lot to catch up on.”

Additionally, fighting fires can be more difficult in Hawai‘i. “It’s not only trying to get resources from the continental U.S., but even sharing resources like an engine truck from island to island,” says Michael Walker, the state’s fire protection forester at the Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Division of Forestry and Wildlife.

However, wildfires “are not like other natural hazards,” says Barretto.

“We can control where wildfires go, unlike hurricanes.” We can also predict where wildfires may travel. The majority of homes are ignited by embers that fly through the air. Piles of leaves that accumulate in certain spots in your yard or on your roof, these are good clues to where wind would spread a fire. The good news is, says Barretto, “There are a lot of proactive steps residents can take ahead of time to protect their homes, yards and neighborhoods from wildfire.”

Firefighting should be seen as the last line of defense, according to Barretto. “There’s a myth that the fire fighters can just come out and take care of it. When a wildland fire turns into a structure-to-structure fire, that is a conflagration, and they won’t be able to keep every home safe. It’s really up to the resident to keep their home and yard fire-resistant. Because wildfires are a new reality; they aren’t going anywhere.”

Here are six ways to fortify your home against wildfires.

1. Harden the First Zone

Image: Getty Images

The first five feet around your home is a crucial zone, says Walker. Since homes are often ignited by ember showers, you want an area where there is nothing for embers to ignite. Envision smooth river rocks and minimal plantings, for example, rather than a bunch of bushes surrounded by tree-bark mulch. Pavers and gravel are other noncombustible options that can be used close to the structure.

2. Schedule Maintenance

Just as we have regular cleaning tasks around the interior of the home, Barretto suggests a weekly tidying of exterior areas. “You want the yard to be lean, clean and green,” she says. That means minimizing fuel sources and keeping what remains moist.

Image: Getty Images

Remove weeds and debris such as dead leaves and branches from your yard, roof, carport and lānai, and clear any vegetation out from under steps and other surfaces. Mow grass to a low height. Keep gutters clean.

Prune low-hanging branches so that nothing is lower than 6 to 10 feet off the ground. “There has been some concern with people having trees in their yard. It’s fine to have trees; it’s how you maintain them,” says Walker. Lower hanging limbs, he explains, are ladder fuels that can spread flames upward.

You don’t want crispy-dry plants, so keep your yard’s irrigation system maintained and active. You can also investigate using drought-resistant plants or xeriscaping to reduce the need for watering.

3. Pick Up Clutter

“A lot of times in Hawai‘i, we have the surfboards, the one-man canoes, the lumber for the projects, and you lean them against the side of the house,” says Nicholas Tanaka. He is a public education officer and fire inspector with the Maui Fire Department’s Fire Prevention Bureau.

“Removing the fuel from the area around your house is a best defense,” says Tanaka. That includes items like propane tanks or stacked firewood.

Limit combustibles like outdoor furniture and planters in those first 5 feet around the home, suggests Barretto. Minimize the use of wood lawn furniture and swing sets and leave plenty of space between them. Table umbrellas, and accessories like shades, screens and even natural fiber doormats, can catch fire too. Select materials that are more fire-resistant, like a rubber doormat.

4. Stay Mindful of Materials

Whether constructing a new home, or renovating, building materials matter. Go for glass skylights, for example, rather than plastic or fiberglass versions that might melt if embers land on them. Choose aluminum gutters over plastic versions, and for fences, use metal rather than wood.

Window size is a factor too, according to Tanaka. “Bigger windows will break faster in heat because of thermal expansion.” Invest in good double-paned windows, he suggests.

Also, any hollow spaces, such as eaves, soffits (the connecting material beneath eaves) and vents should be covered with a 1/8-inch mesh, to repel embers.

Image: Getty Images

Building a wildfire-resistant home can be done for roughly the same construction costs as a typical home, and many such homes have additional benefits such as reduced maintenance or longer lifespan, according to research conducted by Headwaters Economics, a Montana-based nonprofit research group focused on community development and land management.

Fire-resistant roofing options include composition shingle, metal, clay or cement tiles; for exterior walls, fire-resistant building materials include cement, plaster, stucco and masonry.

Retrofitting an existing home can be more costly than building new, with components such as the roof and windows adding significant expense, according to Headwaters’ research.

However, “if you are doing an upgrade to your home, that is a good opportunity to invest in wildfire safety, because you can kill two birds with one stone,” says Barretto.

Your top priority should be a fire-resistant roof, as the large surface area makes it particularly vulnerable to catching fire.

5. Be Ready To Go

Image: Getty Images

“The best defense against what people are concerned about – structural ignition – is nothing you need to buy,” says Tanaka. “We want to be prepared and it can be as simple as a go bag. Have some water, a couple changes of clothes, medications and important documents in something you can easily evacuate from your house,” he says.

He adds that mental preparation and acceptance is important, too. “Be prepared to say goodbye to what you know,” he says, “and only take what you really need to have.”

6. Create Community

Walker encourages people to join a Firewise program. “It’s a nationwide program where you can get your community assessed; it’s a great way for folks to get to know each other, discover risks, and find out who is elderly or disabled, who might need help with their lawn maintenance or evacuating in an emergency. You can protect your community as a whole.”

You can, as a community, also figure out evacuation routes. Ideally, plan for at least two routes out of the neighborhood.

On Hawai‘i Island, Erin Harner is a Firewise team leader for the Pu‘u Anahulu community, a Kailua-Kona neighborhood of 150 homes. She became certified for the volunteer position in 2020.

She and her fellow volunteers typically throw one event a month, such as “chipper day,” where neighbors were asked to collect dry leaves and dead branches, and a chipper company came through and turned the waste into mulch.

Another month, they hired a big dumpster for green waste, and neighbors piled it high. “Pulpy stuff, like bananas, or agave, or trimmings from bushes,” says Harner. “We filled that dumpster up three times. People love it. You find something they need and want, and then they will participate.”

Sometimes, the assistance is more personal, like the time volunteers got together to help an elderly resident clear an overgrown vacant lot next to her home. And the volunteer fire department has assisted with training.

Harner has also received training from the Hawai‘i Wildfire Management Organization’s Wildfire Home Risk Assessor Program, which helps homeowners spot risk potential. “Nani got about 50 people to show up in Kona from four islands; we had two days of training, and then Zoom meetings afterward to continue the education,” Harner says. The free risk assessments take about 30 to 60 minutes; request one at the HWMO’s website.

“I’m telling my neighbors, who I play pickleball with, ‘Let me come do an assessment,’ ” she says.

She notes that after a large fire, there’s a lot of attention and concern about the topic, but then community interest may dwindle.

“We had a big fire behind our community a few years ago,” she says, “and people were freaking out. About 100 people came to our next meeting. The last meeting we had, there were only 20 people there.”

As Barretto notes, “There is a role for everyone in fire prevention. Fire is complex, and 99% of wildfires are started by people. It’s a human issue – a human disaster. The only way to solve it is through the e orts of humans.”

“What makes us truly unique is we’re making our product straight from the juice of the cane,” he says. “We’re not using molasses, we’re not bringing products in – it is straight from farm to bottle.”

Kō Hana’s farm in Hale‘iwa has grown from one-quarter of an acre 10 years ago to over 350 acres today, according to Kyle Reutner, GM of the distillery.

Reutner says turning sugar cane into rum can take about 15 months or more depending on the flavor. The distillery’s top seller is its cacao and honey-infused rum called Kokoleka.

Dewald says the farm has over 34 varieties of sugar cane. When workers harvest the cane, he says, they try to use regenerative practices like leaving plant matter in the fields to preserve nutrients instead of burning them.

“We don’t just grow sugar cane and treat it as a crop,” says Dewald. “We grow it for the future of agriculture in Hawai‘i.”

This year’s REPI Challenge projects will bring millions in environmental project funding to Hawai‘i.

REPI is the Department of Defense’s Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration Program. It’s designed to establish collaborative partnerships with state and local governments, as well as private conservation organizations, to protect and restore natural resources and the environment, and to establish compatible land uses near military installations and ranges.

The seven new REPI Challenge projects announced for Hawai‘i in fiscal year 2024 focus on habitat preservation, reforestation, watershed protection, flood and wildfire mitigation, and food and water security.

“The military has some of the most amazing open spaces, natural lands and habitats with species on them, but their training can have an impact on them,” says Mark Fox, the Pacific liaison for REPI. “So, one example of how to help mitigate this is to help manage the species outside the boundary of the installation.”

REPI benefits those serving in the military, too, as well as their families. “The military installation is a part of the community,” says Fox. “It needs basic municipal services, but also the environmental ‘services’ like clean air, fresh water and food – ideally, food grown locally.”

The military contributes funding though its personnel do not work directly on the projects. “But the military service and especially the installation’s staff work very closely with the outside partners to develop the projects,” says Fox. Together, he says, they collaborate on solutions that both promote military readiness and benefit the environment.

Origins of REPI

The nationwide REPI Program started in 2003 and has been supporting projects in Hawai‘i since 2005. When REPI began, the idea was to create buffers. Let’s say there was a piece of land adjacent to a military installation, and future development on that land could restrict the installation’s training or activities. REPI would keep that space open by helping a government or nonprofit purchase that land, either outright or as a conservation easement in which the landowner gives up the right to development.

“It’s important to note the DOD does not want to own the property,” says Fox. “They want the land owned by a state natural resource agency, or a local one, or a private nonprofit, or a land trust. This is not about the DOD owning more land.”

A “buffer” can also involve land that is not next to a military installation. “Let’s say there was an endangered bird species affected,” says Fox. “The program might contribute to buy a piece of land to secure a habitat and conservation area that is farther away from the base.”

The National Defense Authorization Act, the overarching legislation that originally created REPI, has gradually expanded the program over the years so it can support the management of open spaces, not just purchases. “It can fund open space, parks, agricultural land, range land,” says Fox. “Recently, the REPI Program was expanded again to include issues of climate resilience.”

About 10 years ago, REPI added the REPI Challenge, paving the way for the Pentagon’s nonmilitary partners to spearhead project developments, Fox says. But whether an initiative is suggested by the military or a partner, the projects and results are similar. For 2024, “regular” REPI has garnered $14.5 million for Hawai‘i projects; another $10.2 million has been made available through REPI Challenge funding.

With the military turning its attention to the Indo-Pacific region, and toward China especially, there is increased interest in investing in Hawai‘i’s military presence and readiness, says Fox.

Complex Projects

“The complexities of executing these partnerships, the behind-the-scenes work being done, is incredible,” says Leah Rothbaum, environmental protection and REPI specialist at Marine Corps Base Hawai‘i. The base has a partnership with the Hawai‘i Land Trust to protect the adjacent Waikalua fishponds complex via a perpetual conservation easement.

“There used to be about 40 different fishponds in Kāne‘ohe Bay,” says Rothbaum. “These stone structures were an ingenious use of natural systems such as tides and currents. They were often filled in and built over during development, and so much culture and understanding of climate resilience and coastal change were lost. Yet after 800 years, some remain and are being carefully stewarded, and are neighbors to the Marine base. The environment affects all of us. It doesn’t matter which side of a fence you are on. It’s the closest project to us, and an opportunity to really engage with our neighbors and have an opportunity to connect on a daily basis.”

On Hawai‘i Island, the Parker Ranch Maunakea Reforestation Project aims to restore 3,300 acres of remnant native forest and pasturelands.

“We look forward to partnering with Parker Ranch on their project that will benefit Pōhakuloa Training Area and the Hawai‘i Island community by increasing watershed functionality, improving fuels management and wildfire response, and expanding forest habitat,” says Tiana Lackey, natural resource biologist at the training area.

“The efforts of our environmental staff at Pōhakuloa Training Area, working closely with our partners from Parker Ranch through the REPI Challenge awards, is nothing short of superb,” says Lt. Col. Tim Alvarado, commander of U.S. Army Garrison Pōhakuloa Training Area. “The blending of training readiness and environmental management on and off base on Hawai‘i Island paves the way for soldiers and Army units to conduct realistic, challenging and tough training and ultimately brings added security and stability to the theater.”

At Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, the military and its partners have received over $28 million of regular REPI funding in 2024 to protect and restore over 100,000 acres of natural resources and lands throughout the state, reports Susie Fong, the joint base’s REPI program manager. In fiscal years 2022 and 2023, the funds helped to restore upland watersheds, aquifers and native forests; transplant native species from nurseries; eradicate non-native species; and construct two state base-yard facilities.

In one example from 2019, Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam partnered with the nonprofit Ma‘o Organic Farms so the farm could acquire 236 acres in Lualualei in perpetuity.

2024’s Seven Repi Challenge Projects

Since the first REPI Challenge project launch in Hawai‘i in 2021, there have been 15 funded projects using $40.3 million in REPI Program funds and $55.5 million in partner contributions.

Multiple Efforts

Some projects involve multiple military branches and islands. For example, the Detection and Management of High-Impact Aquatic and Terrestrial Invasive Species affects Pacific Missile Range Facility Barking Sands on Kaua‘i, Marine Corps Base Hawai‘i on O‘ahu, and Pōhakuloa Training Area on Hawai‘i Island. Community partners include UH, the Department of Land and Natural Resources Division of Aquatic Resources, and the U.S. Forest Service.

Funding from REPI has helped expand biocontrol work in Kāne‘ohe Bay, explains Elizabeth Monaghan, an aquatic invasive species biologist with the Division of Aquatic Resources. “We are using native sea urchins, a natural predator of the algae, to control invasive algae. It’s a really good grazer.”

Raising the sea urchins in a hatchery on Sand Island required the creation of 10 new jobs, says Monaghan. Also, “resilient reefs have a major impact. The reefs support the economy through tourism, provide seafood from nearshore fisheries, and they help protect coastal homes. We do a lot of community outreach, and generally get a positive reaction to the urchin biocontrol project. People like the idea of a natural solution, and growing our endemic species is really important to them.”

She added that REPI funds pay for the creation of an O‘ahu-based rapid response coordinator position. This person can address coral disease outbreaks or bleaching throughout the state, or deal with the aftermath of big storms. She also says the partnership is working on environmental DNA technology that can screen for invasive species threats.

Planting Seeds for the Future

The U.S. Army Garrison Hawai‘i, in partnership with the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, received $2.2 million in REPI funds. The partnership with the Office of Hawaiian Affairs will support and expand their revegetation and education programs for the area surrounding the Kūkaniloko birthstones in Wahiawā, according to Kapua Kawelo, natural resource manager with U.S. Army Garrison Hawai‘i.

The Office of Hawaiian Affairs received $2.2 million from the Defense Department to support and expand its revegetation and education programs for the area around the Kūkaniloko birthstones in Wahiawā. | Photo: Odeelo Dayondon

“The establishment of a native seed orchard will scale up production of native seeds for use in habitat restoration and revegetation following wildfire,” Kawelo says. “In this changing climate and era of catastrophic wildfires, building a native seed supply is essential.”

Of the REPI Challenge awards, Col. Steve McGunegle, commander at U.S. Army Garrison Hawai‘i, says “the community will clearly see the benefits of the preservation and management work done by our environmental specialists working side by side with local experts.”

The REPI Challenge grants, he says, “demonstrate the balance we must attain between readiness in the theater and environmental protection.”

On the hottest day ever recorded in Honolulu – Aug. 31, 2019 – a group of volunteers organized by the Honolulu Office of Climate Change, Sustainability and Resiliency attached heat sensors to their cars and collected readings around O‘ahu. The project’s timing just happened to coincide with the oppressive weather, brought on by a record-breaking marine heat wave that was cooking up the waters around the Islands.

The volunteers recorded startling discrepancies. While the air temperature hit a high of 95 degrees Fahrenheit, the “heat index,” which also factors in humidity, reached 107.3 degrees, logged at the Waimalu Plaza shopping center between 3 and 4 p.m. That was more than 22 degrees higher than the coolest temperature on O‘ahu recorded that hour.

This commercial stretch of ‘Aiea is one of the city’s many “urban heat islands,” where buildings, rooftops and pavement absorb the sunlight and re-radiate it as heat. Few trees are around to cool the area by blocking and reflecting the sun, or, in a process called evapotranspiration, releasing water into the atmosphere through their leaves.

And there’s another layer of heat to consider. The heat index is measured in shade. But the tropical sun can dramatically heat surfaces, making a sunbaked sidewalk or parking lot significantly hotter.

John DeLay, an associate professor of geography and environment at Honolulu Community College, measured temperatures in direct sunlight and under the thick canopy of a monkeypod tree at Makalapa Neighborhood Park near Pearl Harbor. While the air temperatures in the shade and sun were nearly identical, surfaces in the shade were 12 degrees cooler. “That’s why you’re feeling a significant difference in your body temperature,” he says.

About 1 million people live on O‘ahu, most in developed areas that are prone to the urban heat-island effect. Pockets of high heat and low vegetation can be found all along the coastal plains of O‘ahu, including in Pearl City, Waipahu, Kapolei, and Wai‘anae.

In the core of Honolulu, low-lying neighborhoods get dangerously hot, as shown by the dark red areas of the O‘ahu Community Heat Map. At these hot spots – stretching from the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport to residential areas hugging Wai‘alae Avenue in Kaimukī – afternoon temperatures on that extreme heat day in 2019 reached 99.7 degrees and higher.

Jammed with apartment buildings and tightly packed houses, many of the trees and gardens in these dense urban areas have been cut down and paved over for parking. Municipal “street trees,” wedged into small plots of dirt along sidewalks, can have short lives and stunted growth, with little chance of developing the thick, sprawling canopies of mature shower trees blossoming in a park.

Tree canopy maps created in 2022 by the state’s urban forestry program, Kaulunani, along with the U.S. Forest Service, show that in neighborhoods such as Kalihi, McCully-Mō‘ili‘ili, Kapahulu and the makai side of Waikīkī, and parts of Kaimukī and Pālolo, tree-canopy coverage is less than 8% and as low as 2% – far less than the city’s goal of 35% coverage. Honolulu’s overall canopy coverage is estimated at 20%.

These neighborhoods are also some of the most disadvantaged parts of the city, as shown on the multilayered canopy map depicting income levels. Median household incomes in many of these areas fall in the lowest ranges – from $25,000 to $57,000 or from $57,000 to $76,000 – according to data from the 2015-2020 American Community Survey.

But travel south to north, into the cooler, often rainier and greener neighborhoods at higher elevations, and income levels tend to rise precipitously, a historical pattern that began in the 19th century as those with means moved out of the hot, congested town that had coalesced around the harbor.

Heat Is a Public Health Crisis

Those over-paved areas that don’t have sufficient tree canopy are going to be the hottest,” Brad Romine of the Honolulu Climate Change Commission says. Romine, a coastal resilience specialist with the UH Sea Grant College Program and deputy director of the Pacific Islands Climate Adaptation Science Center, has worked with the five-member commission to develop guidelines that track the impact of urban heat and recommend ways for city and state officials to deal with it.

Average temperatures in Hawai‘i have risen 2.6 degrees Fahrenheit since 1950, and about 3.5 degrees at the Honolulu airport, according to Matthew Gonser, chief resilience officer and executive director of the Honolulu Office of Climate Change, Sustainability and Resiliency. Much of that rise has been in the past decade, and near-future projections show it will get hotter.

“We have seen a marked increase in hot days and warm nights. … It’s one of the most conspicuous, in-our-face results of using dirty fossil energy and the resulting climate changes.” – Matthew Gonser

In a heat wave like the one in 2019, when trade winds collapse and humidity rises, the heat can be punishing on the body.

Dr. Diana Felton, head of the state Department of Health’s Communicable Diseases and Public Health Nursing Division, says that vulnerable people will bear the brunt of the impact of intense heat: the elderly and children, outdoor workers, people with chronic health conditions, and those who can’t afford air conditioning or access health care.

Felton is a lead member of a new DOH working group that’s studying the local health impacts of extreme heat, floods, drought, wildfires, mosquito-borne illnesses and five other climate threats illustrated on a circular chart that Felton calls, with dark humor, “the pinwheel of death.”

The Climate Change and Health Working Group was formed to expand climate-change planning beyond sea-level rise and protecting infrastructure, she says. “No one was talking about the disease and injury that is going to come from climate change, and has actually already come.”

Felton is working with the group to gather evidence of how heat is impacting health in Hawai‘i, and is still sifting through data. But one fact is well documented across the globe: Fatalities rise when the heat index reaches 95 degrees – which can be air temperature of 90 degrees and humidity of 50%, for example – for an extended period.

“The longer the heat wave goes on, you have increased mortality,” explained Dr. Elizabeth Keifer, an assistant clinical professor at UH Mānoa’s John A. Burns School of Medicine, at a seminar in January.

Romine says that urban Honolulu could experience intolerable heat in just a few decades. “I think we could surpass 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming by mid-century, and that’s only going to exacerbate heat waves,” he says. “What that means is more frequent and severe heat emergencies.”

At Honolulu’s Division of Urban Forestry, part of the Department of Parks and Recreation, new administrator Roxanne Adams says her groundskeepers have switched to long-sleeved, high-visibility Dri-Fit uniforms that don’t require the extra layer of a safety vest. She plans to buy cooling neck wraps to supplement the ice water that work crews carry in their trucks.

Roxanne Adams, administrator of Honolulu Department of Parks and Recreation’s Division of Urban Forestry, is responsible for trees in public parks and rights of-way. It’s a big job that requires residents to help: “If neighbors are watching the trees in front of their house, the chances of survival increases greatly. | Photo: Aaron Yoshino

“They notice the heat. We all notice that it’s hotter and drier than when we were kids,” Adams says.

“We’re not going crazy when we say, oh my gosh, it’s not as comfortable to sleep anymore,” Gonser echoes. “We have seen a marked increase in hot days and warm nights. … It’s one of the most conspicuous, in-our-face results of using dirty fossil energy and the resulting climate changes.”

Federal Funds to Expand the Canopy

In November, $42.6 million in competitive federal grants, funded by the Inflation Reduction Act and administered by the U.S. Forest Service, was awarded to Hawai‘i groups to provide “equitable access to trees.” In raw dollars, only California, New York and Oregon received more money than Hawai‘i, and in terms of funding per resident, Hawai‘i topped the list.

“It just shows how ready people are to take on this kind of work. … I feel like in five years we’re going to look back and say, wow, this was an amazing time,” says Heather McMillen, an urban and community forester.

McMillen heads the state’s Kaulunani program, an urban and community forestry initiative at the state Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Division of Forestry and Wildlife. Her small office distributes grant money, does outreach and education, and partners with the city, state and nonprofit sector to improve the health and viability of Hawai‘i’s trees.

Kaulunani received a $2 million competitive grant from the U.S. Forest Service, and is launching a project to plant shade trees at select Title 1 schools, where at least 47% of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals.

McMillen says that if you look at all public school campuses, and extend the footprint to include a half-mile buffer around the school, only 21% would meet the minimum goal of 30% tree canopy. But among the 67% of schools that are designated Title 1, or 197 schools, just 14% have these fuller canopies – an example of disparities in who has access to the cooling benefits of trees.

The project also involves creating a school forester position to work with teachers and staff on maintaining the trees. “Planting the trees is the easy part. Helping them grow to their full potential … is a much longer-term commitment,” McMillen says.

Heather McMillen, coordinator of the state Kaulunani community and urban forestry program, says: “Trees are not beautification. Trees aren’t nice to do. This is critical infrastructure, and it needs to be part of the planning process. | Photo: Aaron Yoshino

Other groups receiving funding include the Akaka Foundation for Tropical Forests and the Friends of Amy B. H. Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden, both on Hawai‘i Island, and various county, state and UH Mānoa projects.

The largest U.S. Forest Service award in Hawai‘i, at $20 million, went to Kupu, a 17-year-old nonprofit that has trained thousands of young people, many from disadvantaged backgrounds, for jobs in conservation and natural resource management. In the process, its teams have cleared about 150,000 acres of invasive species and planted 1.5 million native specimens.

CEO and co-founder John Leong explains that most of the $20 million grant will be re-granted to other groups in Hawai‘i and the Pacific region over the next five years, with Kupu providing technical expertise. The application process is expected to open in the second quarter of 2024.

In the world of urban forestry, the Kupu grant is a huge amount of money. For comparison, Hawai‘i’s 2023 state allocation for urban and community forestry from the U.S. Forest Service is $1.5 million. Many people interviewed for this article say they’re eager to find out who will win sub-grants from Kupu and what projects will be funded.

The broad theme of the federal grant is to expand the tree canopy and cool down places where people live, but the finer details require projects to benefit underserved areas. Projects linked to creating green jobs and engaging communities in planning and decision-making are also prioritized.

The O‘ahu community heat map identifying urban “hot spots” was developed by the Honolulu Office of Climate Change, Sustainability and Resiliency. It’s based on peak afternoon temperatures recorded on Aug. 31, 2019. The full islandwide map can be found at tinyurl.com/oahuheatmap

Kupu’s mission lands at the intersection of all those goals. Leong says it will seek out organizations that will bring trees to “under-resourced” areas, both urban and rural, and build up a workforce of arborists and conservation workers.

He’s especially focused on training and educating, both for those doing the work and the broader community that benefits from more trees, more jobs, and an understanding of how climate change will impact them and what they can do about it.

“When you educate a young person, you’re really impacting about seven people: their parents, their grandparents and their siblings,” he says.

In the fight against climate change, “We have all the right stuff in our Islands to be a model for the rest of the world,” Leong says. “But we also have to engage communities at the grassroots level, empower them and give them the resources they need on the ground to be successful. That’s really what this grant is about.”

Why Trees Are Important

In 2016, the nonprofit Smart Trees Pacific released the dispiriting results of its urban tree-canopy analysis. Nearly 5% of the tree canopy, or about 76,600 trees, had disappeared in a four year span. The consensus among experts is that things haven’t improved since then.

Trees are cut to make way for larger houses or more parking space for multifamily homes. They’re cut because they’re old, and then not replaced, or because it’s easier to remove a tree that’s interfering with a sidewalk or utility project than to work around it. They’re cut because a homeowner is worried about liability. And many times, they’re cut because someone wants a better view or just can’t deal with the rubbish.

“It’s death by a thousand cuts,” says McMillen from the state’s Kaulunani program. No one tree-removal project accounted for a significant portion of the loss, she says, and it’s happening on both public and private land.

Gonser, from the city’s climate change office, says street trees are sometimes destroyed maliciously. That’s an added insult when you consider all the nurturing required in a tree’s first few years, before it’s planted in the ground, and “it’s vandalism of a city asset and infrastructure.”

Trees can take years, even decades, to get large enough for their benefits to dramatically overshadow their costs. “They cost money to maintain, as do sidewalks, as do stoplights, as do fire hydrants. But unlike that kind of infrastructure, trees are the only kind of infrastructure that increase in value over time,” McMillen says.

An analysis conducted for the city’s Division of Urban Forestry found that for every dollar spent on Honolulu’s trees, the city gets back $3 in benefits. Estimates in many other cities show even more positive cost-benefit ratios.

On the global level, trees are called the “lungs of the world” for their ability to pull enormous quantities of carbon dioxide from the air, which they store in their trunks and branches. With the help of the sun, trees then release oxygen through their leaves. A dramatic NASA time-lapse video shows the forests of the Northern Hemisphere sucking carbon dioxide from the air through photosynthesis as trillions of leaves open in the spring and summer.

The lungs metaphor goes deeper as well. For people who feel connected to trees, or just aware of their contributions, trees don’t just make life on Earth possible, they make it worth living.

Trees provide shade and cooling. They clean the air by removing pollutants, and provide food for people and habitats for birds. They protect against flooding by absorbing stormwater and help prevent beach erosion.

Trees reduce noise in the city, and traffic calms along tree-lined streets. In hot climates, their shade makes a city more walkable and bikeable.

And there are intangible benefits too, McMillen says: Trees are the “keepers of memories” for anyone who spent time playing in them as a child, and they can strengthen social connections among neighbors sharing fruit from backyard trees. They help define a place and remind us where we are on this planet.

Trees can even change cortisol levels, heart rates, breathing and mood. At the Tropical Landscape and Human Interaction Lab at UH Mānoa, students’ physiological, “preconscious” responses were captured as they viewed images of trees. Lush, green canopies triggered states of relaxation while images of canopies with their tops lopped off had the opposite effect, says Andy Kaufman, an associate professor of tropical plant and soil sciences and a landscape specialist.

For all their benefits, trees and other vegetation are often taken for granted and treated as disposable. “Nature is so important to us, but landscaping is the first thing to be cut and the last to be addressed,” says Kaufman, who founded and runs the interaction lab. “We should embrace living in nature,” not work against it, he says.

Kaufman has seen many examples of trees chain-sawed at the top, which lets disease and pests enter the tree and weakens the branches that grow back from the stumps. He’s seen trees clear-cut from an ‘Ewa school’s campus, a “complete streets” project in ‘Aiea that failed to include trees, new buildings constructed with only a tiny strip for plantings, and – in an especially egregious case – miles of oleanders along the Moanalua Freeway ripped out and replaced with concrete.

The biggest challenge, Kaulunani’s McMillen explains, is to get policymakers, developers, homeowners and anyone who cares about their neighborhood to change the way they think about trees.

“Trees are not beautification. Trees aren’t nice to do,” McMillen says. “This is critical infrastructure, and it needs to be part of the planning process, not an additional thing to do if you have funds or if you have the inclination.”

Where Trees Are Needed Most

The City and County of Honolulu’s Division of Urban Forestry can trace its roots to the Shade Tree Commission, which started in 1922 to deal with the ongoing issue of how to cool a tropical city, now getting hotter with climate change. “I would love for our city to be a city in the forest. I’m a firm believer that trees make everything look better, cleaner and more friendly,” says Adams, the division’s administrator.

Before joining the division last year, she spent two decades overseeing the more than 4,000 trees at UH Mānoa. The campus is an accredited arboretum and includes what’s probably the nation’s largest baobab tree, which is at least 110 years old.

Her new role overseeing the estimated 250,000 trees in city and county parks and public rights-of-way offers a vastly larger canvas for planting – the entire island of O‘ahu – but also far more challenges.

At the moment, Adams’ division is finishing a complete inventory of all city trees, which will let her team know exactly what trees they’re responsible for, which ones need attention first and where to plant next. The project, funded in 2022 with $300,000 in federal assistance, will be done before the end of June.

She’s also been focusing on filling vacancies that have accumulated over the past decade. Adams says her team is nearly fully staffed to do the hard physical labor of digging holes and planting trees, many of which start from seeds in the division’s nursery at Kapi‘olani Regional Park.

Once the tree inventory is complete, Adams says her goal will be to plant where shade is needed most, such as in Kalihi, Mō‘ili‘ili, Kapahulu and Kaimukī, and outward to ‘Ewa, Nānākuli and Wai‘anae.

“We’re definitely looking at equity and will be planting in those neighborhoods,” Adams says.

Kaulunani and U.S. Forest Service maps track tree canopy coverage and heat vulnerability, and also data such as median family incomes in a particular area, the presence of impervious surfaces, the prevalence of asthma and cardiovascular disease, the number of residents by census tracts and Native Hawaiian populations. That fuller picture of which neighborhoods are being left behind – economically, environmentally, medically – seems to be shifting the conversation about where to focus efforts.

Gonser, from the city’s climate change office, says that, over time, patterns in how a community is designed and developed “can exacerbate increasing temperatures and make it hotter in places. There really are disparities or inequities as a result of these practices. … We’re trying to make sure that we bring focused, strategic attention to those neighborhoods.”

People living in treeless, low-income areas on O’ahu, such as this stretch of Mō’ili’ili, suffer most in heatwaves.

 

In contrast, monkeypod trees line Kapi’olani Boulevard from Atkinson Drive to South Street, offering shade and cooling to pedestrians and residents.

While planting in an older neighborhood full of hardened surfaces and densely packed housing requires more effort than in more remote areas, among urban foresters, anything is possible. Their often-repeated motto is “the right tree in the right place with the right care.”

In unshaded neighborhoods, for example, sections of concrete can be removed from sidewalks to make space for plantings. Clusters of small street trees can be planted together to create a bigger canopy. For something more ambitious, car lanes could be used for planting large canopy trees, such as the monkeypods that line Kapi‘olani Boulevard from Atkinson Drive to South Street – a grove that’s been designated as one of Hawai‘i’s “exceptional trees.”

While trees can pose difficulties, those difficulties are surmountable, Kaufman from UH Mānoa says. “There are always ways to restructure roads. You can always work around trees. … Green infrastructure should be business as usual in every municipality.”

He and a team of researchers recently found that using Silva Cells – a modular, suspended pavement system developed a decade ago – is the most promising way to grow healthy street trees in Hawai‘i. Unlike other methods they tested, the roots stayed contained rather than sprawling out and up, damaging infrastructure. He says the long-term tests were the first ever conducted in a tropical urban environment, where trees and their roots grow year-round.

It’s not a magic bullet, Kaufman explains. But better planting techniques could help expand the canopy in some of the city’s oldest, most crowded neighborhoods, where working-class and middle-class people began moving more than a century ago, as new tram lines opened up new possibilities.

The Old Suburbs

Honolulu, like everywhere, has been defined by shifting migration and development. Through much of its history, one trend seemed clear: wealthier people tended to congregate in the hills or near the water, while the less affluent settled in the low-lying, hotter middle.

The first hint of a city started in the early 1800s, as whalers began stopping here for parts, provisions and rest, and a makeshift harbor settlement emerged to meet demand. By 1845, the capital of the Kingdom of Hawai‘i had officially moved from Lahaina to a now bustling Honolulu.

Wealthy ali‘i and white settlers were the first to leave the core, says William Chapman, the interim dean of UH Mānoa’s School of Architecture and a professor of American studies, with expertise in historical preservation. They fanned out for more space, less disease and often cooler climates.

Queen Ka‘ahumanu, for example, regularly retreated to her Mānoa house, near the present-day Waioli Kitchen and Bake Shop, where she died in 1832. In 1853, the German physician William Hillebrand built a house and planted trees at the site of Foster Botanical Garden.

In 1882, Anna Rice Cooke and Charles Montague Cooke, both members of missionary families, built a home on Beretania Street, on the site where the Honolulu Museum of Art is now. When electric streetcars were introduced in 1901, and the first automobiles traversed the city’s roads, large estates were constructed in the hills of Nu‘uanu Valley. Some are now occupied by foreign consulates.

After the kingdom was illegally overthrown by white businessmen in 1893, the global sugar and pineapple trade accelerated, along with immigration. Contract laborers first arrived from China in the mid-1800s, followed by people from Japan, Korea, Europe, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.

Kaka‘ako in the late 1800s was filled with small houses for artisans, stevedores and service workers, many of whom were Native Hawaiian, says Chapman. Working-class and artisan-class residents began branching out into Kalihi and Liliha.

Honolulu Tree Canopy Map, 2021. Prepared by EarthDefine, U.S. Forest Service, NOAA and Hawai‘i Division of Forestry and Wildlife.

Streetcars opened up neighborhoods far beyond the harbor area. Many Japanese and Chinese workers, freed from contract labor that was deemed illegal in 1900, migrated east along King Street, renting or buying modest wooden houses stretching all the way to the rice fields of Mō‘ili‘ili.

By the 1920s, satellite communities as far away as Kapahulu and Kaimukī were developed as the rail lines expanded, while along the coast, affluent people had moved to the Diamond Head area and were expanding into Kāhala.

John Rosa, an associate professor of history at UH Mānoa, says his great-grandfather on the Chinese side of his family built a house on 16th Avenue during Kaimukī’s first wave of development. In the 1950s, his grandparents moved to a house in the breezy mountains above the neighborhood, in Maunalani Heights, where he grew up.

Many prosperous families had moved mauka into Mānoa Valley and Nu‘uanu, where whites-only “tacit agreements,” sometimes written into covenants governing new subdivisions, kept others out, explains Chapman.

These rules also determined the physical environment. “There were a lot of restrictions,” Chapman says. “It had to be a substantial lot. Residents weren’t allowed to build walls over a certain height. They couldn’t open a gambling den or a bar or a restaurant.”

The racial elements of the exclusionary practices were dropped after World War II, and the cooler, leafier neighborhoods opened to a mixture of people. Among the new Mānoa residents were many upwardly mobile Japanese residents who had gone to UH Mānoa on the federal GI Bill, Rosa says.

After the war, and before zoning laws were enacted in 1961, high-rise apartments were constructed amid the single-family houses of Waikīkī and Makiki. Eventually, cars brought people to the new postwar suburbs of ‘Āina Haina and Hawai‘i Kai, and then even farther from the city.

Today, some of Honolulu’s old working-class, mixed-use neighborhoods can feel improvised, a mismatched collection of small wooden bungalows, motel-style walk-ups with open corridors, taller “bare-bones” buildings with interior hallways, and their posher cousins, the newer high-rise condos.

“Planners aren’t the ones that actually build cities. It’s the developers,” Chapman says. “It’s like a rowboat and a tanker. The tanker is the developers, and they pretty well decide what’s going to happen.”

For example, setback regulations, which started in 1969, are still just 5 feet. “You’re supposed to put planting in the setback, but they’re often not very robust,” he says. “Developers probably see vegetation and trees as a luxury add-on. And if they don’t need to do it, they won’t do it.”

Chapman sees the old neighborhoods as “transitional,” with new housing set to rise in places like Isenberg Street in Mō‘ili‘ili. There, a 23-story tower is under development by the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, and on Kapi‘olani Boulevard, the Kobayashi Group is constructing a 43-story condo.

But with no requirements for trees, shade, green walls or green roofs – on new high-rise projects or throughout the older neighborhoods – these urban heat islands will only get hotter.

Greening the City

Community groups have been focused on trees and shade since at least 1912, when the newly formed Outdoor Circle, a volunteer women’s group, planted 28 monkeypod trees in Honolulu’s ‘A‘ala Park. Those trees still stand today.

The organization has spent the subsequent 112 years planting and protecting trees in public spaces. In 2017, the Outdoor Circle helped found Trees for Honolulu’s Future, a nonprofit group dedicated to increasing the urban tree canopy, advocating for laws and policies, and educating the public.

The group’s president, Daniel Dinell, spearheaded the educational component of the Makalapa Neighborhood Park project, which quantified the impact of shade on how we experience heat. Young “heat island investigators” from the underserved area nearby learned to measure trees, read temperature sensors and test hypotheses.

Among the organization’s many projects, Dinell is also leading a group of “citizen foresters” to map the trees in Kaimukī and locate places to plant, and he’s working with the city to get trees in the ground. One of the big obstacles to new street trees, he says, is getting homeowners and renters to water the trees in their early years, when they’re still weak.

“Just activating the community is key to the goal of increasing the tree canopy,” Dinell says. Government agencies can’t do it alone, Adams, the head of Honolulu’s Urban Forestry Division, says. “It’s critical that our neighborhoods, our friends, our family chip in and help us get this done. It’s a kōkua thing. If neighbors are watching the trees in front of their house, the chances of survival increase greatly.”

Residents can contact Adams’ division to request a street tree, at 808-971-7151 or DUF@honolulu.gov. The city selects hardy trees that won’t become invasive pests; most native trees aren’t able to survive in harsh urban settings with vehicle pollutants and poor soils.

On Hawai‘i’s Arbor Day, about 4,000 trees, including fruit trees, are given away across the Islands. The next annual event, organized by Kaulunani and government, nonprofit and community partners, is scheduled for Nov. 2.

At the Honolulu Office of Climate Change, Sustainability and Resiliency, an ongoing effort to plant 100,000 trees on O‘ahu has passed the halfway mark. The agency’s online map tracks city plantings as well as trees planted on private property and larger restoration efforts.

The project, says Gonser, the office’s executive director, “was intended to be a campaign of awareness, and to celebrate those that are the true champions out in the community.” He says many plantings have not been recorded yet.

All of these efforts are steps in the right direction, and indications that more people and organizations recognize the value of trees in a time of rising heat and sweltering cities.

Globally, 2023 was by far the warmest year on record, according to NOAA. And while the heat affects everyone, it’s much worse in urban heat islands bereft of trees. And it’s particularly punishing for people without air conditioning.

“We’re already facing a lot of heat in these urban areas. It’s a problem we need to fix now,” says Romine, of the Climate Change Commission. “And if we start addressing it now, it’ll make these communities safer, more comfortable and more equitable, now and for the future.”

Over 7,000 species of marine plants and animals live in Hawai‘i’s waters, and for snorkelers, some are easier to spot than others.

Before diving any deeper, a few guidelines: Avoid any contact with marine life, especially with coral, which are fragile living creatures that can be damaged by your touch. That’s actually the policy at Hanauma Bay and other marine life conservation districts, says Gavin Iwai, outreach program coordinator for the Hanauma Bay Education Program.

“Everything is protected here. So, there’s no fi shing, no taking shells, sand fl owers, especially no touching the animals. So leaving everything in its place,” Iwai says.

Katie Hearther, the Hanauma Bay program’s educational specialist, says she hopes that people take these principles “to any other future reefs that they might visit, even if it’s outside of Hawai‘i.”

Here are the top 10 marine life species you are most likely to encounter while snorkeling along local shorelines.

1: Rock-Boring Urchin (‘Ina Kea)

The most common urchin in Hawai‘i can be found near shallow rocky shores exposed to constant wave action and on reef fl ats mingled with oblong urchins.

2: Banded Urchin (Wana)

The most common long-spined urchin in Hawai‘i can be found on rocky shores. Be careful: Wana have venomous spines that are easily broken.

3: Black Sea Cucumber (Loli Okuhi Kuhi)

Hawai‘i’s most common large sea cucumber can be found exposed on sandy reefs, in the shallows and at depths down to 100 feet. When the loli okuhi kuhi is disturbed, it emits white sticky threads.

4: Convict Tang (Manini)

These fish can be found alone or in large schools, usually near shallow reef slopes as they feed on algae reef flats. This Hawaiian species has a small black bar under its pectoral fin.

5. Hawaiian Whitespotted Toby

This fish does not have a Hawaiian name though it is endemic to the Islands. They are shy but are also known to sneak up on other fish and bite their fins. You can usually find these fish among the rubble on the seabed.

6: Sharpnose Mullet (Uouoa)

This fish also tends to be found at the bottom of the ocean, where it grazes on algae. They swim in fast moving schools and have sharp, upturned mouths.

7: Reef Triggerfish (Humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa)

This is the official state fish of Hawai‘i. Pua‘a means pig, describing the fish’s nose, which resembles a pig’s snout. They feed on sea urchins, so their eyes are far back on their bodies to avoid being poked by the urchins’ spines. When they are nesting, they sometimes chase or attack snorkelers who get too close; it’s best to calmly back off when this happens. Don’t worry: Their bite is not dangerous.

8: Saddle Wrasse (Hīnāea Lauwili)

The most abundant wrasse in Hawai‘i live on the rubble bottom of the ocean. The super-males of the species have a white bar that can appear behind their orange saddle.

9: Blackspot Sergeant (Kūpīpī)

This damselfish, commonly found in surge zones and inside reefs, can be identified by a black spot near their tails. Males are darker colored with defined white vertical bars when they are courting or defending eggs.

10: Yellowstripe Goatfish (Weke‘ā)

You can identify this fish by the black spot near its middle and yellow strip across its body. Weke‘ā are most commonly seen hovering in middle depths or resting on the sand. Its two barbels – the slender, whiskerlike sensory organs near its mouth – are used to find food buried in the sand.

On Jan. 1, 2021, Hawai‘i banned the sale and distribution of sunscreens that contain the chemicals oxybenzone and octinoxate after studies showed the chemicals harmed Hawai‘i’s coral and other marine life.

“Here at Hanauma, when people come in, I usually ask them, ‘Did you buy it (sunscreen) in Hawai‘i?’ ” Iwai says. “And if they did, then typically, they should be OK, because they ban any sale of sunscreen that has those types of ingredients.”

At the Hanauma Bay gift shop, visitors can exchange sunscreen purchased outside the Islands for reef-safe sunscreen for half off the price. “We live in such a special place,” Hearther says. “We’re the most isolated island chain in the world. And because of that, about 1 in 4 marine species will be endemic here or found nowhere else in the world, which is really special.”

“The east side of Maui is aligned in a northwest-southeast direction, in a way almost perpendicular to the prevailing northeast-east trade winds,” says Pao-Shin Chu, a professor of meteorology at UH Mānoa and Hawai‘i’s state climatologist.

He says that as cumulus cloud clusters approach the windward slope of Haleakalā, “they are forced to rise and produce cooling, saturation, clouds and rains.” It’s called an orographic rainfall effect, which happens when air masses flow over high topography.

The Big Bog, at an elevation of 5,400 feet, experiences an average of 31.6 feet of rainfall a year. Chu says that average annual total, and all the rainfall figures in this story, are based on various data sources covering 70 years, from 1950 to 2019.

The second wettest spots in Hawai‘i are Kawaikini and Wai‘ale‘ale, mountain summits in central Kaua‘i that are near each other. Chu says both get 29.8 feet of rain a year.

Kaua‘i is the northernmost island in the Hawaiian chain, which means “it is more susceptible to midlatitude weather systems such as a cold front, Kona storm or upper-level low than other islands,” Chu says.

And because of Kaua‘i’s round shape, the island is vulnerable to weather systems from any direction. The island is also below the trade wind inversion.

That results in the island being “subjected to weather systems from all directions – from north, from south, from east, from west – and they all converge into the center of Kaua‘i, so it makes this area very wet,” Chu says.

Wet Spots on Hawai’i Island and O’ahu

Hawai‘i Island’s wettest spot is in the Hilo Watershed Reserve, which has an average of 23.6 feet of annual rainfall. The Wailuku River begins within the reserve and feeds numerous waterfalls, including the popular tourist attraction Waiānuenue (Rainbow Falls).

Hawai‘i Island is home to two tall mountains, Maunaloa and Maunakea, which create lots of orographic rainfall effects.

O‘ahu’s wettest spot is in the ‘Ewa Forest Reserve, on the windward slope of the Ko‘olau range near Punalu‘u.

Although O‘ahu has a similar orientation as East Maui, “the Ko‘olau Range is not as tall and massive as Haleakalā, so the interaction between trade winds and island topography is perhaps less pronounced as Big Bog on Maui,” Chu says. Nonetheless, that wet spot in the ‘Ewa Forest Reserve gets an average annual rainfall of 21.2 feet.

Chu also listed the wettest towns on each of the four most populous islands and ranked them by their mean annual rainfall from 1951 to 2022.

• Hawai‘i Island: Hilo, 138.83 inches
• Kaua‘i: Līhu‘e, 49.53 inches
• O‘ahu: Waimānalo, 37.63 inches
• Maui: Kahului, 20.13 inches

Here are a few facts you won’t find in any travel guide about Hawai‘i: There are 83,000 cesspools across the state, and these substandard systems discharge an average of 52 million gallons of untreated sewage per day into the ground and groundwater. That’s like a massive sewage spill every day.

In fact, Hawai‘i has more cesspools per capita than any other state and it was the last state to ban them, by more than three decades.

The toxic stew of poo, pee, pharmaceuticals and other contaminants sent into the ground, seeps into the groundwater and often ends up in the ocean, where it harms nearshore coral and can sicken swimmers.

In recent years, a coalition of scientists, citizens and environmental groups set out to change sanitation policies and create public awareness. The state Legislature passed several laws to reduce sewage pollution: Act 120 banned the construction of new cesspools (2016); Act 125 mandated the conversion of all cesspools to approved sanitation systems by 2050 (2017); and Act 132 created the Cesspool Conversion Working Group (2018).

It seemed like progress was being made. After four years of meetings, the working group submitted its final report to the Legislature in 2022 about the best ways to convert cesspools and find funding to help homeowners with the high cost of conversion. An omnibus bill, HB 1396, supported several of the group’s recommendations and different versions were passed by the House and Senate, but the measure died in conference committee behind closed doors.

“Disappointed is an understatement, let me put it that way,” Sen. Mike Gabbard, chair of the Senate Agriculture and Environment Committee, told Civil Beat in August. “Lots of different people … put their heart and their soul into this thing. It’s not like this is a manini thing. It’s a huge problem we have, and it’s affecting all of us.”

Gabbard said advocates would try again next year to pass the bill.

To understand the problem requires a deep dive, and while the ocean may look clear and blue from a distance, new research into land-based sources of pollution makes it clear that all is not well in the coral kingdom.

The Problems With Cesspools

Cesspools are basically holes in the ground, and their untreated sewage seeps into our groundwater, streams, fishponds and nearshore areas. That pollution contains many harmful waterborne pathogens that can cause gastrointestinal illnesses whose symptoms include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomachache, and fever in humans.

Sewage-related pathogens in our groundwater can also contaminate drinking water sources. One Department of Health study revealed that 50% of the samples from private drinking-water wells in Hawaiian Paradise Park on Hawai‘i Island showed signs of fecal indicator bacteria.

A 2018 DOH study found elevated rates of nitrogen in the Upcountry Maui groundwater, and this can lead to illnesses like “blue baby syndrome,” a potentially fatal reduction in blood oxygen in infants. EPA and academic studies have revealed links between higher levels of nitrogen from cesspools and elevated rates of bladder and other cancers.

Long Island, New York, is the only place with more cesspools than Hawai‘i and the resulting contamination has led to costly and harmful algal blooms, massive fish kills and the collapse of the area’s shellfish industry.

A groundbreaking paper just published in the scientific journal Nature suggests that increasing land-based sources of pollution and decreasing herbivore fish populations are two of the biggest stressors on the survival of Hawai‘i’s reefs, especially during and after coral bleaching events.

The land-based sources of pollution mainly consist of stormwater runoff, sedimentation and the nutrient loading of nitrogen and phosphorus from agriculture and wastewater pollution. Together, they wreak havoc on Hawai‘i’s nearshore ecosystems and coral reefs. This is especially concerning because current El Niño conditions could cause another massive coral bleaching event like the one in 2014-2015, when Hawai‘i lost more than 25% of the area that living coral reefs previously covered.

One piece of good news is a new program called ‘Āko‘ako‘a, which means both “coral” and “to assemble” in the Hawaiian language. The program focuses on restoring corals along the 120 miles of reefs off the west coast of Hawai‘i Island. Funding for this ambitious undertaking comes from Arizona State University, the Dorrance Family Foundation, the state Division of Aquatic Resources and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The $25 million initiative is led by Greg Asner, director of Arizona State’s Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science. Asner is also on the faculty of ASU’s School of Ocean Futures and has helped the university make a big splash in Hawai‘i.

Along with that, Asner is a senior author of the new Nature paper and the managing director of the Allen Coral Atlas, an online map of all the world’s coral reefs. Armed with decades of research, he is now in the process of assembling and coordinating a team of coral reef restorers.

A former deep-sea diver with the U.S. Navy, Asner is based on Hawai‘i Island and has spent much of his life monitoring coral reefs from air, land and sea. Since 1998, he and his team at the Global Airborne Observatory have used planes, satellites and high-tech instruments to monitor and diagnose damage to reefs. It’s a daunting task, especially with the cascading threats from climate change, rising temperatures, overdevelopment of coastal areas and land-based sources of pollution.

Greg Asner leads a $25 million initiative to restore corals along 120 miles of reefs off the west coast of Hawai‘i Island. | Photo: courtesy of Greg Asner/Arizona State University

Flying along the coastline in his highly modified twin-turbo prop aircraft, Asner can see huge patches of macro algae growing off West Hawai‘i’s coast. In contrast to the harmful algal blooms that grow on the water’s surface off Florida, this kind of algae grows on the seafloor, fueled by excessive nutrients from agricultural runoff and wastewater. And the rapidly spreading invasive macro algae is seriously damaging the coral reefs off West Hawai‘i.

“What we know about wastewater is that it increases nitrate concentrations in seawater, and that nitrate stimulates the growth of macro algae,” Asner says. This creates a vicious cycle when combined with overfishing and decreasing populations of herbivore fish that normally eat the algae. Without enough herbivore fish to eat them, the seaweeds grow until they smother the reefs. And with the added stressors of marine heat waves and the chronic cocktail of nutrients, Hawai‘i’s reefs are more prone to coral bleaching and collapse.

The Value of Coral Reefs

Known as the rainforests of the sea, coral reefs are beautifully complex ecosystems. A quarter of all known ocean species inhabit these coral kingdoms, yet they only cover 1% of the ocean. They are extremely valuable in providing food, jobs and recreational income, and they help to protect coastal areas against storms, flooding and rising sea levels. A report by the U.S. Geological Survey estimates Hawai‘i’s coral reefs are worth more than $863 million a year.

Culturally, they are priceless. In the Kumulipo, Hawai‘i’s creation chant, the coral polyp, or ko‘a, is the first organism created and one of the key building blocks for all forms of life in the Islands. “These reefs are fundamental to the cultural identity of Hawai‘i,” says Asner. “They are literally linked through generations of cultural identity.”

Cultural engagement and leadership are key parts of the ‘Āko‘ako‘a program. Asner has been working with such Native Hawaiian leaders as Cindi Punihaole, director of the Kahalu‘u Bay Education Center on Hawai‘i Island, on blending modern science and ancient Indigenous wisdom. “We can combine kilo (sustained and careful environmental observation) with experimental science,” Punihaole says, “to develop innovative ways to preserve and restore precious ecosystems and share findings with other sites throughout the Pacific and beyond.”

With its shallow, protected coral reef, Kahalu‘u Bay acts as a marine nursery for corals and fish that can replenish other fisheries along the coastline. “Unfortunately, the safe and shallow nature of Kahalu‘u Bay is also one of its biggest threats,” Punihaole says. “Over the last several decades, the natural and cultural resources of the park have been degraded by an increase in several chronic stressors, including the unmanaged impact of poor water quality from nearby cesspools and increased runoff from development.”

From his airborne lab, Asner sees the damage to the coral reefs along the Kailua-Kona coastline. “There are very large areas of severe macro algae, and those tend to be more common near these areas of development,” he says. “The macro algal cover along Ali‘i Drive in Kona is pretty bad. But when we get to Kahalu‘u, it lights up on our screens with macro algal cover.”

Global Airborne Observatory’s map shows the percentage of live coral cover at Mā‘alaea Bay on Maui in 2019. | Coral Map: courtesy of hawaiicoral.org

The ‘Āko‘ako‘a program has the funding for reef restoration work, but Asner says his team has to be careful about where it focuses its efforts. “When it comes to reef restoration, $25 million sounds like a lot of money, but we have to be practical. There are areas of reef that have declined so far that the framework, the carbonate framework that makes a reef have structure, is failing. As the leader of ‘Āko‘ako‘a, it would be unwise to put all of my eggs in areas where the outcome is likely to be unsuccessful.”

Asner says the program will prioritize its efforts and funding for coral reef restoration on areas that would be graded as “B’s and C’s” on a report card. “For the areas that are D’s and F’s, we cannot put a lot into them,” he says.

He mentions the community of Puakō, which has wrestled with wastewater pollution from cesspools and other individual wastewater systems for decades. The area was once home to pristine corals, but now Asner says its reefs are in the D to F category. “It has really declined,” he says. “There’s a data set that shows in 1970, when I was 2 years old, the reef had around 70% coral cover, and now it’s somewhere around 7%.”

The challenge is how to improve these hot spots of coral decline and find ways to reduce the nutrient loading from cesspools and septic systems, as well as sedimentation from stormwater runoff and rapidly growing residential and commercial developments.

Hot Spots

Mā‘alaea Bay on Maui is another area where the coral reef cover has declined dramatically over the last 50 years. Peter Cannon, a fifth-generation kama‘āina, recalls swimming in the bay as a boy. He says it was like diving into an aquarium with brightly colored corals and fish swimming all around him. But those tropical fish and pristine reefs faded from sight as large condo buildings sprang up along the coast.

The partially treated wastewater from the condo systems was pumped into injection wells and eventually percolated into the bay through underground springs. Nutrients from the wastewater and sediments from stormwater runoff gradually led to a deterioration of water quality and a near collapse of the coral reef system. Now, Cannon says, “It’s a dead zone.” According to the EPA, Mā‘alaea is one of 34 “impaired bodies” of water across the state.

Not ready to give up on his beloved bay and reefs, Cannon has gathered a team to fight for better wastewater treatment. The Mā‘alaea team has developed plans for a decentralized treatment system that will produce high quality water and biochar to be used for irrigation and landscaping. The coalition is currently working with Maui County and Mayor Richard Bissen’s administration to create the proposed Mā‘alaea Regional Wastewater Reclamation System. The plant would reuse all of the liquids and solids and be a model of wastewater recycling for the rest of the state.

Despite declines in Puakō, Mā‘alaea and other areas, Asner says, “The good news is that in Hawai‘i, especially on the Big Island, we have lots of hot spots of high quality reef left.” He refers to these areas as “reference reefs,” where the coral cover is up to 80%-95%. “Those are our biological arks at this point. They are holding most of the biodiversity for the West Hawai‘i reef system.”

In Asner’s home community of Miloli‘i, rapid development is transforming the landscape and creating hazards for the area’s corals and the newly established Community Based Subsistence Fishing Area. About 200 homes have been built in this remote community on the South Kona coast, and 700 more lots could be developed in the coming decade. The area has a number of cesspools, but most of the homes there have traditional septic systems embedded in lava rock. Unfortunately, these traditional individual wastewater systems don’t provide enough treatment or denitrification to protect the reefs.

One solution being discussed in Miloli‘i is to connect the homes to a Pressurized Liquid Only Sewer system. The PreLOS model includes a small collection tank at each home that pumps liquid wastewater through small PVC pipes that are buried 1-2 feet beneath the surface. These pipes convey the effluent to a decentralized treatment facility that can produce clean, recycled water, which is desperately needed in dry areas like Miloli‘i.

Diagram of a Pressurized Liquid Only Sewer system (PreLOS). | Illustration: courtesy of Orenco Water

“The solutions have to be wastewater treatment systems that do denitrification. It’s a straight line between the science and the solution,” Asner says. “People are going to have to figure out how to decentralize wastewater treatment and get it moving in subdivisions that are growing fast. In South Kona alone, there is an explosion of development.”

Heather Kimball, chair of the Hawai‘i County Council, is working with Asner to find practical solutions to protect valuable reefs. She says, “There are three things we can do: Provide incentives to connect (homes) to existing wastewater treatment systems; encourage transition to on-site treatment systems that remove nutrients as part of their function; and look at installing smaller multi-household distributed systems.”

Kimball hopes to get support from OSCER, Hawai‘i County’s new Office of Sustainability, Climate, Equity and Resilience. “OSCER’s kuleana will include both natural resource protection, as well as looking for opportunities to save energy and expand reuse with treated wastewater,” she says. The treated water can be reused for irrigation, landscaping and other uses.

The High Cost of Conversion

The biggest challenge is how to fund the conversion of 83,000 cesspools across the state. In Hawai‘i, conversion costs range between $30,000 and $50,000 per home. The estimated total cost would be about $3 billion to $4 billion, and it’s not clear who would pay those bills.

At the state level, the Hawai‘i Department of Health has been working on a pilot program with the EPA to give counties access to forgivable federal loans through the State Revolving Fund program to help with the costs of converting their cesspools. “The counties will pass these funds in the form of grants to homeowners for cesspool upgrades,” says Sina Pruder, the Wastewater Branch chief. “DOH is committed to providing up to $1 million to each county in fiscal year 2024 for their respective pass-through programs.”

Currently, DOH can only offer the forgivable loans from the State Revolving Funds directly to the counties, but for the last two years, the counties haven’t been able to figure out how to process these funds for homeowners. One solution would be to amend the state’s Intended Use Plan so eligible nonprofits can access the revolving funds to help homeowners with the conversion process.

The revolving funds pilot program is a good start, but the EPA and DOH will need to increase that initial funding of $1 million for each county dramatically to cover the cost of replacing cesspools across Hawai‘i. In 2022, the state passed Act 153 to offer rebates of up to $20,000 to help homeowners with the costs of conversion. Demand was so great that applicants depleted the $5 million fund in less than a week.

When the Cesspool Conversion Working Group delivered its final report in 2022, it included a list of recommendations to the state Legislature. Two of the top recommendations included creating a new cesspool section at DOH and establishing earlier deadlines for priority areas where cesspools pose significant health and environmental risks. A cesspool section would streamline the permitting process, and earlier deadlines would increase the rate of conversions. The current rate is fewer than 300 per year, but that will need to increase to 3,000 per year to meet the state mandate to convert all cesspools by 2050. But after not passing any bills this year related to the working group’s recommendations, some legislators seem to want to continue kicking the can down the road. Meanwhile, new research shows time is running out.

Who is responsible for cleaning up this mess: the state or the counties? The counties are in charge of municipal sewer systems, but the state oversees permitting of all individual wastewater systems, including cesspools. Traditional gravity sewer lines are expensive (over $1 million per mile) and building them blocks roads for months at a time, so they are unfeasible for remote, rural communities. But the counties could work with the state to create local, decentralized systems like the one planned for Mā‘alaea to treat and reuse wastewater.

In the end, we will all have to work together to solve Hawai‘i’s massive sanitation problems. That includes the state and the counties, federal agencies and local nonprofits, scientists and concerned citizens.

The upsides include economic opportunities for workforce development, like the new Work-4-Water program to train workers on Maui and Hawai‘i Island in the rapidly growing wastewater industry. Gov. Josh Green says that converting cesspools “is an incredible opportunity for us to protect our water and environment and simultaneously create a new industry and hundreds of high-paying jobs.”

The federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the federal Inflation Reduction Act provide large amounts of grants for infrastructure improvements, especially in poor, rural and disadvantaged areas.

“I view federal grant opportunities like this as a way to jump-start a new area of economic development in the green jobs space,” Green says. “We shouldn’t pass it up.”

Hawai‘i’s government agencies must apply for these grants or lose a once-in-a-generation opportunity to access vast federal infrastructure funding to clean up the Islands’ waste.

Assembling People to Protect The Reefs

Along with building a new coral propagation and reef restoration facility in Kailua-Kona, Greg Asner says the ‘Āko‘ako‘a program will collaborate with government agencies and offer “multimodal education.” The program seeks to educate decision-makers and the public about the importance of protecting our coral reefs.

Members of the Cesspool Conversion Working Group have offered to continue their volunteer work and to help implement their list of recommendations, but so far the state and counties have not acted on those recommendations. Often, state and county agencies work in silos and don’t include local nonprofits and community groups in their efforts. But Kathy Ho, deputy director for Environmental Health at the state DOH, suggests that “the state can leverage existing partnerships with trusted community organizations and other stakeholders to conduct outreach focusing on the protection of our coral reefs by reducing wastewater and nutrient pollution from cesspools.”

DLNR’s Division of Aquatic Resources is working with Asner on community outreach for the new ‘Āko‘ako‘a program. The division is also trying to increase herbivore fish populations through its Holomua Marine Initiative. “Holomua aims to help align and coordinate place-based work being done to reduce land-based sources of pollution with marine management actions so that these efforts can work to complement each other,” says the Division of Aquatic Resources’ Luna Kekoa.

Photo: courtesy of Greg Asner/Arizona State University

A new organization called Fish Pono – Save Our Reefs is on a similar mission to educate decision-makers and fishers about the dire need to limit the overfishing of reef fish. As one of the founders of FishPono.org, Mark Hixon, a marine biologist at UH Mānoa, says overfishing is a hard challenge to overcome. Few of those in power, including politicians and the fishing industry, he says, understand or want to acknowledge the critical link between healthy herbivore populations and healthy coral reefs.

Because coral reefs are the living foundation and building blocks of life in the Islands, we would do well to protect them. Referring to the new paper in Nature, Asner says: “As complex as it is written, the story is really simple and straightforward. It’s also very actionable. The paper is not saying, ‘Oh, well, there’s no hope.’ It’s saying, ‘Wait a minute, we have a major role to play on land in how these coral reefs are doing.’ ”

Improving Hawai‘i’s sanitation practices will play a key role in the health and survival of our reefs. “It’s a hallmark of a good society to have access to effective sanitation,” says The Nature Center’s Kim Falinski, who also worked on the Nature paper. “Technologies are available to reduce those impacts, and it’s worth it to protect our reef and coasts.”

Now, Hawai‘i’s policymakers need to weigh the costs of improving the Islands’ sanitation systems with the value of its coral reefs and coastal areas. Once they agree it’s worth it, the transformational process of converting cesspools, reducing sewage pollution and protecting the health of Hawai‘i’s coral reefs can begin.

Stuart Coleman is a public speaker, freelance writer and the author of three books, including “Eddie Would Go.” After working as the Hawai‘i manager of the Surfrider Foundation, Coleman became co-founder and executive director of the nonprofit WAI: Wastewater Alternatives & Innovations. He also served as a member of the Cesspool Conversion Working Group.

Kona coffee, pineapples and macadamia nuts have become such iconic Hawaiian commodities, it’s easy to forget none are native species. They, along with plumeria, liliko‘i and other plants, were introduced to the Islands in the 19th and early 20th centuries. 

They are different from plants brought to Hawai‘i by the first Polynesian settlers, known as canoe plants, including kalo (taro), ‘awa (kava) and niu (coconut). And those are different from native Hawaiian species and species endemic to the Islands – endemic meaning they are found nowhere else in the world.  

Photo: courtesy of Emily States

Today, some local business owners are shifting the spotlight toward endemic and native plants – lāʻau kamaʻāina – and canoe plants. One of them is Emily States, who started her business Kaulumaika after she and her husband went shopping in search of Hawaiian themed baby clothes for their first born.  

“They all had a plethora of commercialized Hawaiian things like pineapples, monstera and English idioms,” States recalls. “But we couldn’t find clothes just with ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i or native Hawaiian plants and animals.” This prompted States to design her original “Kuu Opihi” print for a onesie she handmade for their baby.  

When people began asking them where they could buy their own, Emily and her husband ran with the idea and opened their online store. Kaulumaika now sells fabric, bedding, stationary and more. “We do hours of research before designing and releasing products because we are passionate about appropriate representation of what a ‘Hawaiian design’ is.” 

Photo: courtesy of Emily States

Another local business owner is Kea Peters, a Native Hawaiian artist from ‘Ewa Beach. She runs Kākou Collective, an online store that sells apparel, stationery and other items featuring Peters’ Hawaiian-inspired designs. 

Naupaka, a Unique Species

She gives one example: “Hawai‘i is known for its beaches, but not so much the native plants that live on them. I thought it was really cool to find so many native and endemic species on the beach, like naupaka … a very unique species of plants.” 

Planting native species can help to counter their rapid rates of extinction, says horticulturist Rick Barboza, who alongside longtime friend and business partner Matt Schirman, runs two nurseries on O‘ahu called Hui Kū Maoli Ola that specialize in native Hawaiian plants. They also work on habitat restoration and rehabilitation projects. 

“We were the endemic capital (of the world), which you would think we would be proud of. But instead, we dropped the ball and now Hawai‘i’s got the title of extinction capital of the world,” he says. 

A fungal disease known as Rapid ʻŌhiʻa Death is particularly alarming. “Over 100,000 acres of ʻōhiʻa lehua trees, which are endemic, have already died because of ROD,” Barboza says. 

“They’re arguably the most important Hawaiian plant. ʻŌhiʻa lehua are one of the first plants to come up after a lava flow, so they begin the whole process of turning volcanoes into soil and help the rock breakdown process so other native species can thrive,” he says. Almost all native forest birds and snails – many of which are on the brink of extinction – also rely on the plant as they eat its nectar, flowers, and leaves. 

Mālama ʻāina – taking care of the land and sea – is a fundamental aspect of Hawaiian culture. Under this guiding principle, it is our kuleana to protect native flora and fauna that still exist.  

“There’s a lack of knowledge about this, so there are fewer conversations about it,” says Peters. “I want to hold the space for it. And that’s kind of what the difference is, that we have to just create and cultivate space to have those important conversations, so it’s not completely gone or lost.” 

Endemic Capital of the World

The Hawaiian archipelago is one of the most isolated land masses in the world, so it’s no wonder our islands became the endemic capital of the world. Native plants came to Hawai‘i naturally, in one of three ways, easily remembered as the three W’s: wings, wind and waves. A staggering 90% of the native species in Hawai‘i are endemic. That’s over 10,000 endemic species. 

Species become endemic by evolving in isolated ecosystems over millennia, which results in the development of unique traits. The Hawaiian white hibiscus, for example, is the only hibiscus variety in the world known to have acquired a fragrance naturally. 

Peters finds inspiration in Hawaiian culture, flora and fauna, but says on her website that she avoids stereotypical imagery. 

“Many times when people think of Hawai‘i (especially those not from here), the first thing that comes to mind is the beach, perhaps waterfalls, rainbows, and probably hula. Nothing against these subjects at all because they are part of Hawai‘i, but they are not the first ideas I go with because their story is already well told.” 

Hence her focus on native and endemic species like naupaka, which has several practical uses. It is one of many native plants used in la‘au lapa‘au – the tradition of Hawaiian herbal healing. The sap from its leaves and fruit contains the chemical compounds saponin and coumarin, which can be used to treat minor wounds, skin allergies, and eye irritation and inflammation. 

“The naupaka has a white berry that can be used if you get stung by a Portuguese man-of-war,” explains Peters. “Put that on there immediately.”  

Barboza says there’s a lot of misinformation about la‘au lapa‘au and that some people are simply doing it wrong. “People that practice la‘au lapa‘au today, I would say 80% or more of the plants they utilize for la‘au lapa‘au are introduced and some of them are actually super invasive.”  

He advises la‘au lapa‘au practitioners to do their research and only use native Hawaiian and canoe plants. He believes that if you are following a different culture’s traditional medicine, make sure you are calling it by the correct name and are not using invasive plants.  

“Countless species of plants sold routinely in Hawai’i bear Hawaiian (or Hawaiian sounding) names but are anything but Hawaiian. In fact, many are invasive and actually do significant harm to our fragile native ecosystems upon introduction into the wild.”