Monica Loui looks up at the steep hillside above Kula Sandalwoods Inn and Café. That’s where the fire ripped through last year, damaging their business and burning structures.
“It's frustrating and stressful. But the Alliance and our community — they're healers,” she said.
She’s referring to the Kula Community Watershed Alliance.
Now, the area that was covered in ash just over a year ago, is blanketed with wood chips to prevent erosion. It’s also home to native seedlings, thriving in the burn scar, thanks to their efforts.
“This whole remediation of the hillside was a healing process for us,” said Loui. “The whole experience was traumatic, and not knowing how we were going to take care of that hillside, it could have endangered property and human life. For them to show up and help us, was amazing.”
The Watershed Alliance is led by executive director Sara Tekula and is made up of Kula neighbors and community members.
“Fall 2023 — around this time last year — we stabilized this whole hillside, about 1.3 acres, with a three-inch blanket of mulch made from the very trees that fueled the fire," she said.
Along with the native koa and ‘iliahi, or native sandalwood they planted, they found some surprises.
“I don't know if you can see with the white flowers up here, that's pua kala,” said Tekula. “It's a native poppy, and that just sprang out on its own, which is really fun to see.”
Along with chipping invasive trees like black wattle, Tekula says they’ve held native seed collection events in their ahupua’a, followed by opportunities for growing guidance.
“We did a propagation workshop so people could see how to germinate and grow,” she explained. “And then people took them home. And so hundreds of seeds went out into the immediate community, and folks like Pam and Dave, who have stellar green thumbs, have been doing a great job of growing them.”
Pam and Dave Albright’s Kula home was narrowly spared from burning and they wanted to give back.
“We just wanted to help out and feel like we could be doing something and not just waiting around,” said Pam Albright. “And so we got busy planting. We've grown over 200 plants at this point.”
The Albrights and dozens of other community members have been tending the seedlings in their backyards and gardens.
One family is even nurturing native koa in a tiny greenhouse next to what used to be their home that burned to the ground.
“They've been coming back to their land that doesn't have a home on it anymore to tend these babies,” sad Tekula.
Local schools are also involved in growing and planting.
Last weekend, the Alliance held a planting event with students and residents, putting hundreds of natives into the ground on one of the restoration sites.
Joe Imhoff, Alliance project advisor, knelt in the dirt, brushing his hands over the leaves of a young ‘ohia tree as he shared planting instructions.
“So really, like every tree that you put into the ground, really give it a little extra love, give it your energy,” he explained to attendees. “This plant could grow for a thousand years right here.”
A community nursery is coming soon to grow natives on a larger scale.
In the coming months, the Emergency Watershed Protection Program, a federal program through the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, will come in to do stabilization work in the steep and hazardous gulch areas of Kula’s burn zone.
So far, the alliance has stabilized about eight acres of burned property through community and volunteer efforts, alongside other local grassroots organizations like Malama Kula.
The Kula Community Watershed Alliance will be restoring about 120 acres in the future.
“This is not a short-lived project by any means,” said Tekula. “This is years and years of bringing the burn scar back to life and actually better than it was before.”
