Restoring watersheds

Youth Conservation Corps enrollees this summer will spend five weeks restoring Big Island watersheds before learning the connection between culture and natural resource management on Kahoolawe.

A recently awarded $51,000 U.S. Forest Service grant will allow a dozen enrollees to take part in a six-week summer program working within Hawaii Experimental Tropical Forests’ Puuwaawaa Dry Forest and Laupahoehoe Wet Forest sites, said Christian Giardina, the proposal’s writer and a research ecologist with the Pacific Southwest Research Station of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service in Hilo. Local nonprofit Kupu, which administers the Hawaii Youth Conservation Corps program, will match the federal grant funds.

The funding will also allow two additional enrollees to perform fire restoration work within Pohakuloa Training Area and study climate change and its effects on rainforests in the Laupahoehoe and Hakalau areas, he added.

A total of $459,212 to hire 139 Youth Conservation Corps enrollees was awarded by the U.S. Forest Service to 11 forests, 10 of which were located in California. The Big Island was the lone funding recipient in Hawaii, said John Heil, U.S. Forest Service Pacific Southwest Region public affairs specialist.

Giardina added that the current Youth Conservation Corps funding is the first time national forest service dollars have come to the state, which has no designated national forests. The experimental tropical forest project, which began in 2007, is a partnership between the state Department of Land and Natural Resources Division of Forestry and Wildlife and the U.S. Forest Service.

The Youth Conservation Corps was established in 1970 to further the development and maintenance of the country’s natural resources while preparing youth for the responsibility of maintaining and managing our nation’s natural resources, according to the U.S. Forest Service Pacific Southwest Region. Enrollees must be between 15 and 18 years old and have the opportunity to earn college credit.

Starting June 11, two teams, each comprising five members and a leader with prior Youth Conservation Corps experience, will travel to the Hawaii Experimental Tropical Forests’ Puuwaawaa and Laupahoehoe sites where they will spend five weeks identifying and removing invasive species, plants and animals and then replanting native species, Giardina explained. The enrollees have already been identified for the project.

The goal is to reduce the threat to native biodiversity and reduce the ungulate population, according to the proposal. Doing so will improve both water quality and yield because exotic plants use more water than native plants. The exotic plants also support ungulates, which churn soil, causing elevated erosion rates.

Following five weeks working on Hawaii Island, Kupu will bring Youth Conservation Corps enrollees to Kahoolawe where they will spend one week restoring the uninhabited island while getting a basic introduction to the cultural aspects of natural resource management, Giardina said.

Because the island had been controlled and used by the federal Department of Defense for military training, which included decades of bombings and exercises, the island’s vegetation was denuded resulting in top soil erosion, according to the proposal which noted the island since 1994 has been under the control of the state through the Kahoolawe Island Reserve Commission.

There, the teams will take part in ongoing efforts to control erosion, re-establish vegetation, recharge the water table, and replace exotic plants with native species, according a letter in support of the funding by Randy Moore, U.S. Forest Service Pacific Southwest Region forester.

For more information, visit the U.S. Forest Service Pacific Southwest Region’s website at fs.usda.gov/r5.