Nature Conservancy secures kīpuka “laboratory” for UH Hilo conservation students and others

The Nature Conservancy is partnering with UH Hilo, Hawaiʻi Island watershed partnerships and The Hawaiʻi Conference Foundation to conserve the site.

The Nature Conservancy has acquired a 922-acre conservation easement along the Saddle Road above Hilo, a site that includes a 200-acre kīpuka with a disappearing stream and a diverse ancient forest. The Conservancy is partnering with the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, Hawaiʻi Island watershed partnerships and the parcel’s landowner, The Hawaiʻi Conference Foundation, to conserve, manage and interpret the site. It will continue to serve as an outdoor ecology laboratory for UH Hilo students and others.

The property has a remarkable native diversity of plants, birds and insects, along with a stream that pops up from underground, runs through the kīpuka, and then disappears underground again.

The site, part of Hilo’s watershed, will continue to serve UH Hilo as an educational platform in conservation.

“This area is a great example of lowland wet forest,” says Patrick Hart, associate professor of biology at UH Hilo. “For many years, we have taken ecology and avian biology classes there to study the birds and native insect communities.”

The forested part of the parcel is referred to as a kīpuka in reference to the 400 to 700-year-old forest that was bypassed and left standing by the 1855 Mauna Loa lava flow. Kīpuka is the term for a natural area that has been surrounded by newer lava.

In addition to loulu palms, ʻohiʻa lehua and ʻōlapa trees, ʻieʻie vines,ʻākala bushes and numerous other native trees and shrubs, it is home to rare Clermontia parviflora, the curved flowers that fit the beaks of native birds. Some of those birds in the kīpuka include ʻōmaʻo, ʻelepaio, ʻapapāne and ʻamakihi. ʻIo, the native hawk that is associated with Hawaiian royalty, often soars overhead.

“What’s special about this parcel is that it’s such beautiful forest, so full of native species, and so accessible,” says Suzanne Case, the Conservancy’s Hawaiʻi executive director. “We’re viewing this as a real opportunity to protect native forest in partnership with the landowner, the university, the watershed partnerships and the people of east Hawaiʻi. It is a partnership that will leave a legacy for future generations.”

-Media release.