Mauna Kea Oral History Appendix - Office of Mauna Kea Management

KM:
RH:
KM:
RH:
TB:
RH:
TB:
RH:
TB:
RH:
KM:
RH:
TB:
RH:
KM:
RH:
KM:
RH:
KM:
RH:
KM:
RH:
KM:
RH:
Okay. Now, when you folks burned or poisoned, dried out, then burned the gorse. What’s
the grow back been Is it still just waiting to always pop up there
What the burn does is, it kills a bunch of it. It burns, it’s standing gorse and then it burns
some of the seeds that’s in the ground.
Yes, yes.
And it also germinates the seed, so what happens is you get a re-growth, but then you go
and hit it again with poison and you keep following up and you’ll see less and less
starting to come. From this, when we hit the cattle guard here, from here over, was just
thick, thick. You know that Teddy.
Yes.
You could hardly…
Go through.
You couldn’t go through and we’ve done this for three years now and you can see how
it’s opening up. Opening up, every time we come. I’m finally seeing somewhat of a light
at the end of a tunnel on this stuff. You know, we’re getting to a point where, we’re kind of
winning the battle against this stuff. It’s still just a terrible pest. Here’s the boundary that
we are entering, the real heavily infested part. I would say four thousand acres is what it
is.
Yes.
Before, you’d look up here and you couldn’t see anything, you couldn’t see grass. You
see where the grass is with that gorse
Yes.
That was thick, thick, thick gorse. I mean just everything was, just a mass of gorse. You
couldn’t see the ground and after three years, this is what it looks like, after poisoning,
burning and then continuing poisoning, all the volunteers, poisoning. And so, I think, as
we keep doing this, you’ll see this land finally...
Opening up.
Finally opening up again.
What’s it going to open up to, grass, is that…
Grass.
That’s the basic
And if you know, like [DHHL] they’re talking forestry and some other things.
Yes.
At least it gives, you know, whatever they decide would be fine. At least you got a base to
start off with. In New Zealand, they use forestry to control the gorse. It just shades it out.
So, it’s not shade tolerant
No. It just wipes it out. But I’m not sure, you couldn’t plant trees, you know, on this stuff.
This is all going to have to be, this herbicide.
And see, that’s the big difference that forest, the mämane, pili grass and stuff that was up
here that was recorded in the nineteenth century, the Boundary Commission things and
in the early accounts. It had been centuries getting to that point you know. There wasn’t a
competition.
Right.
Mauna Kea– “Ka Piko Kaulana o ka ‘Äina”
Kumu Pono Associates LLC
A Collection of Oral History Interviews (HiMK67-050606) A:148