 Dear Outdoor Circle Family, We are delighted to present this issue of The Greenleaf to catch you up on some of the activities of our statewide organization and the wonderful work and initiatives of our branches. You will also find some of our current projects and successes in this edition of The Greenleaf. We recognize our outgoing and incoming board members who do so much for this volunteer organization. Finally, we invite you to take advantage of Foodland’s “Give Aloha” Campaign through the end of the month—read below for more details and how to participate. As the planet tilts north on its axis and we ostensibly leave behind some of the hottest months of the year, we all increasingly recognize the value of cooling shade trees. In Honolulu, working with partners, we continue to press for an agenda by the city and other organizations to increase our tree canopy in urban areas to 35% by 2035 from 22% coverage currently. This is not a Honolulu-only issue--statewide, urban or rural, we are seeing declines in canopy tree coverage, and we must reverse this trend. While this increase in canopy coverage is a lofty goal and will require a concerted and sustained effort by the state, counties, cities and large landowners and private individuals, we can achieve this and simply need to look back on all that The Outdoor Circle has accomplished over more than 106 years in planting canopy shade trees throughout our islands. We are delighted to announce that TOC’s Exceptional Trees mapping project now has been updated with ‘geotags’ on virtually all ETs statewide. We have developed an app, available for download, to find out more information about exact locations and information about each tree, with photos and details. This same information is repeated on our website—please have a look and nominate more trees to this Exceptional Tree list. We continue working with our friends at the Kaulunani Urban & Community Forestry Program and SmartTrees Pacific on programs to map trees using trained ‘citizen foresters.’ This map then becomes a comprehensive tool to determine exact locations where the need for new trees is the greatest and replanting will be in concert with the City and County of Honolulu. We hope to expand this program to other areas. An exciting project we have recently completed is an all-islands ‘Google Trekker’ mapping of trails, parks, scenic areas, botanical gardens and more. Selected by Google as its partner in Hawai’i, a 360-degree view 11 camera backpack was worn to film and allow a viewer to ‘virtually’ hike or travel all around some of Hawai‘i’s most exquisite scenery and natural beauty from the comfort of their homes. This is perfect for those who wish to explore an area before a trip, in lieu of a trip or for other reasons and does not hinder those who cannot view these places directly for whatever reasons. TOC was uniquely identified by Google as a partner because of its storied history, continued advocacy and current programs such as ‘citizen forester,’ and use of technology in the mapping of Exceptional Trees statewide. TOC is proud to partner with Google on this innovative and cutting-edge program. More recently, we have partnered with the University of Hawaii to begin a large-scale reforestation effort across Oahu that we plan on expanding out to all islands where there is interest. This program is called the “Carbon Neutrality Challenge” and teaches students about the benefits of trees and how planting them will not only help reduce/offset their carbon footprint, but also help increase the size and health of our urban canopy and important forests. As of now, we have already planted hundreds of native plants comprised of various species, with thousands more planned for this upcoming year. Our upcoming event on October 27thwill be the launch event of the second phase of this program, with the goal of planting 1,000 trees at our four sites in a single day. TOC remains ever-vigilant regarding illegal signage and visual blight, with our visual landscape and view planes requiring constant attention as old and new threats emerge. This is a challenge that we confront daily and we appreciate your eyes and ears in the community to alert us to issues in your community. Newer challenges also include areas such as noise pollution or of light pollution and the destruction of dark skies and the problems excessive lighting brings. Our Waikiki Branch has been leading the charge on this and we expect more work on this area in the future. Members, committee members and volunteers on projects locally and statewide are the lifeblood of our organization. We especially thank our outgoing board members Josie Bidgood, Kaui Lucas, Michael Moskowitz, and Paula Ress, for their dedication over their terms as board members and to the mission of The Outdoor Circle. We welcome new board members Mimi Bornhorst Gaddis, Christian Palmer, Jennie Peterson, and Scott Wilson, and know they will contribute much to the organization. They join continuing board members Steve Mechler, Diane Harding, Kathleen Bryan, Cheryl Langdon, Elizabeth O’Sullivan, Eric Hansen, and Lowana Richardson. We owe a great debt to all of our volunteers, serving as board members of the statewide organization and local branches, as well as the many others volunteers who give so much of their time and energy to the projects and concerns that keep our islands “clean, green and beautiful.” Thank you for all you do. To continue to donate to The Outdoor Circle while you shop, TOC is again participating in Foodland’s “Give Aloha” program. When shopping at any Foodland or Sack N Save store during the month of September you can donate to TOC during the check-out process. Just use your Maika‘i card and mention to the cashier that you would like to donate, up to $249, to The Outdoor Circle (I.D. #77116). Foodland will match your donation on a percentage basis. Because you value the work that The Outdoor Circle has done over the last century and will continue to do for future generations, an important way to maintain the health of this organization is to include us in your planned giving arrangements. Please contact your estate planner, attorney, or our office for more information on how to easily set this up. Future generations will benefit from your bequests, and you will join in the legacy of those whose generosity in estate planning has allowed their gifts to continue to ensure we will be able to thrive and keep Hawai‘i clean, green and beautiful. We sincerely appreciate your continued support via your participation when a call to action is made, becoming active with your local branch, your gifts, and your membership, which allows us to speak with a louder collective voice to keep our islands clean, green and beautiful. Thank you again for your continued support of The Outdoor Circle. Warm aloha, Winston Welch Executive Director  By: Vanessa Distajo The Mānoa Branch of The Outdoor Circle has had an incredibly active year of volunteering. In the midst of beautifying, educating and advocating, we have deepened our partnerships with the City & County of Honolulu, other non-profits, schools, businesses, and State agencies. Our key stone project this year has been the restoration of Kamānele Park. With the approval of the Department of Parks & Recreation Director Michele Nekota and Clint Jamile of the City’s Adopt-a-Park program, we organized thirteen clean up days to remove over three and a half tons of invasive vegetation that had been covering over the cultural site for decades. Working closely with the archaeologists from OASES, we were able to have the site officially mapped. It was determined that the site was used by Native Hawaiians for ceremonial, agricultural and habitation purposes, and does indeed feature the remains of a heiau. We will continue to maintain the area as we develop a historic preservation plan with OASES, Mālama Mānoa, and other community stakeholders. The playground aspect of our Kamānele Park Project has been coming along as well. A design concept was developed by a team of local educators to reflect the history and legends of Mānoa Valley. We also formulated a list of interdisciplinary connections, and shared them with Dr. Edna Hussey, Principal of Mid Pacific Institute, because the lower school campus she supervises is adjacent to Kamānele Park. The Mid Pacific first and second grade students used Kamānele Park as an Inquiry Project. We were pleased to attend their celebration, and donated books to their classrooms to commemorate the culmination of their work. Furthermore, we formed a relationship with Punahou School, facilitating service learning classes for the Academy G-Term and the Hawaiian Culture II class. Last November, we shared the Kamānele Park Project Proposal with the Mayor’s Commission of Culture and the Arts. The eleven commissioners unanimously voted in support of our project. Also, we received strong support along the way from City Council Member Ann Kobayashi, who donated snacks for our volunteers, and championed funding for the new playground to help us with our fundraising efforts. Thankfully, the Executive Budget Bill 16 passed, allocating $150,000 for the engineering site work for the new playground. Council Member Trevor Ozawa, Chair of the Budget Committee, loved the project too, and worked hard to find more money in the City’s budget to increase the amount to our estimated total of $216,000. We sincerely appreciate everyone’s contributions to this massive community improvement project. In addition, it is important to briefly mention a few of our other projects which received media coverage. We negotiated with Alexander & Baldwin to save the seventeen mature monkey pod trees at Mānoa Marketplace; we organized the 1,000 Tree Give Away with Mālama Mānoa; we advocated for the residents of UH Faculty housing as they had valid environmental concerns about DLNR’s Mānoa Stream Dredging Project; and we submitted testimony to elected officials about the issue of monster houses. Our year has been hectic and overwhelming at times with all the multitasking, but it has been extremely rewarding and fulfilling to make such positive impacts in the community that we love.
 Waimea Outdoor Circle - Stream Restoration Project at Ulu La`au Waimea Nature Park  Waimea Outdoor Circle successfully partnered with the University of Hawaii Sea Grant College Program and recently showcased the completion of a four-year long stream restoration project at Ulu La`au the Waimea Nature Park on July 14th. Community members were invited to see the different methods used to stabilize the banks of the stream and control erosion with native plant restoration.  East Hawaii Island Outdoor Circle The East Hawai‘i Island Branch has been working on education and awareness for the trees on Banyan Drive in part by helping start a “Friends of Banyan Drive” and developing an informational pamphlet. The trees are in dire need of care. We have pushed for and achieved, the reestablishment of the Big Island Arborist Advisory Committee.  East Honolulu Outdoor CircleThe East Honolulu Branch celebrated Arbor Day with a birthday party for the 10 kou trees planted five years earlier in the Diamond Head Crater. Kaua'i Outdoor CircleThe Kaua’i Outdoor Circle, although small, has had a positive an impact on the Kaua’i community. We had our annual educational booth at the Arbor Day Tree Giveaway; held tree pruning demonstrations for the State Public Works Department and the County Beautification Department and continue to work with the County Building Department on regulating signs. Lani-Kailua Outdoor CircleThe Lani-Kailua Branch had a very successful 26th Annual “I Love Kailua” Town Party this year, raising almost $30,000 to help fund our beautification projects around Kailua, including the on-going landscape maintenance of two major traffic triangles, and the proposed landscape refurbishment of Alala Point, at the entrance to Lanikai, a landscape project that LKOC installed 25 years ago, with proceeds from the very first Town Party, and has maintained since 1999. Waikoloa Village Outdoor CircleProgress is being made toward creating a Waikoloa Community Garden on a quarter acre lot we have procured. We have installed a sub-meter for the water, have recently purchased other irrigation supplies, and the trench work has begun. We look forward to completing the construction so planting can begin.
The North Shore Outdoor Circle (NSOC) members climbed and volunteered atop Mt. Kaala, held workshops, and pruned trees in Haleiwa’s Weed Circle. Members also monitored Haleiwa Special District amendments related to signage as bills moved through the City Council and gave input regarding portions related to sign codes in the Land Ordinance revisions. The NSOC, worked with the Haleiwa Community on view plane issues related to Special District amendments on food trucks, supported efforts to preserve the view plane in lieu of a 72 foot cell phone tower fronting the land trust behind Sunset Beach Elementary School and wrote letters and visited city officials regarding the condition of Ke Ala Pupukea. The NSOC also became a partner in the Sunset Beach Dune Restoration Project and adopted the ginger garden in Waimea Valley. Members of the North Shore Branch climbed and volunteered atop Mt. Kaala, held workshops, and pruned trees in Haleiwa’s Weed Circle. Members monitored Haleiwa Special District amendments related to signage. We worked on a number of view plane issues: the Haleiwa side of Waimea Bay, Special District amendments on food trucks, and the land trust behind Sunset Beach Elementary School. We engaged city officials regarding the condition of Ke Ala Pupukea, became a partner in the Sunset Beach Dune Restoration Project, and adopted the ginger garden in Waimea Valley.   Since 2014, TOC has been working on revitalizing its Exceptional Tree Initiativefor the statewide law it helped to create in 1975 that protects these valuable tree specimens. Part of this program has seen the development of TOC’s “Exceptional Tree Map”which is constantly being updated as new trees are added and removed from each county’s registry across the state. However, over the last couple of years, there has been a net loss of Exceptional Trees (ET) across the state as many of these individuals are reaching the end of their natural lifespan and are beginning to fail. To reverse this loss, TOC’s Programs Director, Myles Ritchie began working much more closely with Arborist Advisory Committees from counties with active ET programs to try and curb this alarming trend. Myles has been appointed to the Oahu Arborist Advisory Committee and is an active liaison working with committees in each county and property owners to increase the number of ET nominations submitted with the overall goal of seeing new ETs added to each county’s respective register. This work has paid off as new ETs have been accepted in addition to more under further consideration. While the new status of these trees will not be made official until they are approved by respective county councils when the annual ordinance change occurs, on Oahu alone, there are at least four new trees and one grove that should be receiving this distinction in the coming weeks. While the nomination of new ETs is crucial to the program’s success across the state, education regarding these trees is also a vital component as well. The two most common questions asked when presenting or talking about ETs are: How old is the tree and what were the criteria used in determining its selection for inclusion into the ET registry? While age is always difficult to pinpoint, the use of historical documents always assists with this process as does using the original nominating documents to find the reason for a tree’s exceptional status. In order to do just this, Myles has just finished digitizing all of the original Oahu ET nomination documents (this has never been done before) and will be creating a database that will answer both of these questions related to age and selection criteria. In the coming months, this data will be added to the Exceptional Tree Map so that the general public will finally have answers to two of the most commonly asked questions related to these trees. While all of this is welcomed news, the need to continually send in new nomination forms remains of the utmost importance, in addition to beginning to lay the foundation for a Next Generation Exceptional Tree program that will replace those that are near the end of their lifespan. 
In 2017, TOC was approached by University of Hawai‘i professor Dr. Andrew Kaufman to participate in a research program that has been designed to find alternative root barrier methods that would work in Hawai‘i to greatly reduce the number of mature street trees that are removed annually due to infrastructure damaged caused by their roots. The initial project had already been underway for a few years but it was at this point that increased data collection and research needed to be conducted in order to understand the full impacts of the three different root barrier methods under consideration (standard root barriers, root paths and Silva cells). Due to the immense potential that this research could have on preventing mature trees from being constantly removed and replaced with new smaller trees, and the research experience that TOC’s Programs Director, Myles Ritchie, has in the field, this seemed to be a natural fit. Now, a year and a half later, the data that has been acquired has recently been published in the May/June 2018 issue of the Landscape Industry Council of Hawai‘i’s (LICH) Hawaiiscape Magazineshowing the progress that has been made and the potential findings that will be seen when the final data is analyzed in two years’ time. Below is an excerpt from the article that highlights the goal and benefits of the research: "This research will be one of the first projects addressing tree installation, root zone strategies, and mitigating existing tree/infrastructure conflicts in tropical municipal landscapes. It will begin to generate techniques for proper tree selection, installation, and maintenance which could be employed statewide. These kinds of techniques will not only improve the aesthetic quality of Hawaii’s public landscapes for visitors, and residents, but has the potential to save the State thousands of dollars per year in urban forest amenity replacements and maintenance practices. In addition, this project will help in the safety of urban trees in relation to sidewalks and streets from improper tree selection, installation, and maintenance practices due to the current lack of knowledge of how trees function in urban tropical environments, as opposed to those in more temperate environments. The results of this research could be immediately applied to future HDOT as well as C & C Honolulu urban tree planting projects. This could begin to drastically change the way trees are selected, installed and maintained in the State of Hawaii, thus improving the aesthetic, social, and safety of urban landscaped streets while becoming a viable economic practice” (Kaufman & Ritchie, 2018).” Moving forward, the results of the research should help provide new information to those who conduct street tree plantings and infrastructure maintenance. From this, we should see a healthier and more mature urban forest throughout the state that also sees a decrease in the amount of infrastructure damage caused by tree roots, while at the same time, keeping sidewalks safe for all to use by mitigating the constant battle seen between trees and urban infrastructure. Source: Kaufman, A., Ritchie, M. “Mitigating Infrastructure Damage by Trees: Hawaii’s First Research Study on Urban Tree Installation Strategies”, Hawaiiscape, Published May/June 2018.  This past year saw the completion of TOC’s partnership with Google’s Trekker program which highlighted various environmental, cultural and historical locations from around the state and saw them uploaded to Google Maps/Earth. All imagery from Kauai, Maui, Oahu and Hawai‘i Island can now be accessed through Google Maps/Earth and direct links to each location can be found on the TOC website (http://www.outdoorcircle.org/google-trekker.html). Please note that for all locations featured, permission was granted by the respective property owner or government agency and no secret locations were a part of the program. The imagery has received praise for the numerous benefits that it can provide including the ability to use it for research purposes such as monitoring changes in invasive species composition over time, and allowing those who may not be physically or financially capable of visiting these wonderful locations, the ability to do so virtually.  One year ago, TOC announced a new collaborative program that it had begun to undertake with the University of Hawai‘i called the Carbon Neutrality Challenge. This program uses a three-tier approach focused on education, a unique carbon footprint calculator that tells you how many trees of a given species you need to plant to become carbon neutral and finally, a means to achieve this goal of carbon neutrality through the planting of trees at one of the program’s sites. Over this time, students from elementary schools through to the university level have participated in this program and has led to the planting of over 200 native Hawaiian tree species (Wiliwili, Lonomea and A‘ali‘I) at the Camp Palehua site. Now, with the experience gained from this pilot project, the program will be expanding in scope to provide further access to additional students which will ultimately see many more trees planted around Oahu. Currently there are a few hundred trees growing at the UH greenhouse that are scheduled to be out-planted in the fall at the current Camp Palehua site, in conjunction with three newly proposed sites. These are located in Kailua, Moanalua and Wahila Ridge and have been made possible through support of the program by DOFAW and the Ko‘olau Mountains Watershed Partnership. The goal for the upcoming fall is to have numerous groups of students participate in the program and ultimately come to these sites and plant over 1,000 new native trees.  The Outdoor Circle’s founders and members over the last 106 years made a commitment to beautify and green our islands for future generations providing the large shade trees and visual-blight free environment we enjoy today in our island home. We invite you to place The Outdoor Circle in your planned giving in whatever form is appropriate for you, knowing that your gifts will continue to live on in perpetuity and bless these islands with beauty for generations to come.
You do not need to be wealthy to leave a legacy gift. Make your core values known by making a planned gift to The Outdoor Circle where your forward-thinking will continue to support our long-term success for an organization whose work you value. In addition to supporting our work through your generous cash donations, here are other ways you can contribute to the sustainability of The Outdoor Circle in the long term. Many of these options are a win-win for the donor and the organization. We encourage you to consult with your financial advisor to discuss the tax implications of these options.
Mahalo for including The Outdoor Circle in your planned giving and the legacy that provides so that you can indeed ‘Give Beyond Your Years” to this organization that has kept the same vision of beauty in our island home for over a century. |
Welina!The Greenleaf is the online newsletter and blog of The Outdoor Circle. Here you will find updates on the projects and accomplishments of our many branches throughout the state, as well as programs with statewide impact. Archives
September 2023
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