Hawaii's Heritage

To any outsider, Hawaii may seem like an untouched paradise full of exotic, colorful species. What is really going on beneath the dense underbrush is a constant battle between the defenseless native species of Hawaii & the aggressive species introduced by European colonizers.

As a senior in high school, I traveled to Hawaii to see first hand the damage done to the native land. The destruction was obvious immediately. Crisscrossing through the dense forest floor were the hoof marks of the wild pigs that had once been used for food. They plow down trees & over turn soil in search of truffles. Next were the piles of ginger being torn up by hand by dedicated locals, trying to reclaim some of the acreage lost to this feral species. & I hadn't even walked into the forest yet.

At night, we were delighted by the symphony of chirps from the coqui frog, but soon learned that if you were to have visited this same house three months earlier, you would have been greeted with simply silence. The coqui frog is from Puerto Rico & is spreading like wildfire through the big island of Hawaii.

There are a little under 1,100 native species left in Hawaii. This article from The Christian Science Monitor describes a tour of the National Tropical Botanical Garden in Hawaii, with emphasis on conserving what is left of Hawaii's native habitat.

Preserving Hawaii's native species is preserving Hawaiian culture. The exotic species that reside here are inexorably intertwined with the rich history of Hawaii & introduced species threaten to take that away.

Hawaii has more endangered plants than anywhere else on earth... making us a hot spot for conservation and a truly invaluable national resource to preserve the nation's tropical flora.