Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 6, Number 4, 1 April 1989 — Nuʻupia Ponds At Mokapu Studied [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Nuʻupia Ponds At Mokapu Studied

More than 150 high school students from seven high schools scattered throughout Hawaii eame together President's Day weekend to take part in Ecology Camp at the Marines Corps Air Station in Kane'ohe. The eamp is an annual event for the Sierra Club High School Hikers Program and is aimed at educating the students on environmental preservation. According to Tai Crouch, a teacher in Hawaiian culture and history at Punahou High School, education is the key to preserving natural resources, whieh are rapidly deteriorating. "At the rate we are going, the Earth is going to be a lifeless mud ball floating through space," he said. "We need to educate the leaders of tomorrow to preserve Hawaii's natural resources." The eamp also emphasized cultural preservation. Saturday afternoon, the group studied Hawaiian archaeology and the marine eeology system. Paul Cleghorn brought artifacts from the Bishop Museum and taught a class in Hawaiian archaeology. Keone Nunes, OHA's Cultural Officer, gave classes on traditional Hawaiian methods of making fishhooks. Other experts gave classes in omithology, geology, and marine biology. The highlight of the eamp was the service project conducted at the Nu'upia Ponds on Sunday. The students worked together to rid pond areas of pickleweed and mangrove seedlings whieh interfere with the nesting of the stilts, and rebuild the entire islands whieh serve as artificial nesting sites for the endangered Hawaiian stilts. "The eamp allows the students to become involved in their surroundings and it shows them the importance of preserving their surroundings," Crouch said. According to Diane Drigot, the Air Station's environmental specialist, the dual effort of the game warden's trapping of the stilts' predators and the voluntary efforts to minimize the plant encroachment on the birds' habitat has helped the birds doubly. "When I first arrived seven years

ago, the stilts' population was between 60-55," she said. "Now, because of these efforts, it has grown to 160." • The Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station is almost completely separated from the island of O'ahu by some large ponds, known today as the Nu'upia ponds. Scientists have speculated that originally the peninsula was an island, and it only beeame connected to O'ahu after Hawaiians closed off the isthmus by building walls to create fishponds.

Frank Bailey of Kamehameha High School digs in to pull out pickleweed from Nu'upia Ponds.