Education activities at Makauwahi Cave just keep growing.  Since the beginning of the year, twenty school and other youth groups have spent a day with us.  That’s 677 young people from Kaua`i and O`ahu who have learned about ancient Hawaiians, our native biota, and conservation strategies for the future.

The 2013 education program statistics are remarkable:  156 volunteer-days; local youth from age 4 to college; three or more activities going on simultaneously on a rotating basis (so everybody gets a chance to do everything).  Grove Farm has played a key role by financing school bus rentals and providing their employees and Grove Farm’s “Ace Team Volunteers” to help out.  Our own docents have done triple-duty, not only keeping the Sunday tours going and helping with all phases of site maintenance, but also providing their expert guidance at each educational station.  Students tour the cave and sift fossils, walk the nature trail and help with plant maintenance, collect data on tortoise locations and behavior, and help run the taro farm and wetland restorations, all under the watchful eye of our professional-level cadre of trained docents.  You can be one too!  And mahalo to Boy Scout Troop 133, one of the visiting groups, for providing us a new and better first-aid kit.

All this positive activity hasn’t gone unnoticed.  Dr. Burney recently was invited to give a talk about the cave project as part of a TEDx symposium at the National Geographic Society in Washington DC.  As you’ve read in recent newsletters, this is part of a major initiative mounted by the Long Now Foundation to explore the possibilities of new technologies to bring back extinct creatures.  Only two projects worldwide were chosen as examples of futuristic rewilding efforts that have been great public successes, which might serve as a model for future initiatives to re-introduce extinct creatures brought back to life.  These were the Megafauna Foundation’s efforts at about a dozen sites throughout Europe – and Makauwahi Cave Reserve. If you would like to hear what he had to say, and see his slides, go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDl4S31xlbI.