Unlike the baseball diamond in a corn field, created in the blockbuster movie Field of Dreams, old corn and sugar cane fields at Makauwahi Cave Reserve have been turned into — not a playing field for ghostly baseball heroes — but native habitat for endangered species. Besides the acres of native plants, we now have a half-dozen lovely lo`i, shallow terraced ponds for growing taro (Colocasia esculenta) known to most Hawaiians as kalo, and to our Niihau employees and their families, who built the ponds as part of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) jobs program at Makauwahi and speak the Ni`ihau dialect as their mother tongue, as “talo.”

The new ponds at Makauwahi were visited by endangered Hawaiian Stilts as soon as they were finished.

Whatever you call it, restorationists here in the islands learned decades ago that this lovely edible-rootcrop, fundamental to native Hawaiian culture and beliefs, produces an ecosystem highly prized by several endangered waterbird species. Our one previous restored wetland had shown that, if you do the right things, like taking out invasive plants and controlling the water levels to benefit native plants and animals, the endangered Hawaiian Stilt, Koloa Duck, and Hawaiian Moor Hen will just show up and start using them. Within a couple of weeks of completing our new ponds, with the help of not only the Niihauans but also that new tractor funded by the Hawaii Community Foundation on behalf of the Omidyar `Ohana Fund (see Issue Five of this newsletter), these beautiful rare birds turned up. Our project had good advice and plant materials from State and Federal officials and local growers, and the able leadership of Rev. Dana Kaohelaulii, pastor of the Waimea Hawaiian Church and an intern in the OHA program.

And true to form, the birds showed up within a few days. In the natural wetland between the lo`i and the Waiopili Stream, we are planting native sedges and other vegetation that is useful for nesting and feeding sites for the rare birds, and fibers for traditional Hawaiian crafts. Everybody wins!