Our lo`i, or taro pondfields have grown fast, and harvest time is coming. Let us know if you
Hawaiian Stilts visit the Lo`i
would like to help with this “adventure in ancient agriculture” or any of our other interesting ecological experiments. Three litters of Koloa Ducks have fledged in our new ponds, and Hawaiian Stilts and Ne-ne visit daily. You should visit, too!
The Makauwahi Cave Trail, our beautiful nature trail winding through the 17 acres, has been self-guiding for a couple of years, with not-so-great metal mailboxes for dispensers. Now also the cave itself is fully self-guiding, with its own brochure, and we have deployed a new generation of dispenser boxes. Our lovely new Plexiglas brochure boxes arrived recently, and they are now up, mounted on (what we hope are) termite-proof posts. The posts are galvanized metal set in concrete below ground, and beautiful dark-stained wood above.
So, reach inside and help yourself to a color brochure! The new box located inside the North Cave, for instance, sports the brochure that tells you all about the cave’s history, geological features, and biology – all the stuff our dedicated docents relate to hundreds of visitors on Sundays. This means that those who show up some other day when the cave is open can also have a tour — that they give themselves!
Mahalo to the Hawai`i Tourism Authority, Natural Resources Program, for making this big improvement in our interpretive program possible.
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.
If you would like to join us for a guided hike from the Grand Hyatt Resort along the Maha`ulepu Heritage Trail, to see the shearwater nesting colony, Ho`oulueia Heiau, fossil trackways, and sea-turtle grazing shoals, ending up at Makauwahi Cave Reserve and touring that as well – a magnificent half-day adventure – get in touch. We now offer this wilderness adventure by appointment. For more information, call (808) 482-1059 or email makauwahi@gmail.com.
You are invited to help us dig down at the cave any Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday from June 17-July 10. You heard that right – in that entire period, you can come down to Makauwahi Cave and participate in our season’s big dig, along with the Kaua`i Archaeological Field School, our college-accredited program held each summer under the auspices of the University of Hawai`i-Manoa Anthropology Department, in collaboration with the National Tropical Botanical Garden.
Of course, the actual digging is done by our professional staff and the students who are enrolled in the program for 9 units of college credit. But we need help with sifting the many buckets of sediment for fossils, as well as picking, bagging, labeling, and all that goes with this big annual undertaking. You are also welcome to just watch, as there will be plenty to see as we uncover thousands of fossils and hundreds of artifacts. Plan to take pictures and send us some to post on the Makauwahi Cave Reserve Facebook page (and don’t forget to “Like” us if you haven’t done that yet).
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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.
The Kauai Archaeological Field School has gotten more than enough applications to be a “go” this year, but those on Kaua`i or with friends or relatives on Kaua`i might want to sign on at the “local rate.” So for local applicants only we are extending the deadline for application to May 1. For full information, go to kauaifieldschool.wordpress.com.
Ever more students from all grades and all schools on Kaua`i have been able to participate in site visits, work days, and educational exercises at Makauwahi Cave over recent months, thanks to generous support from the Grove Farm Foundation to help defray the costs of student transport. By sponsoring the buses and also providing some of their employees as volunteers, Grove Farm has made it possible for our staff and volunteers to work safely and efficiently with even groups of 200 or more at a time.
School administrators have long preferred that we take larger groups, as the “economy of scale” applies to school trips like anything else. Our usual approach with very large groups is to divide them into subgroups that rotate through a variety of activities, with trained volunteers and staff on duty at each station. There is just enough time in a school day, if the buses roll in on time, for each student to have a turn at touring the cave, tending native plants and Polynesian crops, hiking the Makauwahi Cave Trail, and a “tortoise hunt.”
Mahalo to the Hawaii Tourism Authority’s 2013 Natural Resources program, which is sponsoring the printing of color versions of the Makauwahi Cave Trail self-guiding brochure, and one more: a self-guiding brochure to the cave interior. A black and white version of the trail brochure is well-known to anyone who has walked the trail that winds its way from one end of the Makauwahi Cave Reserve to the other and read about the features at each of 19 numbered posts.
But the cave brochure has until now been somewhat “underground” (sorry). Entitled Welcome to Makauwahi Cave: An Underground Guide, this little brochure has been previously available only in a limited waterproof edition that quickly escapes the premises, and as a pdf download on this website under “Resources.” The new versions will still be available that way, so you can print your own, but thanks to HTA, now they will be available on-site in waterproof boxes along the trail and in the cave.
The new HTA grant will also help us make improvements to the trail and overlooks, including a new viewpoint overlooking Waiopili Stream and the lo`i pondfields. Another recent grant from HTA, through the County Product Enrichment Program, has allowed us to offer special events at the Reserve, such as the very successful Ni`ihau Day observance April 6, featuring music, hula, shell lei-making, mat-weaving, and other aspects of the culture of the people of Ni`ihau.
We have been receiving applications for this summer’s field school at the cave, slated for June 15-July 14. There are still a few slots left, so get in your application for 9 units of UH credit in Archaeological Methods and Natural History of the Hawaiian Islands.
A Two-Part Bone Fishhook Excavated at Makauwahi Cave