Just over a year ago, Waipa began expanding our reforestation plantings into a new site. This 1.3 acre area, on the south facing slope of Kuahua (the ridge which forms a boundary between the ahupua`a of Waipa and Waikoko), was cleared of non-native vegetation in early August, 2010.

Every year, for years now, on Admissions Day weekend in August, the Nakamura, Shiramizu, Loo-Marshall `ohana have come camping at Waipa, and their trip always includes a project to give back to the `aina. Last year, they became the first of many groups to begin planting this site, primarily with Koai`a, a native lowland Koa. A couple of weeks ago, this same group of families returned to camp once again, and we hiked up to check out the trees. In a year they had grown so that some of them were nearly five feet tall, the beginning of another native forest at Waipa! We had finished planting the site, so after giving our trees some good mana, we hiked back down and weeded the lo`i kalo.

Since that first planting in August 2010, through May of this year, numerous groups and individuals have contributed to the reforestation at this site. They include: Aunty Puna Kalama’s Halau, Ms. Shelby Dabin’s first grade class from Kanuikapono School, Peter Vitousek and Stanford University’s Hawaii Field School, Earthday Rising, Doug Sears and the Grand Hyatt Po`ipu Management Team, Raleigh Fisher and his dad Jon, among many others.

In November of last year, a couple of us planted about 25 Koai`a trees right at the top of the planting site in honor of Uncle Gary Blaich, and indeed this has become a place for us to remember him, and his love of Waipa and the outdoors.

Mahalo to all of you, and the Waipa staff and `ohana who help to facilitate this work, we hope that in a few years, these trees will be thriving like those in some of our previous plantings, and we look forward to acres of beautiful native forests at Waipa in the decades to come.

A USDA-NRCS Wildlife Habitat Incentive Program contract helped to provide some funds for clearing and planting.

Since the re-launch of our website in late August, Waipā staff have been busy learning how to manage the new features and working closely with our great web team to make our site more useful to you, the Waipā ‘ohana. To help us accomplish that, we are so grateful in particular to Matt Goodale (w3dd.com) and Lindsey Fritz for their technical expertise, creativity and guidance.

Waipā’s ‘ohana is an amazing community of unique and supportive kupuna, volunteers, families, youth and others who are not only from Kaua‘i, but really from all over the world. All so different and yet all choosing to show aloha ‘aina, love for the land, to our abundant ahupua‘a. And…because the Waipa ‘ohana actively shares in the effort, we are also a community of laulima… of many hands working together.

While most of our work is on the land, Waipa staff do appreciate the potential of the internet to stay in touch. Since we have so many diverse projects all over the ahupua‘a, it excites us to share Waipā’s many faces of abundance.

And…because we certainly know that the full abundance of the ahupua‘a is not just in the ‘aina but also in our many hands, we invite you TOO to share in making our website useful by suggesting topics or providing feedback to us at

waipaonline@waipafoundation.org.

Mahalo nui loa!