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Restoring Hawai'i's ancient fishponds

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  • Restoring Hawai'i's ancient fishponds

    An EPA-sponsored pilot project to restore Hawai'i's ancient fishponds and to create an easier process for groups to reclaim the fishponds, restore them and have them produce food has been deemed successful.

    Project Loko 'Ia on Moloka'i has restored the Keawanui loko so that it now is generating money from aquaculture, given some Moloka'i youths jobs, and proven that through proper management, the fishponds of Hawai'i can once again become an important part of the 'aina's drive for self-sufficiency.

    "...Thirteen fishponds have been restored statewide, with six ponds currently in use; three on Molokai, one on the island of Hawai'i, and two on Oahu. Through Project Loko I'a, the Hawai'ian Learning Center at the Keawanui fishpond on Molokai has been established and provides the local, state, aquaculture and research community an opportunity to view, discuss and experience a working fishpond and demonstration ahupa'a. The strategic plan also calls for continued education and research in fishpond management, aquaculture, ecosystems, and water quality, business/marketing and Hawaiian culture...."

    On Maui, Koie'ie loko is in the process of being restored by Ao'ao Na Loko I'a o Maui. Maybe something like this could restore the Menehune Fishpond on Kauai.

    Miulang
    "Americans believe in three freedoms. Freedom of speech; freedom of religion; and the freedom to deny the other two to folks they don`t like.” --Mark Twain

  • #2
    Best and Brightest, Ponds for

    Unfortunately, it seems that of the islands' few surviving fresh and lightly brackish water fish ponds that have not already been lost to present and future generations, few such topographical, aqueous features are properly recognized for what they were and can again become.

    Fortunately, the islands' shores' topography has not (but for Honolulu, Pearl Harbor and Kaneohe) been so radically destroyed (by developers)/developed (by developers) that the islands' shores are something other than what they have been and are for centuries now. Someday ----but for the garbage and pollution sites, whatevers and parking lot street runoffs mauka of Niumalu River upstream of "Menehune Fishpond"--- maybe our best and brightest won't be fighting Corporate America's wars; maybe some of our best and brightest could remain at home and be decently compensated for their efforts and labor in the reclamation of land and waters of the islands; surely, Menehune Pond is worthy of such a reclamation endeavor, before development in the pond's watershed turn the pond into yet more developments' water runoff trough.
    Last edited by waioli kai; June 23, 2005, 06:45 PM.

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