Life on this Earth cannot exist without our Rainforests. This not new news, and yet still our Rainforests are being thoughtlessly destroyed. Every moment brings us closer to a world devoid of life, yet those ignorant to the consequences still persist. Why? What motivations, besides greed, can bring about that which will serve to devastate this planet? Is man truly so bent on self-destruction?

My daughter and are at present studying the Biomes of this planet, and the Rainforest. In our home studies we must learn those integral parts that make up this Earth. The biosystems, ecosystems and all that lives in the natural world and keeps this planet in balance. It is quite disturbing to try to answer her many questions, and she is becoming quite alarmed with the current events happening around our planet, and with good cause. It is sad to think of what the world will be when she is grown, and the daunting task we are setting forth for our children. She asks me “What will I tell my children, Mama?”.

I try so hard to paint a picture of all the wonders in nature, yet it is quite difficult to do when nature is disappearing so rapidly. The virgin Rainforests are home to 61.8% of all the biological diversity on Earth. In this, the richest environment for life, we are destroying a land area which is equivalent to the size of the city of Tokyo Japan ( 240 square miles ) every day. This equals 6417 acres per hour, 107 acres per minute or 1.78 acres per second. This issue of Rainforests destruction and mass species extinctions is the #1 issue facing humanity. If we do not stop this NOW, it will be too late.

It is believed, based on the Fibonacci series of numbers which are found throughout nature, that there are approximately 560 Rainforests species extinctions per day. This equals one Rainforests species extinction every 2 minutes and 33 seconds. We are but a strand in the fabric of life, all intricately interdependent on one another. And yet here we are, in the mere geological blink of an eye, eroding the very foundation of our own existence with mass species extinctions. This 6th great mass extinction period on Earth that we are insanely causing by the suicidal annihilation of the Web of Life, will very soon bring about our own extinction.

The Omega Point is the point in time, when all of the devastation we have inflicted over the years to our life support ecosystems finally becomes too much and they irreversibly fail, no longer able to sustain Homo Sapiens. What this translates into for our future generations is an ever increasingly nightmarish slippery slope to extinction.

Rainforests are some of the world’s most ancient and complex ecosystems. They cover a mere 2% of the Earth, yet more than half of all plant and animal species live there. The rainforest is home to creatures as famous as the jaguar and poison dart frog, as well as lesser-known and even unidentified species.

I will be following up soon with more about the life that still exists within the rainforest.

“This we know: The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”
Chief Seattle

Today I am featuring a fellow blogger dedicated to educating the public of the dangers of toxic substances in our environment. Mark Sadaka of PharmaWatchDog has a Bachelor of Science degree from Pennsylvania State University, as well as a Master of Science in Public Health degree from Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine with specialization in environmental toxicology and risk assessment. I believe Mr. Sadaka is very well educated in his chosen field, and after a tragic personal loss he is truly serious about getting the word out to the people.

Mr. Sadaka earned his law degree from Washington University in St. Louis where he served as an Editor of the Journal of Law and Policy Law Review. He has a solid commitment to defending those who cannot defend themselves against companies with nearly unlimited resources. Please take the time to visit PharmaWatchDog.com and find out about the truth concerning toxic substances and the dangers to public health. We are poisoning ourselves and we owe it to our loved ones, and ourselves, to discover how we can prevent further tragedies in our lives and live toxin free.

I am adding PharmaWatchDog.com to my blogroll, and hope my blogging friends will do so as well, and help spread the word.

Taking root
By VALERIE MONSON, Staff Writer

ULUPALAKUA – Hawaiian family members long separated from their roots returned home Saturday in an emotional reunion that many thought might never happen.

Eight alani seedlings went back to the Auwahi forest, taking their place in the shadow of their only known ancestor living in the wild.

“This is where they’re supposed to be,” said a proud Martha Vockrodt Moran, caretaker of the tree that produced the seeds, as she watched another plant go from pot to posterity. “It’s so great that they’re going home.”

The story of the alani – a native Hawaiian tree that once flourished on the back flank of Haleakala – has become yet another piece of the ongoing miracle at Auwahi, the dryland forest that was all but dead five years ago. With its dwindling collection of rare trees reaching old age and unable to reproduce in a landscape made hostile by cattle, kikuyu grass and fire, the native forest was fading away.

Since it was man who unwittingly led to the downfall of the forest, it seemed only right that it was men – and a whole lot of women, too – whose exhaustive efforts have brought a strand of it back, restoring hope for the land and the Native Hawaiian people whose culture centers on the sights, the sounds, the smells and the very spirit of the forest.

“In a Western sort of thinking, man has dominions over nature,” said Kalei Tsuha, the kumu whose family led the chants and prayers that welcomed back the alani. “In the Hawaiian perspective, we are one and the same. As Hawaiians, we need to have contact with the forest and the forest needs to have contact with us.”

Until a year ago, there was the very real possibility that contact with the alani would become a thing of the past. Biologists were aware of only two left – one in the wild at Auwahi on Ulupalakua Ranch and the other in the arboretum started by Moran’s grandfather, the renowned agronomist D.T. Fleming. Even worse, both were ailing and appeared to have lost their capability for producing viable seeds.

But Moran was determined to carry on the legacy of her grandfather who had collected the alani from Auwahi 50 years ago and planted it in his arboretum at nearby Puu Mahoe along with other plants that he feared were nearing extinction.

Alani were once prolific at Auwahi, where they grew to 30 or 40 feet tall and developed trunks a foot in diameter. Formerly known as “Pelea” for Pele, the goddess of Hawaiian volcanoes, the leaves release a fragrance similar to oranges and were used to scent kapa. The bark was used for medicine.

Calling herself “only a gardener,” Moran knew she needed help to save her tree, so she assembled a crack team that made Saturday’s homecoming possible: Makawao arborist Ernie Rezents, who diagnosed the tree’s disease and prescribed the cure; Nellie Sugii, a researcher at Lyons Arboretum on Oahu, whose experiments led to germination; and expert growers Anna Palomino, Richard Nakagawa, and Dan and Noah Judson, all of Maui, who produced the eight seedlings.

Meanwhile, Auwahi, with the permission of ranch executives Pardee and Sumner Erdman, was being readied for its return by tireless biologist Art Medeiros and his crack team of volunteers who have spent the last eight years fencing, weeding, digging, propagating, planting and willing the land back to life. After successfully restoring one 10-acre enclosure, they have fenced off another 20 acres that includes an old lava channel where the last alani was struggling to survive.

“When it gets cloudy here, it’s like you’re in a cathedral,” said Bob Mikell, one of the volunteers who has given up weekend after weekend to see Auwahi revived. “Everyone here is really possessive of this place. It’s part of their body and part of their spirit.”

The feeling of family was in the forest air as the plants were unloaded from four-wheel drive vehicles that traveled as far as they could, and then the plants were carried by hand the rest of the treacherous way across loose rocks and tangles of weeds. As the alani were going home, Moran couldn’t help but think of her grandfather on the afternoon that he went to Auwahi and gathered the alani that would become the mother to this new generation. Also thinking back was Mahealani Kaiaokamalie, seventh generation of his ohana to live in the area. Kaiaokamalie’s grandfather, William Ainoa Kaiaokamalie, saw the forest collapse in his lifetime. When famed botanist John Rock, who once described Auwahi as one of the top two dryland forests in Hawaii, returned in the 1960s to see it again, he asked the elder Kaiaokamalie to lead the way. As the men came upon the forest near death, Rock broke down and wept.

Mahealani Kaiaokamalie, who has spent much of his adult life restoring native ecosystems, wondered what his grandfather – and other ancestors – would be thinking at the scene below.

“I can only imagine they’re looking down and saying ’mahalo,’ ” said Kaiaokamalie. “My family has always been private, but I think they would be proud that somebody from their genealogy is here today. That’s all I live for – to make them proud.”

It was a day when pride seemed to ooze from the ground. Once the holes were dug, they were checked and rechecked to make sure they were deep enough (but not too deep) and wide enough (but not too wide).

Finally, with the holes deemed ready for occupancy, Kalei Tsuha and her family – husband, Mark, and daughters, Kawai and Joanna – called for silence as the crowd gathered around the single ancestor alani left in the wild. Holding the keiki up to the kupuna tree, Kalei Tsuha summoned the forest gods in a chant of celebration and introduced the young alani to the old one while reuniting a larger ohana.

“The forest is the greater kuahu (altar),” Tsuha said earlier. “The kuahu is where the gods dwell. For Hawaiians, those are our ancestors. Since we’re losing them, we’re losing ourselves.”

But on this afternoon, the ancestors – and their living descendants – got a boost and made contact. Moran was even startled to see how different the alani seedlings looked once they were sprung from their pots and had settled into their beds of rich volcanic soil.

“They seem to have gotten bigger by just getting into the ground,” she said with joy.

After years on the brink of extinction, the alani were back where they belong. They were home with the ancestors.

Valerie Monson can be reached at vmonson@mauinews.com.