When you come into Limahuli,
you're gonna see plants that you see
nowhere else in the world.
All of this biodiversity is the foundation
that Hawaiian culture was built on.
I hear the voices of the old Hawaiians
talking about how special this place is
and pushing me to really care for this place.
(tranquil music)
Limahuli Garden Preserve is a 1,000 acre botanical garden
and nature preserve situated on the North Shore
on the island of Kauai in the Hawaiian islands.
My job is to basically garner support for our protection
of this place and the restoration of this valley.
Some of the plants that we have now,
they're so rare that you have to go on a four mile hike
deep into the valley or risk your life
and climb one of those peaks to get to them.
One of the examples of that is this plant called olena,
which is the second strongest fiber in the world.
Now that plant is pretty rare,
and they only exist way deep back
in the wet valleys of the island.
Within the context of the Hawaiian culture,
every plant has a name.
When a plant goes extinct,
that's a part of our language that dies.
It's our job to make sure that they
stick around for a future generation.
So this tree right here,
this is a really important tree culturally.
It's a hardwood, it's the second hardest wood in the forest.
Its name is uhiuhi.
It's down to two trees left on the island of Kauai,
so this is one tree that you're not
gonna really find anywhere else.
200 years ago, all of these plants were all around.
The community was actively cultivating them,
but there's been a huge disconnect in the past 200 years
between the community and the resources of the valley.
This is actually the state flower.
Unfortunately, our state flower is down
to just a handful of individuals in the wild.
So itâ€™s kind of a pretty strong statement
of the state of affairs of our native plants.
I can feel the rare plants calling for help.
We talk about sustainability nowadays.
We don't have to reinvent the wheel.
The ancient Hawaiians did it.
They were doing it for a millennium at least.
In Hawaiian culture always try to be at a point
where you've given more than you've taken.
That resource management system
is viable in the 21st century to address
a lot of the problems we're dealing with nowadays.
If we're engaging with the ocean,
we don't just go down there and fish.
We build fish houses so that there's more habitat
for the fish to live in.
And in the forest, you go and take care of the place,
make sure that the plants are healthy before you gather
and then before you leave,
you replant behind you so that there's more for tomorrow.
If you take responsibility for something,
and then you have a right to access it.
(tranquil music)
Humanity doesn't have to be separated from nature,
and there are ways for humanity to engage nature
such that both benefit.
This place can be a model.
It can be a model of how humanity is connected to nature
and that is probably the most important story in Hawaiian culture.