The first native trees planted in Lahaina’s commercial district after the 2023 wildfire are now taking root at Lahaina Harbor. They’ll help provide shade and a sense of place, while restoring Native Hawaiian species.
Treecovery Hawaiʻi supported the transport and installation of the trees as part of an effort initiated by the Lahaina Restoration Foundation. It was funded by Maui County, with support from Royal Pacific Landscape.
The harbor’s new trees include endemic loulu palms, which were grown for about 20 years in Kula from seeds originally collected on Molokaʻi.
Duane Sparkman, founder and president of the nonprofit Treecovery, said the loulu at the harbor — a species known as pritchardia — are between 14 and 16 feet tall.
“What we notice is in most of these areas where you have resorts or commercial spaces, you will have pritchardias that are from Tonga or Fiji, but not from Hawaiʻi, right? And that's been the most common thing, is having these non-native loulu palms around. And so our point was to bring in the real Hawaiian native loulu palm. So when people talk about loulu, that's a true loulu palm. It is from Hawaiʻi,” explained Sparkman.
“We want people to see the trees that are from Hawaiʻi,” he continued. “So us bringing the pritchardias in there, and then bringing over a [native] sandalwood and planting it at the harbor, and then planting specific types of kukui nut at the harbor, then doing all the ground covers native as well, we're just trying to keep it all native plantings in those spaces now that we have a chance to.”
Lahaina Harbor has now reopened for commercial operations, and this planting effort represents the first commercial space in the town to be replanted since the fire, Sparkman said.
“That's pretty significant in itself, just to have a little bit of normalcy in that space of the harbor, because it is open and it's active and people are walking by it almost every single day, there's a couple hundred visitors that go down there," he told HPR. “And so it's neat to have those areas finished and kind of ready, instead of just empty planters where all the trees died and there's nothing in them, so it was nice to get that stuff back in.”
Treecovery was founded after the 2023 wildfires to provide free native trees to fire-impacted landscapes in Kula and Lahaina. The nonprofit has more than 30 “grow hubs” or partial nurseries around Maui that help supply and support ongoing fire recovery efforts through planting.
The organization has planted more than 9,000 trees over the past two years.
