Introduction

Around 2.4 million visitors infiltrate the island of Maui every year. This is the equivalent of annually shipping the entire population of Minneapolis and St. Paul to the island. Unfortunately, a vast majority of these people gain little understanding of what is significant about their destination. Instead, a false and vague mystique of the island as paradise is blindly perpetuated.

Maui is indeed a paradise of sorts—it is the kingdom of endangered and extinct species. Seventy-five percent of all documented floral and faunal extinctions in the United States have occurred in Hawaii. One hundred and seventy endemic plant species are listed as endangered—35 percent of the U. S. Endangered Species List of plants for the entire country. Forty percent of the birds on the Endangered Species List are endemic to Hawaii, and half of the historical total of 140 bird species is already extinct. This demise of the Hawaiian flora and fauna began 1,600 years ago with the arrival of the Polynesians. Humans have since introduced, both knowing and unknowingly, an army of invasive plants and animals that have heavily impacted the natural ecosystems. The results are destructive and permanent.

As one of the last oases of endemic diversity, Haleakala National Park on the island of Maui has been battling with the invasion and subsequent extrication of non-endemic species for the last thirty years. It is a dramatic and frustrating struggle that despite small victories demonstrates the significance and permanence of species loss. Consequently the park acts as a great classroom for investigations into the complex and fascinating task of bio-diversity management. The goal of this service project is to immerse high school students from the mainland into a hands-on exploration of the challenges associated with endemic species sustainability. This summer a group of 40 students will visit Maui and become part of a very small minority that takes away a greater understanding of the island while leaving a positive contribution behind.

The Program

For the last three years I have been working as Program Director and a scuba instructor for Seattle based SeaMount Institute—a non-profit organization that provides outdoor education and ecological studies programs from the mountains to the sea. One of our programs, CREEP—Coral Reef Ecology Education Project, involves taking high school students to the island of Maui every August for three weeks of diving and hands-on investigation of the reef ecosystem. Over the last two years, I have worked with SeaMount Institute to re-create and expand the marine science component of this program. Recently I have become increasingly aware of the terrestrial challenges Maui faces. I believe that CREEP could greatly benefit from a broadening of its scientific focus to include a greater emphasis on terrestrial ecology. Global Change Biology has made me realize the global relevance of bio-diversity management and the need for increased awareness and education on the subject. Maui and CREEP are a perfect way to start.

The science component of CREEP is comprised of a series of student led experiential investigations. At the airport all participants receive a book that is divided into ten sections—most of the pages are blank. Each section focuses on a specific area of Hawaiian ecology:

• Corals and Coral Reefs
• All About Water
• Island Biogeography
• Mollusks and Crustaceans
• Worms, Worms, and Echinoderms
• Reef Fish, Sharks and Rays
• Marine Mammals and Turtles
• Sponges and Marine Algae
• Terrestrial Flora and Fauna

A list of 5-7 learning objectives accompanies each subject and teams of about 6 students are responsible for facilitating the achievement of a section’s objectives by the rest of the camp. They can utilize other staff, an extensive science library, and direct field observations for their information. Specific topics must be presented as a Field Focus—a location(s) that the science team must utilize for their investigation and presentation. Last summer, for example, the group doing Reef Fish had the participants dive to take a fish species census on an established reef and compare it with counts from submerged wreckage left over from Hurricane Aniki. With these data the students tried to analyze the effect of reef habitat on fish diversity.

The strength of this program lies in its ability to get participants involved in hands on field investigations. I wanted to find some way of continuing that tradition in the terrestrial ecology arena—a field that in many ways on Maui is less accessible and more complex. A little research uncovered an enormous amount of biological conservation work taking place a few thousand feet above the reefs on the slopes and craters of Haleakala. I discovered that Haleakala National Park is a hot bed for alien species control and endemic conservation efforts. It is a perfect way for CREEPers to get involved in real, globally significant science.

A partnership between SeaMount Institute and Haleakala National Park will operate as an additional, though more involved, science component of CREEP—adding the needed terrestrial dimension to the curriculum. Ron Nagata has been instrumental over the last twenty years in working for the Park to preserve endemic species and eradicate alien invaders. Some of the projects undertaken include the construction of a perimeter fence to create a barrier that keeps out non-endemic fauna such as feral pigs without compromising endemic species. Many of the tasks he manages, such as weed pulling, simply require a great deal of physical labor—this is where the high school students will be utilized.

Ron will introduce the service project component with a slide show in camp explaining the seriousness of the alien species problem and documenting the efforts of the park to combat the problem. There are dramatic slides of where the park has installed border fencing to exclude harmful alien animals. The resulting differences in vegetation are staggering. The CREEP participants will become directly involved in the conservation efforts by assisting with the labor-intensive projects of weed removal. A series of small groups will participate in a two-day service stay in Haleakala National Park. The participants will either be camping in the field or staying at the Haleakala Field Station operated jointly by the United States Geological Society and the National Park Service. One of the species students may help to extricate is pampass grass or Cortaderia jubata. The most effective means of removing this South American native is simply pulling it up. This is an extremely expensive and time-consuming process for the park without sources of volunteer labor.

Similar to all the other CREEP science components, a team will be responsible for facilitating for the rest of the group the learning of a short list of objectives relating to the volunteer work within the park. These items will be developed to correspond to specifics of the assigned tasks and will include the following subjects:

• Differentiation between endemic and native classifications
• Natural processes of species introduction to the island ecosystem
• Human/artificial species introduction, case examples: mongoose, feral pig, brown snake, norfolk pine, etc…
• History of extinction and numbers of endangered species on Maui
• Value of global diversity
• Possible bio-management practices for island communities

The partnership established with Haleakala National Park will most likely be used for a Carleton program next December as well. The Sophomore LEEP—Leadership Experiential Education Project is a program designed to give some spark to the sophomore year, strengthen student leadership skills, and provide opportunities for students to facilitate experiential programs for others. Run through Campus Activities and sponsored by SeaMount Institute, this two-week program will include a series of participant directed island investigations ranging in scope from reef ecology, to native cultures, to tropical agriculture, to endemic species conservation. The connection with Haleakala will be used in a similar fashion as CREEP providing a means for the participants to directly contribute to the community and environment.

Results and Implications

It is always a difficult task to directly assess the impact of providing an experience. As this program has not happened before and will not occur until this summer it is a challenge to project what the gains will be for the park and the participants. However, it is my hope that incorporating service opportunities and facilitating biological investigation into an unique and highly threatened environment will be a great boon to both parties involved. The park will gain sorely needed sources of labor for their efforts in alien plant control. The high school students will be exposed to real world issues of biological management, expand their Hawaiian exploration to include ecosystems that range from the mountains to the sea, and make a measurable contribution to a global problem.

I strongly believe that one of the most effective means of addressing the global biological challenges that our planet is increasingly experiencing is through education. I hope that the individuals who travel to Maui with one of these programs will gain greater insight into the complexity and fragility of both the Hawaiian ecosystem and the Earth system as a whole. Undoubtedly, these students will gain a perspective that a vast majority of the islands’ 2.6 million annual visitors fail to achieve; Maui may still be paradise, but it’s a paradise that they helped keep alive and unique for the millions more who will follow in their foot steps.