 Welcome to Healthy Planet, the show for people who care about their health and the health of our planet on the ThinkTech Live Streaming Network series. I'm your host, Dr. Grace O'Neill. Joining me today are Amber Miyake from Rapid Ohia Death Outreach and Robert Hulf from the Division of Forestry and Wildlife. Today we're gonna talk about Ohia trees. So Robert, can you tell us about the Ohia tree? Sure, Ohia is our most abundant native tree species in the islands. It's only found here in Hawaii and it provides really important habitat for most of our flora and fauna. It also provides water that we drink, that we use to irrigate our crops because it grows up in the mountains where the rain falls and allows the water to slowly percolate into the aquifer and then it has lots of cultural importance too. So it's arguably the most important tree species in Hawaii. Are there any other native tree species in Hawaii besides the Ohia tree? I don't really know any others, I must say. Well, if you've heard of koa, that would be another very important tree species. Between Ohia and koa, those are the two tree species that take up most of the area in our forest. And then there's many, many other species that are smaller, but the two dominant trees we say in Hawaii are the koa and the Ohia. And does the Ohia grow at low elevations too or only in high elevations? It can and in some places like in Puna on Hawaii Island, you'll see Ohia growing right next to the ocean on recent lava flows. And it can also grow high up in the mountains too upon the slopes of Manukaea, for instance. So it is a very adaptable species and grows in many different types of environments, dry, wet, hot, cold. So what kind of environment is completely necessary for the, I mean, I know you said it grows in all kinds of environments, but if you were to get an Ohia tree yourself, like I got Ohia tree myself in my backyard and I put it there, but I think maybe it's not getting enough water, but then you're saying now it grows in dry environments. So I'm a little bit confused. I don't know why it's not growing well. Right, and Ohia can be difficult to grow, but in general, as long as you give it enough water and sunlight in most environments in Hawaii, they'll grow fine. There are pests that will attack it and I think we're gonna talk a little bit about disease in a bit, but it's actually the first species that colonizes recent lava flows. So it can grow in these really difficult environments. Yeah, I mean, I guess if the water is not important, it's possible that, you know, I guess in different areas, it might grow to different heights because I've seen some places on the Big Island, for instance, that you'll see very tall trees in the forest, whereas here I just see them when I'm hiking and they're kind of short at the top of the mountain. So I think mine is gonna end up being sort of short. It hasn't grown very much, though. It just depends. Ohia has so many different varieties and species that adapt to different environments and so yours could be one of them or it could be tall. It just depends on that. So another thing, because I live in Kaimaki and it's really hot. So, you know, they do like sunlight, but they also like a little bit of shade too. So make sure, you know, just to give them a little bit of shade throughout the day just because if anything indirect sunlight all day long, every day will probably fry regardless of, you know, how much water you give it. So. Yeah, that's probably the problem, man. It's not in any shade. I have a small avocado seedling next to it, but it's not providing nearly enough shade. So how do you both, I guess I should ask, what are your qualifications? How did you both get into the Ohia trees? So I have a different background. I got my bachelor's in natural resource management and then I got my master's in tropical conservation biology, but I took a different route where I did both of my studies and my work and my research doing marine science work. And then I just started working for the division of forestry and wildlife doing some outreach and education and things like that and learned a lot more and realized that there's more to just the ocean realm, you know, that everything is connected. And so I got into rapid Ohia death and that's where I've been for the last six years dealing with this and being part of this amazing group of talented scientists and individuals that care about our environment and it's been such a blessing to be a part of it all. Thank you, Amber. How about you, Robert? Well, I just really liked being in the outdoors, hiking and so forestry seemed like a good match for my interest. And then I was able privileged, I should say, to get a position working in Hawaii because Hawaii has such amazing ecosystems to get to practice forestry in Hawaii is really an amazing opportunity. And of course, Ohia is one of the focuses of our agency as the most important tree species in Hawaii. So, yeah, that's how I got here. So that's great. I mean, just to have both of you working on this project, how many people are on the project total? Wow. That's awesome. Thank you so much. Good question. Goodness, I'd say several hundred that span different departments. Topics and different departments and different expertise and some work with the beetles and some work with the pathology and some work with the genetics and the outreach and the grant rating. And so we have a team of, I'd say, well over 150 people. Rob, give or take, probably even one. I mean, we have a huge network, as Amber said. And then we do have people who work full-time focused on rapid Ohia death and Ohia like Amber. So, Amber, I guess since you are the rapid Ohia death outreach coordinator, tell us about rapid Ohia death. What's going on with these trees? Why are they all dying? Yes, so there's a fungal disease. So it's a fungal disease that you cannot see from the outside of the tree. You would have to actually cut into the tree to see the actually what's going on. And in about the early, I might say about 2005, 2007 around there, the community in Puna started calling the scientists and the U of H and everything saying, hey, our trees are dying. What's going on? What's happening? We're not doing anything to it. Can you guys come and take a look? It took several years for the scientists to come out every day and map and do aerial surveys and take samples. And so they finally found out what it was. And when they found out what it was, it was actually two different type of fungus that are called rapid Ohia death. One is psoriasis lucohia. And you don't have to remember the scientific name, but one is a very virulent acting species. And one kills the tree a little slower, takes a little slower growing and they both kill the trees regardless. And so what's been happening, how a lot of people ask us, how did they get here? We're not positive how it got here. We have our hypotheses of how it got here most likely imported, like we import everything into the state. And mostly they got imported and passed inspection and then wasn't showing any signs of any diseases or anything and then jumped to Ohia and just being Ohia so abundant across the landscape just found a good home and host to thrive. And so what this disease does, it fills the vascular system within the tree. So it's kind of like how we have veins in our bodies. It kind of like clogs the veins sort of to say and it prevents water from going up and down the trees and it chokes at the death and it's like a water shortage and a water drought situation. And so the trees are dying because there's no water supply to the trees. And these trees are being attacked by these beetles that are spreading it faster than we can handle. But then us as humans also spread our vector of spreading as well. And when we go into the forest and that thing and things like that. So, we do talk about decontamination a lot about using food for stations or scrubbing your boots and spraying your boots with rubbing alcohol to prevent not only rod but to prevent other invasive species from traveling from place to place. So right now we have both species that we have found on Hawaii Island. And on Hawaii Island is where it started. We have lost so far over a million trees on that island to this disease. So people on the island can visually see it when they're driving. It's in their schools, in their yards, those grocery stores, they can visually see it. It's a little hard for other islands to kind of understand and see that because they don't see that on a daily basis. And then we found it on Hawaii and they've been dealing with it as well. And then we found a few trees here on Oahu, which is the non-aggressive strain on Oahu that we have. And so we have three islands currently that have this disease. And so we've been managing what's been going on. We do aerial surveys three to four times a year on all the islands just to monitor the brown trees. And then we go out and sample. I think so far we've been finding a bunch of suspect trees and getting out there and dealing with it. There's no cure for this disease. So it comes down to having to actively manage what we have left and prevent it from spreading to new regions. And so that's kind of one of the main messages is that we cannot cure what's already dying. Unfortunately, they're going to die, but we can prevent it from spreading to new regions. We don't want it to be like Hawaii Island where it's in every district. So we want to try to save the other islands so it doesn't have to be like that and we don't have to lose all of them because we do have nearly a million acres of Ojiah forest in our state. And so we have a lot to protect for our water recharge and things like that. So I don't know if I left anything out, Rob, if you want to chime in on any of it. That was great, Amber. I mean, I think it's a very complex disease. Amber talked a little bit about the beetles and the role they play is when a tree gets killed by the disease, they're attracted to these dead trees. It's where they breed. And so they burrow into the tree and they're pushing out their sawdust and they're eating the wood. And with that sawdust and we call it frass that gets pushed down into the environment, you get the fungus and that's how it gets released into the environment. And so it's very difficult to control these beetles. They look for the dead trees and they go where the dead trees are. And so we're trying to find ways to interrupt that cycle. We also, one thing that Amber didn't mention is that we're finding that there are much higher levels of rapid ohia death on Hawaii Island where there are feral animals, hoofed animals like pigs, goat, sheep in the forest. And what we think is happening is they're damaging the trees and the way the fungus gets into a tree is it enters through a wound. And so we think that that might have something to do with why we're seeing these higher levels in areas that have lots of animals versus areas that are being managed for forest health and have been fenced and have had all the animals removed. So that might give us a tool in the future to better protect our forests as well as ways to interrupt the insect cycle with attacking trees. So how are they trying to interrupt the insect cycle? I don't know if this has anything to do with ohia but I've seen these little receptacles on trees and it has some kind of stuff that attracts an insect in there and it's usually like on the tree is that what you're talking about? I think what you've probably seen are the traps that they have around the island for coconut rhinoceros beetle. So a different type of beetle but that's attracted by chemicals. And so that's very similar to what we're trying the beetles but instead of so beetles communicate with one another through chemicals. And what we're trying with though here is there's chemicals that will tell a beetle to stay away as well as to come toward a target. So we're experimenting with the repellents that might keep beetles from infesting a tree that's been killed by ohia so that the fungal spores don't get released into the environment when the beetles bore in. So that's one of the new tools that scientists are working on to help us manage rapid ohia death especially on islands where it's not widespread. Perhaps we can find it early we can keep the beetles from infesting the trees and we can keep the spread to low levels is the hope. Yeah with these beetles that are infesting the ohia trees what are those beetles called? So it's a big group of beetles we call them ambrosia beetles and they're very interesting organisms themselves they like to go into dead trees and they like to farm a very specific fungus to eat for their larvae to eat. So most of the ones in Hawaii have been introduced we do have native ambrosia beetles as well but we're finding that most ohia gets attacked by these non-native beetles. So the idea would be if we can keep those beetles from going into the infected trees then maybe we can stop the spread but yeah it's a specific group of beetles called ambrosia beetles. How about in areas where the ohia is not as widespread as the big island is it possible to remove the trees that are damaged so that this beetle cannot get inside and spread the fungus everywhere like on Oahu for instance you said it wasn't that widespread yet. Yes so for the case for Oahu we've been fortunate we're kind of because we have 10 cases five have been in the forested areas five have been in residential areas so the residential areas we've been able to cut them down treat them, get rid of them so we kind of got rid of those residential ones. We have a decision tree that our scientists use all across the state that kind of determines whether or not we leave a tree standing. So for example we have a large tree that's full of beetles and surrounding this large tree we have hundreds of ohias if we were to cut that large tree down we would damage all those ohias around it thus spreading the disease because of it. So sometimes we have to leave trees standing sometimes a lot of times we do get to cut them down and we put tarps over them to keep the beetles out or to deter the beetles. We have some experiments going on where we're tarping not tarping but we're kind of like using surround wrap sort of but like a surround wrapping the actual tree and kind of keeping the beetles in that way. So we're trying different methods because this is a new disease not only to Hawaii but it's a new disease to science. So there's nothing to really go on and we're kind of the first pioneers of trying to figure out this disease so we don't want it to spread to other countries or anything like that. So we're kind of in the beginning of a lot of things for about 10 years into the research but we have a lot more to go. These types of diseases obviously have no cure but we can definitely protect what we have remaining and it takes a team of a big team of us to do everyone does their little role in everything. So yeah, so so far it's been really good. Has anybody thought of anything that could be a cure? Are they working on different things in the lab or not really? They are able to find fungicides that can kill the fungus. The problem is how do you get that into a tree? One tree let alone millions of trees across the forest. It's very difficult to use a fungicide to protect an entire forest. So we're pursuing different strategies than some sort of chemical cure that we could inject into the trees because we simply wouldn't be able to treat the entire forest. Yeah, it kind of stuck in that sense. I mean, besides the control of the disease you can't really, I don't know if there's been any similar epidemic in anywhere else of trees and what they did. If I don't know if you guys are looking at that. I mean, maybe in another location there were trees that were killed by a fungus. There must be something, right? I don't know. No, it's definitely a problem across the world. In New Zealand, they have a disease that's killing their calorie trees. On North America, they had diseases come through in the 20th century and wipe out species such as the American chestnut, American elm trees. So this is something that's occurred before. I don't think we're gonna lose Ohia entirely from our forests, but what we've seen on Hawaii Island shows that it can most definitely damage the entire ecosystem. So I think our strategy is to minimize the damage that it's causing, knowing that we can't get rid of it entirely. Yeah. Is there an 100% death rate? Are there any trees that are resistance to the bug? Not necessarily to the bug, but we have found through some trials from some of our researchers that we are seeing some resistance between some of the species and varieties that we've been trying in the greenhouse. And so what we've been doing is raising them and putting them back in the fields in rod-infested areas and kind of caging them and seeing how they do and realizing that it's not the rod-infested areas that's killing these new seed beans or these new saplings that are going in. It's the actual ungulates or the polled animals that are coming around and digging and rooting them up. And so that just goes further to what Rob was saying about how one of the best tools we have is fencing some of our pristine habitat areas and protecting those regions. And that's how we're gonna keep the ungulates out or the polled animals out and that's what's gonna protect these trees and animals in these areas. And it's a uphill battle for us with fencing, but it's one of the tools that we're showing through our research that could be one of the most effective tools that we have against rod. So how about the pigs? Because I feel like even if you fence things in, pigs can dig under the fence. I mean, you have to have a pretty good fence not to go through. And there's so many wild pigs here and even deer. I mean, deer jump over things. So I don't know. I mean, it's gonna be kind of difficult. It's a challenge. And I think that we have to look at different tools for different places to just lower the levels of damage that the animals are afflicting. In some areas, maybe public hunting is the best solution in getting access for those hunters to go in. In other areas where the area is simply too remote for hunter access, then maybe building fences and going and removing all the animals from those areas is the best approach. So I think it's a mix of different management practices across the landscape to minimize the damage being done to the trees. So you were talking about amber having different subspecies of ohia. Is that what you were saying? So why the subspecies, like what kind of, is there like a dwarf ones? Yeah, there's all sorts of ones. You talk to different botanists and the numbers differ because ohia is so genetically diverse that they hybridize often. And so some trees may look like others and some don't. But I believe there's five true species and from there there's different varieties. So some people are like, oh, I know this specimen one because it's red, they look at the colors and unfortunately we don't go by color of flowers or anything like that. We look at the leaves and that's what botanists use to identify the different species. And so us as trained individuals know those differences and can express the people. Maybe this species is different. It's good to grow in your area versus this species sort of a thing. And so yeah, there's a wide variety and some people maybe have the wrong ones in the wrong environments. And that's why it's dying or vice versa. So there's different varieties that spans, the whole island chain. That's pretty cool. Tell us about the event that you guys are gonna have soon. So there was some cool event. Sure. So before the event, I wanted to just bring up, we did a quick, just quickly a quick, we did a, this isn't a quick project last year, but it was a full year long project in which we worked with schools all across the state to teach them about Ohia, the importance about rapid Ohia death and also about advocacy and how to make their voices heard. We talked them about how it works in the capital and Hawaii.gov and things like that. We took them on field trips and we actually created a new law. We've drafted a bill and we actually got a law signed by the governor Ike designating Ohia Lehua as our state endemic tree. So that's something that's special that came out of our Kiki last year. We have hundreds and thousands of Kiki's gay testimony and oral testimony, written testimony. So that's something that was something special and so every year, this is the sixth year that we're hosting our Ohia Love Fest. So the first three years we held it in person in Hilo and then the next two years was virtual due to COVID and then this year we're kind of re-emerging and instead of hosting the event on one island, we're hosting it on four of our islands. So each island has their own little festival going on. We started the month on November 5th, so last week's Saturday in Maui. So that festival is the Maui festival is done and then next week, Saturday on November 19th, we're having the festivals on Hawaii Island, Oahu and Kauai and there's gonna be games, educational cereals, giveaways, information about Ohia, rapid Ohia death, all kinds of fun activities for the kids, hula, chanting, workshops, all sort of things that all the islands have that differ between it. And so if for more information about whether, you know, where these events are happening across the state on the 19th next week, you can go to our website, it's www.rapidohiadeath.org and there's a page, there's a sub page that it's called Ohia Love Fest and you can look up with all the things that are happening on your island and you can come out and help, not only learn about Ohia, but learn about the importance, get some free giveaways, learn some caring tips if you have any trees or get a free tree yourself or a decontamination kit. So we've been doing this six years and yeah, so it's a good festival for the cakey and for the adults as well. So you were actually giving out Ohia trees there? On Hawaii Island, we're giving out Ohia trees on what you were giving out Ohia trees. We're on a walk and we're not giving out Ohia trees, but we're giving out starters. So they were teaching them how to grow their own and then we're giving them seed and they're starting from starters. So yes, on a walk, we were community college and so they'll get those to start off and they can grow their own little garden and grow their own little Ohia at a pot. So we have a whole bunch of stuff coming up and prizes and things. So hopefully if the community comes out and joins us for these events because it's a really fun event and everything is free for all the attendees. And so please join us if you can. Oh, I'll definitely be there if I can make it, you know? That's nice. So we're out of time. So we're gonna have to wrap it up. I'm Dr. Grace O'Neill. This is Healthy Planet on the ThinkTech Livestream Network series. We've been talking with Amber and Robert about Ohia trees. Thanks to Eric, our broadcast engineer and the rest of the crew at ThinkTech for hosting our show. And thanks to you, our listeners for listening. I'll see you in two weeks for more of Healthy Planet on ThinkTech, the show for people who care about their health and the health of our planet. My special guest will be Salish Rao, founder of Climate Healers. If you have ideas for the show or questions for my future show guests, please contact me at Healthy Planet. ThinkTech at gmail.com. Check out my website at graceandhawai.com or Instagram at gracefulliving365 for more information on my projects including future show guests. I'm Dr. Grace O'Neill. Aloha everyone. Thank you so much for watching ThinkTech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.