Auwahi Forest Restoration Project, Makawao, HI (2026)

10/10/2026

Next Saturday, October 17th, we continue our forest tending at the greenhouse area doing all the things needed to provide continuity in the seed-to-seedling-to-sapling-to-return-to-forest cycle.  If you are available and this sounds like fun, please send us an email at [email protected] to request a space.

We only have room for so many people, and email confirmation is required to attend, so for safety reasons, please don’t just show up without confirmation. If we do not have space for you this time, please reply to future opportunities! If you are a new volunteer, or we haven’t heard from you in a while, please also tell us a little bit about your motivations, as well as any relevant physical or health limitations you might have.

9:00 AM until afternoon, usually around 2 PM (or until we run out of steam)   The Auwahi project (www.auwahi.org) conducts ecological restoration on `Ulupalakua Ranch at Auwahi, a district harboring some of the last and most diverse tracts of native forest in the archipelago. The amazing progress and ongoing stewardship of Auwahi forest has been built on the contributions of Maui’s volunteering community and the public-spirited land owners of `Ulupalakua Ranch

10/10/2026

It’s been said that the difference between liking something and loving something can best be tested by your reaction to it. If you like a flower, you’re attracted to it and you want to pick it. If you love a flower, you want to water and care for the plant it came from.  Hawai’i is at a place in its history where its wild, native systems are being torn apart and replaced with hybrid composite systems made up of species from different parts of the globe interacting with each other. In this type of scene, you have to pick which side of the line you stand on: liker or lover of Hawai’i and its mea ma’amae (treasured things).  We applaud the Merrie Monarch Festival organizers, kumu hula, and master lei makers for making the painful and powerful move of temporarily banning the wild collection of ‘ōhi’a lehua, palapalai, and maile for use in Merrie Monarch activities. In a cultural sense, of course, these natural things are not just flowers and fronds, but kinolau, the physical manifestations that deities take when among us. This ban, originating out of intimate knowledge of exactly what’s happening beyond our yards, is a sign of love, of aloha maoli beyond trappings. The next few decades will be critical in determining the fate of Hawaiian plants, animals, and places. For those who live in and love Hawai’i during these perilous times, we suggest that to be an authentic maoli lover of Hawaiian things requires accepting the kuleana of being one who actively cares for the maoli world around us, a lover of Hawai’i, a tender, rather than just a liker and plucker.

09/12/2026

Join us in the greenhouse next Saturday September 19 - Pua Kauila

The Auwahi project has entered a bright new phase of its growth. New, collaborative partnerships with landowners, organizations, and funders is allowing growth in promising programs whose results we hope dwarf previous efforts. We have initiated recruitment efforts to bring on new members of a leadership group to help guide Auwahi in coming decades. This summer, an unprecedented push was made with community volunteers and staff adding over 4,600 saplings into the newest Auwahi forest restoration area, funded in part by Maui resident and musician Paul Simon’s 2019 Maui concerts. Auwahi greenhouse facilities, still under construction, at ‘Ulupalakua Ranch will enlarge our existing native plant propagation efforts by perhaps 3,000-5,000% in coming years.

Next Saturday, September 19th, we continue our heart and forest tending at the greenhouse area doing all the things needed to provide continuity in the seed-to-seedling-to-sapling-to-return-to-forest cycle we’re still learning to become specialists in.

If you are available and this sounds like fun, please send us an email at [email protected] to request a space.We only have room for so many people, and email confirmation is required to attend, so for safety reasons, please don’t just show up without confirmation. If we don’t get back to you with an acceptance email this time, we still encourage you to reply to future opportunities! If you are a new volunteer, or we haven’t heard from you in a while, please also tell us a little bit about your motivations, as well as any relevant physical or health limitations you might have.

If selected, please remember to wear close-toed shoes with good grip. Recommended items to bring are: a hat, long sleeve shirt, sunglasses, a jacket, drinking water, a lunch, and snacks. Feel free to visit the ranch store for a bite of refreshments after they open at 10AM, but we will have some snacks and drinks as well.

09/12/2026

Auwahi Greenhouse Volunteer day, this Saturday September 19

In the Sanskrit-based Bhakti tradition, the human heart and its well-being are fundamentally linked to human’s ability to serve as stewards of earth’s resources. If the ecology of the human heart is healthy, what naturally follows is increased capacity and desire to care for the natural world – oceans, forests, air, birds, fish, snails, reefs...everything natural. Even if places and species can be saved, if the hearts of people are not healthy, the Bhakti tradition suggests these systems will inevitably just be lost again.

We have seen this first hand at Auwahi forest, time and time again, people heal forests, that then heal people. If you’ve never taken that first step, you probably haven’t experienced that the health of a human’s inner landscape is fundamentally connected to their potential role in restoring the earth.

08/06/2026

Last minute opportunity to get in to join us in Auwahi to make great art. 2 places remaining ...
Saturday, as part of the Malama Wao Akua art show, the Auwahi project will be offering a select group of Maui artists rare access to fragments of an ancient wild part of Maui that once was the home of ‘the people of old’ and now, the site of native forest ecosystem renewal.

Diverse patterns of ancient, highly diverse dry and mesic forest types once extended across leeward Haleakala, stretching uninterrupted from Makawao across Kula to Kaupō. Though today these regions are thought of as open and sunny, in the past these areas were so densely forested that someone would have to search for an opening and a patch of sunlight to warm up in. Mary Kawena Pukui called woodland forests such as these ‘wao kanaka’, literally ‘forest for humans’. Warmer than windward forests, and filled with birds and hardwood tree species, the mixture of forest types on leeward slopes formed the backdrop for literally centuries of residency by ‘the people of old’.

By the 1920s, when their extraordinary diversity was first being documented by European and American botanists, these forests were literally in tatters, only fading fragments remaining. And yet, because of the engagement of human hands and hearts for the last three decades, Auwahi has been the focus of an exploration to determine whether native Hawaiian forests can be restored, can be brought back from the ecological brink. If they can be, big stakes are involved in that we will regain essential functioning watersheds and refugia for native species that have nowhere else to go in a changed world.

If you are or know an artist who recognizes that art can play a vital role in fostering high levels of comprehension, appreciation, and stewardship of na mea ‘ōiwi, please email us with a little about you and your art, and let’s make great things happen next Saturday. Please share this with friends and folks who are artists.

Where: `Ulupalakua Ranch

When: Saturday, August 8th, 8:30 AM until afternoon, around 3pm

06/30/2026

Join us at Auwahi the next two upcoming Saturdays July 4 and July 11, and the following Tuesdays, July 14th and July 21st. This is a rare opportunity where our restoration group will be running 4 consecutive trips!

We are making a big push to get lots of plants in the ground and are asking for your kōkua! please send us an email at [email protected] to request a space for the dates you can make and we will try to get you on a trip.

If you are a new volunteer, or we haven’t heard from you in a while, please also tell us a little about yourself and any physical or health limitations you might have.

Saturday July 4th (La’au Independence Day)
Saturday July 11th
Tuesday July 14th
Tuesday July 21st

Where: `Ulupalakua Ranch

When: 8:30 AM until afternoon, usually around 3 PM

06/30/2026

Upcoming Auwahi native tree planting trips on July 4, 11, 14, and 21
Lots of exciting things are happening at Auwahi, more on that later, but for now the most pressing headline out Honua’ula way is the huge batch of young native plants that want to go home to Auwahi. Good news there is that we have a place in their ancestral home waiting for them, tools, cream of the crop staff, and a few 4WD vehicles to carry everybody and the keiki la’au back home. If you have the physical chops and such, maybe you’re one of the people who can help shepherd them home. It feels pretty darn good, body and soul, to be on the team shepherding the little guys home and tucking them into Auwahi’s rich loamy soil for the next century or so.
Because we have so many plant keiki that want and need to go home at this point in their development, we’re going to be doing things a little differently. First, this invite is focused on tree planting trips for the next two Saturdays, July 4th and 11th. In addition, we’re starting a new gig for this planting push with smaller trips going up on two upcoming Tuesdays, July 14th and 21st.
Regarding the trips themselves, though usually we focus on using ‘o’o (iron digging stick) as our modus operandi, these trips will be different. Because the plant keiki are in mini-dibbles, we will be changing up to a quicker, more mobile planting style, with everyone getting their own small pick and keiki cluster. With this method, we’re hoping to plant higher numbers than normal trips, so if you are one of those strong and agile people who wants to be a hero defending native Hawaiian forests, please send us an email at [email protected] to request a space for the dates you can make and we will try to get you on a trip. If you are a new volunteer, or we haven’t heard from you in a while, please also tell us a little about yourself and any physical or health limitations you might have.
So those dates are:
Saturday July 4th (La’au Independence Day)
Saturday July 11th
Tuesday July 14th
Tuesday July 21st
Where: `Ulupalakua Ranch
When: 8:30 AM until afternoon, usually around 3 PM
Mahalo for your support and interest to help the forest, we try our best to get as many people safely on the mauna as possible. We’re going to be juggling people, trips, and complicating factors early next week so please understand if it takes us a minute to formulate a plan and get back to you.
The Auwahi project (www.auwahi.org) conducts ecological restoration on `Ulupalakua Ranch at Auwahi, a district harboring some of the last and most diverse tracts of native forest in the archipelago. The amazing progress and ongoing stewardship of Auwahi forest has been built on the contributions of Maui’s volunteering community and the public-spirited land owners of `Ulupalakua Ranch, the Erdman famil See less

06/29/2026

Lots of exciting things are happening at Auwahi, more on that later, but for now the most pressing headline out Honua’ula way is the huge batch of young native plants that want to go home to Auwahi. Good news there is that we have a place in their ancestral home waiting for them, tools, cream of the crop staff, and a few 4WD vehicles to carry everybody and the keiki la’au back home. If you have the physical chops and such, maybe you’re one of the people who can help shepherd them home. It feels pretty darn good, body and soul, to be on the team shepherding the little guys home and tucking them into Auwahi’s rich loamy soil for the next century or so.

Because we have so many plant keiki that want and need to go home at this point in their development, we’re going to be doing things a little differently. First, this invite is focused on tree planting trips for the next two Saturdays, July 4th and 11th. In addition, we’re starting a new gig for this planting push with smaller trips going up on two upcoming Tuesdays, July 14th and 21st.

05/02/2026

Queen’s Prayer at Auwahi - Hawai’i’s last reigning monarch, Queen Liliʻuokalani, composed ‘Ke Aloha O Ka Haku’, the Queen’s Prayer, as a symbol of the importance of hope, kindness, pride, and honor even, especially in troubled times. To many, the composition now considered Hawai’i’s first national anthem still represents that today.

In the attached YouTube video, talented cellist Michelle Ancheta and gifted cinematographer Amia Datts honor the Queen’s composition played at Auwahi, on ‘Ulupalakua Ranch on Maui. The Queen was a lover of Hawaiian forests, honoring them throughout her mele (songs). We felt the spirit and music of the Queen would sound especially powerful at Auwahi where native forests, once nearly lost, are being restored with the hands and hearts of caring people. The day we recorded this, everything seemed to go right. When Michelle began to play with ancient native trees as audience, a powerful presence could be felt, tangled in the tree branches and in the cool wind and light rains.

04/25/2026

Mahalo again to the senior class of Ke Kula Kaiapuni ‘o Kekaulike. Last Friday, Auwahi.

Auwahi Forest Restoration Project

10/10/2026

10/10/2026

09/12/2026

09/12/2026

08/06/2026

06/30/2026

06/30/2026

06/29/2026

05/02/2026

04/25/2026

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