Rolling Hills and Rocky Roads

We're getting back to it today after a long, but fun weekend. It was a bit of a cold start this morning and with some rain, we got to see a rainbow. It luckily stopped raining shortly after we arrived for restoration with Rima. Windbreakers and boots donned, we took the rocky road up to our restoration site. 

Looking up at the restoration site

But the Gator Waka and Piwakawaka couldn't make it up without four-wheel drive. Rima and her team shuttled us in their trucks across the Birdlings Flat stones and we reached our destination. While we waited for a few more of us to be picked up at the bottom (pictured above), Rima explained the Maori connection to lakes Forsyth and Ellesmere. It all started with a cloak and a woman. She had put the sacred Maori cloak on and started a civil strife. In the ensuing conflict, many Maori chieftains were lost (along with 98% of the local population). Europeans arrived and began to buy land from chiefs who didn't even own the land. Yet, the water was never sold and remains critical to their culture. Eels inhabit the lakes and provided fats to keep them warm during winter months. 

Rima talking about the lakes (Lake Ellesmere in distance)

Lake Forsyth (Wairewa) looking a bit green

Rima and the others living on the property have a huge task ahead of them at this site. Since gravel closed the lakes off to the ocean and runoff has caused algae to grow, eels are truly threatened. A canal has been made in the meantime for them to continue their journeys between the lakes and the ocean. The part we were involved in is creating a seed source for a future forest. In another eighty years, we may see the grassy hills turn into a forested landscape. Our job was to remove the weeds (grass) in and around the fenced-in native plants. The fences discouraged invasive rabbits from trying to destroy the future forest. Even the plants had their own defense: some actually played dead!

 Pulling the grass

  

Before weeding

   

 After weeding (different plant)

To join us, we had Bonnie, a peppy dog who just wanted love. Even though we got a bit distracted at times, the job was finished and we completed the work started two years ago by another UF study abroad class that planted them (Editor's Note: Around 300 plants that are having a 95-98% success rate because of the TLC weeding). In the last three years, around 3,000 plants have been planted. However, the threat of drought and severe oceanic winds still haunts the hillsides. So the plants Rima put down needed special care while we worked there.  (Editor's Note: Follow-up weeding is the not so glamorous part of planting natives.)

Eliza and Bonnie

Group photo after we finished!

So we made our way back down the hills and across the stones until the cars got stuck in a rut of rocks. We all got out and walked the short distance back to the Gator Waka. Luckily, Rima's team lived on the side we had just come from. And while we waited for the next group of students to get picked up from on the mountain, some of us tried a balancing act on the playground. After that, we had tea time at Coffee Culture and headed back to our dorms where Dr. Hostetler looked at iNaturalist with us before we called it a night.

Until the 'morrow,

Devin