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Mangrove:
“In my early memories of He‘eia fishpond,” Mahealani says, “they didn’t have the overgrowth they have now with that mangrove, it wasn’t as bad then.” “The mangrove was put there in the early ‘20s,” Rocky states. “I think it was when the floods, they tried nature’s way and tried to do something to control, manage the floods. Because we have the 100-year floods here. I think it’s ‘64 or ‘65 when there was another really big flood. In fact, it was high tide. I know the waters went right over the bridge. And when the waters came up, if you found fish on the bridge, because you had o‘opu and all that, freshwater fish. It’s funny. Really big flood. |
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“In fact, my grandfather used to live at the mouth of the river at He‘eia State Park in the early ‘20s when they had that other flood that broke their house. So, they decided to just move up across by where King Intermediate School is now.” “Just about ten years ago, three hundred sixty degrees worth of this pond, every angle you looked was mangrove,” Keahi says. “There wasn’t a space on this wall that didn’t contain thirty to sixty feet of mangrove out into the water. That mangrove was introduced to stop sediment and stop erosion going into the ocean. It did a great job, but in return we’ve lost a few acres of fish pond to the sediment that the mangrove has caught. And if we never got to it, I do definitely believe that one day this pond just would have filled in and it wouldn’t have been here. “What’s crazy is that there was this mangrove expert of the world that came down to look at the fish pond,” Rick recalls. “And he said that that area of mangrove directly mauka of the fish pond wall—because unlike other fish ponds, like usually fish ponds, the wall starts on land, goes out into the ocean and comes back to land—He‘eia fish pond is a complete circle of wall. That’s why it’s 1.3 miles of wall. And so, the inland portion of the wall, there’s this mangrove forest, and that guy said that that is the highest density mangrove forest in the world right behind that fish pond. 
“So we actually got grant money to help them clear out, and so we did some of the work too. We didn’t even get to that part yet, and it was unbelievable. The area where the houses stop on the inland portion of it and to where they stopped, where that island is on the inside of that island, that area. It is the highest density mangrove forest in the world. Isn’t that crazy? I mean, it’s an unfortunate thing to have. It’s not native here, but their intent, and as long as we can help them too, is to remove that.” “The land side is nearly 100% covered in a tangled beautiful mess of invasive and native trees,” Keli‘i points out. “The two main species are introduced and invasive mangrove came to Hawai‘i in the early 1900s, and that’s growing right along the water’s edge. Mangrove is extremely amazing and useful plant to the places where it’s native, and it has taken hold along our shoreline here and is doing what it does best: thrive in a brackish-water ecosystem, provide habitat for things growing in the water. And then moving inland from the mangrove, growing along the shoreline is hau—wild hibiscus—which in its current state actually is invasive as well. It’s a native plant but it is invasive because of just the tangled mess that it is. So those are the two primary species. 
“Mangrove is actually an excellent resource for us here. We’ve gotten really good at cutting it down and we process the logs into carriable and usable chunks of wood that have been used for imu (underground ovens), for raku pottery fires, used for barbecues and cooking. Any activity that requires burning of wood, mangrove is excellent. It has the same density as kiawe and kiawe is a highly valued wood—also invasive in Hawai‘i but it’s mesquite so it has a really nice smell and flavor. But if you’re just looking for heat, we like to promote mangrove because mangrove has the same density as kiawe, so it provides a really good heat. “And then mangrove also has natural tannin in it that bugs don’t like, so that makes the wood bug resistant. Mangrove grows normally in estuaries, but they can even thrive in salt water as well, and the salt goes into the wood, making it further bug-resistant. So the wood is excellent for construction, using it for timber. In the places where it’s native, mangrove is used to build beams and posts for homes. You can use it as fence posts. We have begun to use it exclusively to restore our hale kīa‘i out on the fishpond wall as the timber for the hale, for the guard houses, and we’re exploring the amount of time it takes to log it, to then give it away or sell it if people have money for other hale and other construction projects around the state. 
“So the mangrove wood is actually very useful. We don’t want it but we can turn it into something. We can turn the large wood in the trunks into something very, very usable and valuable as well too. It’s a nice wood. We also have some friends that have turned the wood into picture frames. They’ve milled it really thin, turned into picture frames, a bed frame. So the wood is usable. It’s very nice. “And the process, when you move the mangrove and then you’re left with a little mound of rocks and mud,” Keahi adds, “that kind of gives you a glimpse of what route our kūpuna took.” “We’re using for the hale as well as the mākāhā,” Keli‘i goes on, “that’s sluice gates. Again, it’s a dense wood. It’s a hard wood and we want to use as hard a wood as possible. Traditionally in ancient times they used native hardwoods such as ‘ōhi‘a and lama, but our native forests are limited to just a small percentage of the upper portions of our existing forest—way up high is where we have the remnants of our beautiful native forests. No sense plundering what’s up there. We use what we have and again, mangrove is a very hard wood, so it’s perfect to use for the mākāhā. It’ll last longer than any other wood. It still needs to be changed out. It still is a natural product but it’s excellent for that. 
“We used to use metal or fiberglass grating. We could leave a fiberglass grate in there for eight to ten years and it would become brittle by the end of the ten years. But it would last and wouldn’t wear away. What we’ve seen with the mangrove mākāhā is they last about a year and then they need to be replaced. "But if we want to operate the pond in a traditional manner and allow fish to go back and forth, using a wooden gate with posts lashed vertically is going to allow us better water flow, less fouling. The fiberglass grating would get fouled and not as much water would flow. So less fouling, better water flow and just to be able to let in more fish. The fiberglass grating, once it would get fouled, then baby fish would have a hard time swimming through it. So mangrove is good. Once we cut it down, we can find good purposes for it.” “It’s a non-native species that have been here for 90 years,” Kanekoa says. “A lot of people see the value of mangrove. We do see its economic value and its ecological value in other places. Mangrove is not native. We’d like to remove it and re-establish a native wetland sedge estuary system that was here present before the mangrove. “But there might be some people upset with our clearing it. The entire East Coast is upset if we even talk about cutting down mangrove. And rightfully so, it’s native there, but we’d like to rebuild our native sedge wetlands here.” |
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