Just a few months ago, we began building lo`i, shallow ponds for Polynesian-style cultivation and for wildlife habitat, on a low, flat, abandoned cane field full of the hated invasive Guinea grass and nothing else. What has happened since serves to remind us that this ancient Hawaiian tradition can have tremendous relevance to large-scale restoration today. On low flat ground, lo`i pondfields are a great way to battle certain invasive species and save endangered species — at the same time in the same place.

Highly endangered Koloa Ducks and Hawaiian Stilts arrived within hours, but now we have a family of the former thriving under verdant traditional varieties of our tall taro crop. They have to be the cutest baby ducks in the world, and among the rarest, and growing fast. The Stilts, meanwhile, are, shall we say, in an earlier stage of the reproductive cycle.

We have seven ponds planted with taro now, and Joe Kanahele thinks we can have our first big harvest in July. One other pond we’ve dedicated to our collection of native fiber plants, including sedges such as the legendary makaloa, source of the art-quality mats of Ni`ihau (we have found tiny centuries-old pieces of this mat or something much like it in our excavations inside Makauwahi Cave). A half dozen other ponds are mostly open water, as we use water as a kind of weed-control mulch until time to plant. Drown your weeds with good clean water instead of drenching them with herbicide.

Erik “Banana Man” Burton keeps bringing us more and more banana varieties, some rare ancient Hawaiian types, to plant around the margin along with our other Polynesian cultivars.

Meanwhile, dragonflies and damselflies, at least some of them endangered natives, buzz over the water. The last of the Kolea, Pacific Golden Plovers now sporting their black breeding vest, stir about, getting ready to fly back to Alaska for the Arctic summer. Truly, our lo`i are alive.