We love water in Hawai‘i! Easy access to rivers for paddling and kayaking, or the chance to hike to a waterfall, are a perk of living here. So it’s no surprise that water features heavily in Hawaiian place names. Waikiki means ‘fresh water’; Waipi‘o means ‘curved water’; and Wai‘ale‘ale equates to ‘overflowing water’. All that water means lots of wetlands, which is lucky for the islands, because wetlands provide us with all sorts of services and benefits.
To celebrate American Wetlands Month, we take a look at six ways wetlands benefit you – some of them might surprise you!
Free food and water
When the Polynesians arrived, they brought with them kalo (taro). There could hardly have been a better place on earth to grow this staple crop and these resourceful people were soon altering the waterways to create lo‘i (wet taro fields) in the lowlands. Taro sustained the Hawaiian population for hundreds of years and it is still feeding local people today.
As well as dinner, wetlands also provide the water in your glass. These habitats recharge the water table, which is where much of our drinking water comes from.
Nature’s Water Purification
When it rains hard, especially in areas where we have lost native forest, the water rushes down the mountains and into rivers, bringing sediment with it. When the rivers reach the lower elevation floodplain, contaminants such as pesticides, fertilizers, pig feces and even human waste from cesspools enter the water. That’s bad news for water quality, but wetlands can help. If there’s a wetland area in that floodplain, it will store some of the flood water, buying time while the sediment settles out. This helps both the ocean and coral reefs. Experts have estimated that a filtration system like this would cost at least $5 million if you had to build a “non-natural” one such as a water treatment plant.
Flood protection for free
Wetlands act like big sponges. In a storm, they soak up some of the water cascading down from the mountains and rising up in the rivers. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, keeping just 15% of the land in a watershed as a wetland can reduce peak flood by up to 60%. That means big savings on flood damage!
Natural wallpaper
One of the waysides on the North Shore of Kaua‘i overlooks U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Hanalei National Wildlife Refuge and it’s often packed with sightseers. That’s because wetlands are gorgeous, especially when they are reflecting a hot, Hawaiian sun or providing a reflective backdrop on a kayak trip. That natural scenic beauty is a big part of the Hawai‘i package for both locals and visitors.
Cooling services
Wetlands are also really good at keeping carbon trapped in the soil. That means less greenhouse gases rising up from the aloha state. Protecting and restoring wetlands can help to reduce our carbon footprint for a relatively small budget compared to other carbon reduction and sequestration methods.
Bird Benefits
We’re thousands of miles away from the mainland and that distance makes our ecosystems unique. Hawai‘i has lots of birds that are found nowhere else on the planet, including the Big Five; the ‘alae ‘ula (Hawaiian Common Gallinule); the ‘alae ke‘oke‘o (Hawaiian Coot); the ae‘o (Hawaiian Stilt); the Koloa Maoli (Hawaiian Duck); and the Nene (Hawaiian Goose). It can be surprisingly easy to spot these birds if you’re in the right place, even on golf courses and resorts. Our endemic wetland birds are one of those details that make the islands so special… and for our keiki, they can be the gateway to a lifetime of wildlife watching.
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Helen Raine is with the Pacific Birds Habitat Joint Venture.
