J. Matt

Photographer/Writer/Reporter

Reporting on the O‘ahu Invasive Species Committee's work to eliminate miconia

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Location: Honolulu

Nationality: USA

Biography: J. Matt is a documentary photographer and feature-writer from, and based in, Honolulu whose work principally focuses on global warming and its intersections with place, ecology, and social, political, and economic histories. Represented by ZUMA... MORE

Focus: Photographer, Photojournalist, Journalist, Writer, Reporter, Fine Art, Environment, Architecture, Science, History, Documentary, News, Photography, Journalist Investigative, Civil Rights and Social Inequality, Humanitarian, Columnist, Assignments, Teacher, Educator, Conservationist, Human Rights, Artist, Multimedia Journalist, Editing, Storyteller, Visual Artist, Climate, News Reporter, Print Journalism, Environmental Stories, Still Photographer, Landscape, Social Justice, Nature, Reportage, Visual Journalist, Visual Storyteller, Visual Storytelling

By surveying a straight line wi...MAUNAWILI 02/14/23 Honolulu USA

By surveying a straight line with a person on each end and one team member in the middle, the OISC field crews are able to visually cover the distance their survey line spans, constantly conferring between their points on the line by radio and shouted reports. In this way a team is assured of visually covering every possible inch of ground in a survey polygon while searching for miconia. The subsequent survey polygon in the larger target area will be created by moving the survey line's end from point 'c' to point 'a' and in this manner an entire map area is surveilled manually. Field crew manager KEPANO CARVALHO climbs a compass heading gone vertical through scratchy native uluhe ferns on the day's first line. MAUNAWILI 02/14/23 Honolulu USA

On the morning of an OISC surve...UOUA FLAT 06-15-23 Honolulu USA

On the morning of an OISC survey above Pauou Flat, a daily ritual is held, MELE ANA KASTNER, MEI LIN PRECOURT, GIANCARLO BAFFARO, AND MAKA JACK gather for a tailgate meeting. Each day's meeting identifies the specific survey area to be covered, known targets from previous trips into the day's survey polygon, and specific safety concerns—on this assignment it was rain, wind, and falling tree limbs. In fact all proved to be accounted for and the field crew was driven out of the forest, soaking wet, by falling limbs after walking only one survey polygon and finding only very young miconia at the previous location of a mature plant that crews had destroyed. PAUOUA FLAT 06-15-23 Honolulu USA

Above Pauou Flat the OISC field...UOUA FLAT 06-15-23 Honolulu USA

Above Pauou Flat the OISC field crew takes a moment on the walk in to the day's target area to appreciate the view of Pauoa Valley and Honolulu in the distance. The beauty of the vistas their work puts them in is not lost on OISC field hands. Many of the access walks to survey sites occur on trails popular with tourists visiting the mountains of Oahu. The sight of a field crew in their uniforms and spiked footwear raised passing eyebrows without fail in my experience of reporting on OISC's work. On this day the field crew is four, rather than three, members. GIANCARLO BAFFARO is a new hire and is being trained in the orienteering, GPS plotting, and log-keeping that an OISC field hand does as part of their daily conservation work. On today's crew draw he is the new guy, out with some of the many women employed by OISC, including field lead MELE ANA KASTNER. PAUOUA FLAT 06-15-23 Honolulu USA

NICK MATTSON and MELE ANA KASTN...MAUNAWILI 02/14/23 Honolulu USA

NICK MATTSON and MELE ANA KASTNER cross through the WWII-era Maunawili Training Course. This day's survey is being made adjacent to the known northwestern boundary of the Maunawili Valley Impact Area—a firing range where Pacific Theater-bound soldiers trained in jungle fighting tactics with weapons of the era including high explosive projectiles and mortars, grenades, and anti-tank rockets. WWII unexploded ordinance (UXO) remains a present danger in the off-trail, western portion of the Impact Area according to the Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) who are slated to remediate the area by 2025. In a 2015 report USACE describes potential for exposure to "munitions and explosives of concern" in off-trail areas of the western Impact Area, a locale where OISC has identified probabilities of miconia growth based on studies of seed dispersal range by birds and locations of destroyed, mature plants. While popular, publicly-accessible trails through Maunawili Valley have been cleared of UXO, OISC must weigh team member's safety when negotiating eradication efforts in topography with historical military live-fire use. MAUNAWILI 02/14/23 Honolulu USA

MELE ANA KASTNER and PHILLIP KA...MAUNAWILI 03/21/23 Honolulu USA

MELE ANA KASTNER and PHILLIP KAPU (in brush) traverse a steep ridge slope after sighting one of the miconia plants identified in a helicopter survey a few weeks prior to today's ground work destroying those aerially identified plants. The mountains of Hawai‘i consist of steep, heavily forested ridges and much of an OISC employee's day is spent beneath the canopy—and clinging to landscape features most would consider impassable. MAUNAWILI 03/21/23 Honolulu USA

Traveling in a 100 meter long s...MAUNAWILI 02/14/23 Honolulu USA

Traveling in a 100 meter long straight line through terrain resistant to straight line travel the crew must pass through mats of uluhe, a native false-staghorn fern which grow in mats as thick as twenty feet above the ground. The fern is ubiquitous in Hawaii's mountains and its thick matting slows water moving toward the soil allowing precipitation time to saturate soils and percolate into the islands' aquifers. Fern stands also hide holes and other topographical features. On this survey OISC members, and this reporter, repeatedly fell into holes hidden by the ferns, some as much as chest deep. Incredibly, miconia is able to take root beneath mats of uluhe and eventually grow through fern stands and shade the uluhe out, destroying this invaluable watershed pathway to aquifer. KEPANO CARVALHO faces only bad choices following the day's compass heading. MAUNAWILI 02/14/23 Honolulu USA

MELE ANA KASTNER and PHILLIP KAPU begin to remove and destroy a five meter miconia plant. Large plants such as this need to have their foliage carefully assessed for flowering and seed production. If necessary, the area around the plant is cleared and tarped to ensure all seeds from the plant can be retrieved. After this is done the plant's trunk is uprooted. The deep purple leaves of miconia are incredibly effective at shading their understory, preventing other plants competing with them for resources. Able to grow in near darkness miconia regularly sprout beneath, and grow through, dense thickets of native uluhe ferns—ultimately shading them out and killing the stand of ferns. MAUNAWILI 03/21/23 Honolulu USA

NICK MATTSON pulls an immature ...MAUNAWILI 02/14/23 Honolulu USA

NICK MATTSON pulls an immature miconia from its purchase, rooting on a cinder cliff. Once found the weed is often rooted in out of reach spots and demands climbing and hard physical labor to uproot. MAUNAWILI 02/14/23 Honolulu USA

PHILLIP KAPU prepares to treat ...MAUNAWILI 03/21/23 Honolulu USA

PHILLIP KAPU prepares to treat a miconia plant with herbicide. Plants too large or situated in too dangerous a location to be uprooted are treated with herbicide to ensure they not regrow. MAUNAWILI 03/21/23 Honolulu USA

PHILLIP KAPU returns to relativ...MAUNAWILI 03/21/23 Honolulu USA

PHILLIP KAPU returns to relatively more safe terrain as MAKA JACK reaches out to aid him back onto a ledge before seeking out the next plant marked for eradication on the cliffs of Maunawili on Oahu's east side. MAUNAWILI 03/21/23 Honolulu USA

PHILLIP KAPU beneath a miconia ...MAUNAWILI 03/21/23 Honolulu USA

PHILLIP KAPU beneath a miconia keiki (offspring, child) while logging the GPS coordinates of a destroyed plant. All plants identified and destroyed are logged with their GPS coordinates, size, and maturity status for ongoing surveillance. Since the seeds of miconia can remain viable for twenty years careful surveillance of the locations of destroyed mature plants is required for decades. MAUNAWILI 03/21/23 Honolulu USA

Working to get up a muddy ridge...ders like miconia. Honolulu USA

Working to get up a muddy ridge as far as the pig trail in front of her MELE ANA KASTNER uses her "fifth hand" to carry miconia seeds bound for the incinerator. The mountainous areas in these photographs of OISC's work see somewhere between 6.6' and 11.6' feet of rain annually. Even dry days are slippery and muddy. This makes a pig trail sometimes welcome respite from slipping and falling. Feral pigs are another species of concern to conservationists due to their destruction of native plants and contribution to run-off damage, while their rooting contributes to invasive plant dispersal and establishment by tiling soil for the seeds of aggressive invaders like miconia. Honolulu USA

When a mature plant is found th...MAUNAWILI 02/14/23 Honolulu USA

When a mature plant is found the plant must be liquidated carefully, with all of its seeds collected and removed to be incinerated. This is the haul of fruits and flowers from a single mature plant removed on this day's seven hour field survey. Each tiny fruit can possess as many as a hundred seeds and over a lifetime a single plant might produce as many as nine million seeds; each seed viable for as long as eighteen years. Miconia is a noxious weed that might yet be eradicated on Oahu with continued surveys such as these, extending past the seed viability period of the last mature plant to be destroyed in the wild. MAUNAWILI 02/14/23 Honolulu USA

MEI LIN PRECOURT stops to asses...UOUA FLAT 06-15-23 Honolulu USA

MEI LIN PRECOURT stops to assess her way downslope on a 170º compass bearing—a traverse that puts her just to the left of the tree trunk growing at a 45º angle in the lower left corner of the photo. Heading into a valley forest on a rainy day is, at best, a challenge, doing so while being attentive to GPS coordinate tracking, maintaining a compass bearing, and being on a focused lookout for miconia compounds that challenge. Although out with teammates, each point on the survey line faces their terrain alone. This requires a certain fortitude and practiced confidence in one's backcountry skills. Safety is an OISC field hand's ultimate concern walking the line and at any time the terrain becomes truly impassable the survey's bearing can be abandoned to be taken up away from the feature that posses the danger. In this case PRECOURT maintained her 170º course down the hill to the valley floor. PAUOUA FLAT 06-15-23 Honolulu USA

GIANCARLO BAFFARO learning the ...UOUA FLAT 06-21-23 Honolulu USA

GIANCARLO BAFFARO learning the GPS plotting ropes under the tutelage of MAKA JACK. On this day BAFFARO was tasked with leading the survey. That is to say, translating the survey polygon on the assignment map to the real world of mountain and foliage and leading the line from the center position through its survey sector, judging the best way to clear the day's assignment—and recording it all geospacially for integration into OISC's GIS mapping. PAUOUA FLAT 06-21-23 Honolulu USA

GIANCARLO BAFFARO making his wa...UOUA FLAT 06-21-23 Honolulu USA

GIANCARLO BAFFARO making his way carefully through a survey polygon on his first time leading a crew. BAFFARO is navigating a valley forest of invasive strawberry guava, one of the most common trees in Oahu's forests and today subject to a biocontrol in attempts to control its destruction of native and endemic ecosystems. PAUOUA FLAT 06-21-23 Honolulu USA

Returning to a ridge summit to ...UOUA FLAT 06-21-23 Honolulu USA

Returning to a ridge summit to descend and survey the day's second polygon GIANCARLO BAFFARO finds that the easiest safe way up is a boar's tunnel through an uluhe stand. Entering a pig's tunnel with no sunlight at the end is not for the faint of heart—the puaa, the Hawaiian word both for the animal and the meat, is a descendant of the boar Polynesians brought to these islands as a canoe animal and the European boars introduced for hunting in the 19th century. They are known to be aggressive (this reporter was treed by one as a teen) and we were only reasonably certain nobody was home. Fortunately our suspicions of vacancy were borne out over the whole of the twenty feet or so on hands and knees, or slithering on our bellies. We came out the other side without an encounter.

Hawaii's wild boar are not treating native birds well—their rooting and wallows fill with water and provide breeding ground for mosquitoes spreading avian malaria through native bird species—ever higher as cooler temperatures recede upslope and mosquitoes follow. PAUOUA FLAT 06-21-23 Honolulu USA

MELE ANA KASTNER records a vide...UOUA FLAT 06-15-23 Honolulu USA

MELE ANA KASTNER records a video of rainwater descending a native ohia tree. It takes rainwater approximately twenty-five years to reach Oahu's sole-source lens aquifer. The initial part of that journey often begins in the islands' cloud forests. The ohia evolved with the uluhe as a spectacular team slowing rain's travel. Its leafy tops grab and stall clouds and its shaggy bark both slows water and promotes the growth of other plants on the host ohia which in turn slows rainwater further. When this happens above mats of uluhe enormous volumes of rainwater are captured and drained slowly to the soil beneath with minimal run-off ensuring the maximum amount water is sent into Oahu's volcanic aquifer. KASTNER is recording this particular situation because of the proximity of a smooth-barked eucalyptus seen glistening with rain racing down its smooth truck in the background—its a ready contrast. Eucalyptus was introduced to Hawaii as a potential lumber resource and has become naturalized. Its forests are notable for the soil run-off they promote. KASTNER'S video will be used by OISC in the group's varied educational outreach to schools, online, and at events all over Honolulu. PAUOUA FLAT 06-15-23 Honolulu USA

After a long, wet day above Pau...UOUA FLAT 06-15-23 Honolulu USA

After a long, wet day above Pauoa Flat MAKA JACK enters the day's data into the OISC GIS mapping system. When surveilling a plant producing seeds with an almost two decade viability extremely careful records must be kept to ensure that locations that hosted mature miconia are repeatedly checked over the next quarter century. The work of adding the day's survey polygons and associated field notes, including the number, size, and likelihood of viable seed stock, is completed by the team leads every day before they go home, clean up, and do it all over the next day. Field hands joke about the job security a plant like miconia provides but the truth of this work is that it takes its toll and isn't work one can do for decades, as rewarding as it might be, taking OISC staff to places of uncommon beauty most lifelong residents of Hawaii never see. PAUOUA FLAT 06-15-23 Honolulu USA

MELE ANA KASTNER takes a moment...MAUNAWILI 03/21/23 Honolulu USA

MELE ANA KASTNER takes a moment during a tough eradication day in which a large number of large miconia were removed from the ridges above the Pali Highway. Collected fruits and her bag of herbicide can be seen in the foreground. MAUNAWILI 03/21/23 Honolulu USA

PLAY

STOP

GRID

FULL

LOVE

Thumbnail of By surveying a straight line wit_ MAUNAWILI 02/14/23 Honolulu USA

Thumbnail of On the morning of an OISC survey_AUOUA FLAT 06-15-23 Honolulu USA

Thumbnail of Above Pauou Flat the OISC field _AUOUA FLAT 06-15-23 Honolulu USA

Thumbnail of NICK MATTSON and MELE ANA KASTNE_ MAUNAWILI 02/14/23 Honolulu USA

Thumbnail of MELE ANA KASTNER and PHILLIP KAP_ MAUNAWILI 03/21/23 Honolulu USA

Thumbnail of Traveling in a 100 meter long st_ MAUNAWILI 02/14/23 Honolulu USA

Thumbnail of NICK MATTSON pulls an immature m_ MAUNAWILI 02/14/23 Honolulu USA

Thumbnail of PHILLIP KAPU prepares to treat a_ MAUNAWILI 03/21/23 Honolulu USA

Thumbnail of PHILLIP KAPU returns to relative_ MAUNAWILI 03/21/23 Honolulu USA

Thumbnail of PHILLIP KAPU beneath a miconia k_ MAUNAWILI 03/21/23 Honolulu USA

Thumbnail of Working to get up a muddy ridge _aders like miconia. Honolulu USA

Thumbnail of When a mature plant is found the_ MAUNAWILI 02/14/23 Honolulu USA

Thumbnail of MEI LIN PRECOURT stops to assess_AUOUA FLAT 06-15-23 Honolulu USA

Thumbnail of GIANCARLO BAFFARO learning the G_AUOUA FLAT 06-21-23 Honolulu USA

Thumbnail of GIANCARLO BAFFARO making his way_AUOUA FLAT 06-21-23 Honolulu USA

Thumbnail of Returning to a ridge summit to d_AUOUA FLAT 06-21-23 Honolulu USA

Thumbnail of MELE ANA KASTNER records a video_AUOUA FLAT 06-15-23 Honolulu USA

Thumbnail of After a long, wet day above Pauo_AUOUA FLAT 06-15-23 Honolulu USA

Thumbnail of MELE ANA KASTNER takes a moment _ MAUNAWILI 03/21/23 Honolulu USA

Private Story

Reporting on the O‘ahu Invasive Species Committee's work to eliminate miconia

Copyright J. Matt 2024

Updated Jun 2023

Location Oahu, Hawaii

Topics Climate Change, Conservation, Documentary, Environment, NGO, Photojournalism, Water

Summary

Mele Ana Kastner, a field crew lead with the O‘ahu Invasive Species Committee, doesn't hike for a living. Don't ever tell her how lucky she is to spend her workdays hiking in Hawai‘i. To call Kastner and her crew's work tracking down and destroying miconia calvescens plants before they establish themselves in the fragile mountain watersheds of O‘ahu "hiking" does a fundamental disservice to her strength, powers of observation, endurance, understanding of local plant biology, and plain good nature in the face of hardship.

Five days a week, weather allowing, Kastner and two crew members form a one hundred meter line and walk straight-contour compass headings across landscapes most would consider impassable—along the way they experience Hawai‘i like few are able to see the place. Wild, lush, spectacular to be sure, but threatened, with nearly every vista crowded with plants that should not be here, but thrive nonetheless; often at the expense of native and endemic plants, birds, and invertebrates. This is the story of our world today; plants and animals delivered by people to places they don't belong, creating better or worse consequences. It's an old story, and today our warming climate is serving to aid the often ill-considered task we began.

Miconia is one of the most dangerous of Hawai‘i's invasives. Introduced from the Americas, the plant seems almost perfectly engineered to be a deadly threat to Pacific island ecosystems, destroying native forests with terrifying efficiency. In sixty-eight years miconia went from one plant in a Tahitian botanical garden to having destroyed two-thirds of the nation's forests, replacing them with monotypical stands propagated from that first plant, and justly earning its cursed monikers of the "Green Cancer of the Pacific," or often just "The Purple Plague."

O‘ahu, home to over a million people relying on an EPA-designated single-source aquifer, can't bear the threat of miconia's aquifer-robbing, landscape eroding, and near-shore reef threatening presence. After Lāhainā there is greater awareness of the deadly threat of invasive grasses in Hawai‘i but this delicate place faces a host of menacing flora and fauna. It isn't for no reason Hawai‘i is the extinction capital of the U.S. Further imperiled by global warming's allowing not only for increasing wildfire, but the movement of deleterious pests into ecosystems thrown wide to them as temperatures warm, Hawai‘i is a petri dish, a tiny control archipelago that will indicate wider possibilities for our global future as plants, animals, and disease migrate under a heating atmosphere. OISC's work is a fine example of how urgent, and hard, it is to get the cats back in the bag.

Apr 6, 2023

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