KAILUA, Hawaii (KHON2) — Earlier this month, the city opened up the Ka’elepulu Stream Mouth at Kailua Beach as part of the Kailua Beach Dune Restoration project, which has been underway since November.
Changes coming to Kailua Beach Park
Saturday morning, the project continued with a community planting event that included over 150 volunteers, where they planted a variety of different plants into he sand that had been lost over time.
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“We did our first community dune planting day in May,” said Amy Wirts, Extension Agent of the Hawaii Sea Grant College Program. “We planted two small test areas to see what we could learn about what plants were going to do well and where we might want to place them. Based on that, we came back out now and did a very large community event.”
Over a thousand native plants were installed by the volunteers, which they say was a Saturday well spent.
“I volunteer because I wanted to give back, give back to the community to give back to the Aina,” said Bo, one of the volunteers for the morning. “We’ve got to take care of the land.”
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“Kailua Beach is a great place. My little girl learned to walk not too far from here,” said Larry Abbott, another volunteer and longtime Kailua resident. “The plants and animals that were here before people were here are extremely rare and valuable, and to put them back into their homeland is such an important chore.”
But the plants aren’t just for show; they play an important role in the restoration project by retaining sand in the dune. When wind blows, sometimes sand can get away from the dune, causing for the beach to slowly deteriorate over time. But the native plants from Saturday’s event are meant to hold the sand in place as best as possible, keeping the dune in its finest glory.
“If we have high waves or a storm and the waves come, they can kind of chew into the dunes a little bit, take some of that sand down from the beach” said Wes Crile, Hawaii Dune Restoration Coordinator. “Those plants can just recover. Then the sand will start to accumulate again, and it’s a cycle that continues.”
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The restoration project will continue with more installation of educational signage, and potentially more plants that would front the parking lot or some more trees.
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[SRC] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/kailua-beach-restoration-project-continues-032134080.html
