Pacific Business News

By Duane Shimogawa

The Hawaiian Legacy Reforestation Initiative is launching a second "legacy forest" that will preserve 700 acres of land at the 8,500-acre Kahua Ranch on the slopes of the Big Island's Kohala volcano.

The forest will be home to about 250,000 newly-planted "legacy trees" for permanent reforestation, the head of the nonprofit confirmed to Pacific Business News this week.

"We have been working with Kahua Ranch on this deal for about a year," Jeff Dunster, executive director of HLRI, told PBN. "I know that Monty Richards, whose family has owned it for decades, is looking to the future, looking at serving the needs of people today and in the future."

This new venture adds to HLRI and sustainable forestry company HLH LLC's nearly 400,000 legacy trees across 1,200 acres of former pastureland at Kukaiau Ranch along the Hamakua Coast, which was the first of its kind in the world.

HLRI is working to reforest 1.3 million trees across the state - one for each person in the Islands.

Plantings at Kahua Ranch will include dozens of endemic Hawaiian species over a contiguous mix of forest, marshland and fully vegetated volcanic soil.

Dunster said that HLRI's partnership with Kahua Ranch, which has about 10,000 visitors each year, will involve initiative putting in the endemic forest, while having revenue model that will help sustain ranch operations. "The eco-tours will generate revenues," he said. "There has to be an economic viability in this."

Its deal with Kahua Ranch does not involve a lease, which is different from its first arrangement that does involve a lease with Kukaiau Ranch, according to Dunster. "This is a hybrid model that will be attractive to landowners," he said. "Our goal isn't to acquire vast amounts of land but to work with landowners and keep it in their family legacies."

HLRI's work at Kahua Ranch is expected to get underway soon within the next month or so, with crews dedicated to cataloging and clearing the land of all invasive plant species such as strawberry guava, ginger and other major threats to Hawaii's native forests.

Restoration work is expected to begin by the beginning of July, with replanting starting around next spring.Replanting will include endemic koa, ohia, mamane, naio, kookoolau, kukaenene and iliahi trees to replace the cleared plants. Trees will be planted through Legacy Tree sponsorships, and will generate certified carbon credits under Legacy Carbon, which was founded in 2015 as the only program providing certified carbon credits in Hawaii.

HLRI uses a special type of technology to record the growth, health, location and sponsorship details of each tree, which can be tracked online."For us, we don't see any limits to this," Dunster said. "We are already having discussions with other places in the country and other islands in the state. Once we got our arms wrapped around the entirety of this, we want to give it away.

"It's not meant to be used for something to build vast amounts of wealth," he said. "It would be like somebody growing their own food and sharing it with others. This is not a build-to-sell model, it's a build-to-give model. Working with Kahua Ranch, they are the perfect example of this."

HLRI sells the trees under two programs: its legacy reforestation initiative, which plants trees for conservation, and its investment program, which plants trees for harvest.The business model is designed to generate long-term forest health, timber production, carbon sequestration and ecosystem diversity.

Source: Pacific Business News