Ahihi Day

I'm taking a breather as I worked Sat and Sun. Saturday was a long day of meeting with Jeff & some AFRL people up in Pukalani. Sunday I just worked on my 3 upcoming talks as well as on hacking a data-paper out of my thesis. The crap continues.... Anyways, I went in to the Ahihi-Kinau reserve with Judy this morning to hang around. They're trying to majorly restrict public access to the entire reserve. Here's my take on it.

This is a reserve, not a park. It's meant to be an ecosystem research and preservation property. There's been massive damage to the native ecosystems and many species are already extinct. This reserve is meant to be a place to preserve some of these ecosystems as best as you can, before everything is dead. For instance, the reef inside the protected waters is the only healthy, growing reef on the island. Every other one is dying off. That means there's poachers, fisher-men and all kinds of other commercial activities trying to get at/in the water.

I've come to think of it as an attempt to save what once was here for diversity & preservation sake. A very complex and well-adapted ecosystem was once here. Now the ecosystem is in flux and mixing. 95% of the biomass below 6000ft elevation is non-native. Species from every corner of the world are now here and competing. Now that the old ecosystem is gone, it will never come back (save killing off that entire 95%...). This property is a small section of land meant to try to keep parts of that ecosystem alive. From Judy - extinction isn't just death, it's the end of the possibility of living....