Mayor Kirk Caldwell is in South Carolina this week, attending a Mayors’ Institute on City Design meeting.
Caldwell will present concepts from the city’s draft Blaisdell Center Master Plan and get feedback from the MICD resource team of planners and architects.
While in Charleston, Caldwell will visit the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, where nine people were killed, to pay condolences and offer hookupu on behalf of the people of Honolulu. He will place a ti leaf lei in the church as a symbol of healing and unending aloha.
On June 17 a gunman opened fire during a Bible study at the church, killing nine parishioners. Dylann Roof has pleaded not guilty to 33 federal charges in the case.
Caldwell is scheduled to return Monday.
State plans to reforest native dryland on Haleakala
WAILUKU >> The state said it plans to help restore a native dryland forest that once covered leeward areas of Maui.
The Department of Land and Natural Resources Division of Forestry and Wildlife released a draft management plan for the Nakula Natural Area Reserve earlier this month that includes restoration efforts, the Maui News reported Monday.
The division estimates the reforestation will cost about $209,700 in fiscal year 2016 and $154,700 in 2017.
“The intent of projects like those happening in the Nakula (Natural Area Reserve) is to remove invasive plants and animals and then to restore the area to its natural habitat,” said DLNR Director Suzanne Case. “Native plants play an important role in protecting our watersheds and in providing foraging and nesting habitat for a wide variety of native animals like the Maui parrotbill.”
The 1,500-acre preserve, which begins at the 3,600-foot elevation range on Haleakala’s leeward slope, is home to two endangered endemic native forest birds, the nene, known as the Hawaiian goose, and the pueo, or Hawaiian owl. The endangered Hawaiian hoary bat can also be found there.
The dryland forest once stretched across Haleakala’s leeward slope from Makawao to Kaupo, but has shrunk to about 5 percent of its original size due to logging and cattle ranching.
