Makauwahi Cave Reserve is now closed until further notice. For details, click here.

For current information regarding this site, call +1-(808)-245-3678 or email info@grovefarm.com

Many Nene or Hawaiian Geese have taken up residence in the native plant and wetland restorations created by MCR staff and volunteers. This project was carried out, under county, state, federal, and private foundation support, in the abandoned limestone quarry adjacent to the cave. (Photo by Lida Pigott Burney).

A new study of wetlands throughout the state, aimed at setting planning priorities ( Strategic Plan for Hawai’i Wetlands ) rated the wetlands at Makauwahi Cave Reserve as the eighth highest priority for restoration and preservation in the entire state. Restorations we have carried out near the cave on abandoned limestone quarrying lands have become a major attractant to all five of the endangered native waterfowl. Among these, the Ne-ne or Hawaiian Goose has especially thrived, nesting in the native plant restorations and grazing, in flocks of two dozen or more, in the adjacent restored uplands.

The US Fire Administrator, Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell of FEMA, gets an explanation of the workings of an N5 Sensor deployed to detect wildfires near Makauwahi Cave, from engineer Brian Thomson of N5 Sensors.
(Photo by Lida Pigott Burney)

Major advances in science and science applications continue to develop at Makauwahi Cave, as they have since the inception of research there in 1992. Publications in historical fire ecology from the cave sediments and other sites we studied around Kaua`i have seen renewed interest since last year’s tragic wildfires on Maui. Thinking about wildfire again led us to ask what other states and nations were doing to improve wildfire detection. In the fall of 2023, we used equipment loaned to us by N5 Sensors of Rockville, Maryland, to install a prototype system with these sensors, beginning near the cave and including sites in Poipu and Koloa towns. We demonstrated this state-of-the-art wildfire sensor system at the Hawaii Fire Chiefs’ Conference in November, 2023. Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell, the U.S. Fire Administrator for FEMA, toured Makauwahi Cave Reserve with us to see the detectors at work and learn about fire-wise landscaping in Hawaii. She announced at the meeting that FEMA was donating 80 of these sensors to fire departments throughout the Hawaiian Islands. These are now deployed, including 20 more on Kaua`i in addition to our original five sensors, the first in the state.

In the course of decommissioning our extensive plant propagation facility in October, 2024, we also donated hundreds of native and Polynesian plants to a wide range of conservation organizations and schools on the island, for use in their own fire-wise landscaping projects. Meanwhile, a new scientific publication has come out using satellite data from the cave reserve’s restored forests and other sites to calibrate and evaluate LANDSAT imagery of native, non-native, and restored dry forests in the state.

Photo by Billie Dawson

It is only natural that after working at Makauwahi Cave for over three decades, Lida and I would look back and ask ourselves if we would have done it all knowing that things would not turn out well with the landlord, Grove Farm Company. For details, click here, but most readers know the broad outlines already: now under new leadership, Grove Farm put us on a month-to-month lease arrangement whereby we could no longer ask for grant funding, so we had to close down. We thought we had worked out a good transition plan with Grove Farm staff, but none of those staff are working there now and the new leadership has made it clear that they are not interested in working with us. Although the site has had 60-80,000 visitors per year over the last decade, free public tours every day of the year, and the maintenance program that we managed to fund with grants and donations, are no more. What Grove Farm has planned for the property is still not clear.

So…was it worth it? Read More…

By David Burney

Recent oblique aerial drone imagery showing Makauwahi Cave Reserve with new quarry restorations in background, including three new ponds, native dry forest restorations, and new perimeter fence to exclude pigs and dogs. (Photo by Graham Talaber)

Over the centuries, Makauwahi Cave has recorded all kinds of disasters in its sediment layers. Abundant evidence for hurricanes, a tsunami, floods, extinction events, warfare, and erosion are all there. What will the sediments of our time record? Perhaps some archaeologist of the future will uncover there a thin layer containing…face masks and hand sanitizer!

Since March of 2020, life at the cave has been under the powerful thumb of the COVID-19 pandemic. So far, it has not stopped progress at the cave in research, conservation, or public outreach. Like virtually every place on earth, visitation has been affected. We have had many months when all visitation was local, then additional months of limited public access for visitors from off-island, including masks and social distancing. It has been a tough 22 months, and counting, but the Reserve has gone on thriving despite the perturbations of the human world.

Just as things were about to fall apart in early 2020, we were excitedly initiating a new project sponsored by the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Climate Adaptation Fund and the Doris Duke Foundation, entitled “Coping with Climate Change at Makauwahi Cave Reserve.” The plan was to use the abandoned limestone quarry next to the cave as the substrate for building three new wetlands and planting a native plant reforestation project. We did this, and with additional support from County, State, and Federal sources were able to do a lot more in the Reserve, including building new low-impact composting toilet facilities, installing four wash stations around the property for improved public hygiene, constructing a new maintenance building, and creating a parking lot for visiting buses and overflow parking.

Read More…

By David Burney

Welcome to Tess Sprawson, our new Projects Coordinator.

We expect more than 60,000 people to visit MCR this coming year (open every day 10-4). From large new wetlands, to improved visitor amenities, to an expanded nursery, to new signs and trails, much has to be done! Your volunteer help is needed, but if you can’t join us on Kaua`i — or even if you can – please make a donation to help raise funds for our new maintenance building by clicking here.

Dr. Burney collects a sediment core on Rodrigues Island, while a living fossil, a giant Aldabra tortoise, supervises.

MCR is unique…or is it? All through the years, we have taken inspiration from others around the world who are trying to make that rare but potent combination of fossils, cultural history, and habitat restoration in a spectacular natural setting. In Back to the Future in the Caves of Kaua`i (Yale Press, 2010), I talk about some remarkable “rewilding” efforts, from Ted Turner’s Ladder Ranch in New Mexico, to projects on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.

Since that time we have derived inspiration from reciprocal visits and exchange of information with similar projects in Japan, the Netherlands, Madagascar and elsewhere.

Read More…

By David Burney

Much of Makauwahi Cave Reserve is vulnerable to sea level rise, flooding, drought, and storms. In the next two years we hope to establish native plants and wetland habitats at higher elevations and more sheltered locations in the old limestone quarry adjacent to the Reserve.

As Australia burns and Venice drowns, thoughts of people around the world turn to surviving change. We are no different here at Makauwahi Cave Reserve, and major coping is underway. In past newsletters, you may have read about the floods, droughts, hurricanes, tsunami, and other disasters that have struck here over the centuries.

Current threats to the Reserve, which is mostly low-lying and perpetually exposed to the ocean, include record droughts (one lasting over four years recently) and rising sea level. No use to deny it, MCR is under threat from climatic uncertainty.

Read More…

MCR started off 2018 with major progress on the Reserve signage and picnic area, thanks to Scout Troop 270. Another Scout project is planned for 2019.

Hau`oli Makahiki Hou! As another year slides away, it’s good to ponder time, that most imponderable concept. In his 2010 book, Back to the Future in the Caves of Kaua`i, Dr. Burney talks about “time vertigo,” the experience of seeing the clear evidence of many time-scales simultaneously inside Makauwahi Cave. It’s all there: the cave’s rocks, nearly a half million years old; the cave itself, perhaps 100,000 or more; the sediments underfoot, thousands of years old; Hawaiian cultural evidence, many centuries; a tsunami deposit perhaps 1586 A.D.; 19th and 20th century impacts from overgrazing and cane farming near the surface; and the advent of research on the site in 1992. Read More…

Lida Pigott Burney flies drone to monitor quarry restoration. Left, top, view above recent “Scout area” restoration near picnic area. Right, top, looking down on central part of Reserve, with sinkhole lower left and seashore lower right. Bottom, oblique view across restorations, with Mt. Haupu in background.

Our new quarry and streamside restorations are doing even better than we expected. With support from Grove Farm, EPA, and visitors’ donations, we have been able to plant in 2018 a total of 1,492 native trees, shrubs, and perennial groundcovers. Our staff and interns did this with the help of 585 K-12 school children and 131 college students.

We monitor all our native plant translocations by maintaining a database with up-to-date and historical information on each of the thousands of plants translocated here since 1999. Read More…

Tour guide Jerry Keesee sports the guides’ new “uniform.” Tours are free but we need your donations to keep operating – and growing!

Makauwahi Cave is open for tours every day of the year now, 10 a.m. – 2 p.m., and on Saturdays and Sundays 10 – 4. This is possible through the efforts of our new tour guides, Linda Kosen, Deborah Flynn, and Jerry Keesee, and to Keakalina Lindsay’s coordination of tours. Congratulations, Keakalina, on the birth of daughter Aeryana!