Kealia Pond National Wildlife Refuge

The Kealia Pond is a National Wildlife Refuge for native birds, such as the Hawaiian Coot, and the Hawaiian Stilt, and native vegetation, such as the Saltgrass, and the sea purslane. The Kealia Pond is one of the five hundred refuges in America, and is home to many endangered birds. The pond swells up to four hundred acres after heavy rainfall, making it one of the biggest natural ponds left in Hawaii. The California Bulrush is an invasive species, brought here from California. The Bulrush chokes out all the native plants, where the native birds nest. Not only is it hurting the native life, California Bulrush is tall, and ugly, and blocks the view of the beautiful birds.

Common Name: Hawaiian Stilt
Scientific Name: Himantopus mexicanus knudseni
Hawaiian Name: Ae'o
Found in mudflats close to water
Endemic to Hawaii
Ae'o refers to "one standing tall"
resources.edb.gov.hk

Common Name: Hawaiian Coot
Scientific Name: Fulica Alai
Hawaiian Name: 'Alae Ke'o
Found in shollow water close to cover
Endemic to Hawaii
'Alae ke'o means "White forehead"

It is important for us to kill the Bulrush, because it is taking over the ponds and hurting the native plants and animals. This could hurt the ecosystem, cause future extinctions, and hurt tourism, the main income for Hawaii. This means that the state will be affected by the loss of birds, and the loss of tourist activities.

Our science class went to Kealia pond, and we made four different groups. Each group recorded the turbidity, water temperature, salinity, pH, phosphates, average height of plants, density, weather and any other observations. Then, one group cut the bulrush down, one sprayed them with chemicals, and one cut and sprayed the bulrush. Then, a couple weeks later, we went back to the ponds recorded the same data as before, and observed which process worked best.


Before Eradication:


After treatment:

So as you can see, the most effective treatment, was to spray the tassles. This treatment resulted in the most dead bulrush.

Photographs

Reef Survey

Reef Survey

So our latest project, was doing a reef survey. We went snorkeling in a fish pond, and identified all the fish that we saw.

Reef, Reed Enviornmental Education Foundation, is an orginization, whos goal is to conserve the marine life by educating people how to become "active ocean stewards and citizen scientists."

To learn more abou the Reef foundation, visit http://www.reef.org/.

Our snorkeling experience at the fish pond was not very enjoyable, the ground was covered in mushy sediment, and there was no visibility at all.

throughout the entire excursion I saw a total of one fish, and the rest of the time, there was nothing there to see.

I think that a recent storm in Maui is the cause of the poor conditions, there was an unbelievable amount of run-off, and destructive debree flooding the area, during the storm, and it will take a while to return to its original, and beautiful condition.