This project will revegetate Lahaina with native plants, canoe plants and culturally appropriate plants to restore the burned landscape, increase resilience, beautify the town, increase storm water infiltration and groundwater recharge, and provide food and material sources for the community. It will educate the community about native plants and resilient landscaping. Reforesting Lahaina (beyond the town) and Kula with native plants will restore the native landscape, reduce invasive plant fuel loads, increase fire and hazard resilience, increase  groundwater recharge, and provide food and material sources for the community.  This project includes key efforts such as:

• Create a Maui Native Nursery Network of existing nurseries around the island to establish partnerships and increase operations to provide plants to Lahaina, Kula, Pūlehu, and Olinda
• Establish new nurseries in Lahaina moku to grow plants to revegetate the town
• Establish biosecurity protocols and quarantine areas in new nurseries
• Establish and expand composting facilities in Lahaina for waste diversion and generation of mulch for revegetation, soil restoration, and erosion control
• Reforest the middle watershed area surrounding Lahaina town to turn the unproductive invasive grasslands into thriving forested and agriculture areas; Reforest the DLNR lands in upper mauka Lahaina
• Implement other reforestation projects led by organizations across Lahaina, Kula, Olinda, and Pūlehu.

The Lahaina impact zone needs to be revegetated with appropriate fire resilient native plants and canoe plants to reduce fire risk and erosion. Community members want to revegetate their homes, and public properties such as street medians and open spaces need to be revegetated. Surrounding Lahaina, invasive buffelgrass has regrown in the impact zone on private lands and the surrounding areas beyond still pose high fire risks for the town. For the safety and environmental well-being of Lahaina, it’s essential to form multiagency partnerships to manage the private lands surrounding the town, by removing invasive fuel loads, replanting with native plants to reduce fire and wind risk, restoring the native landscape, and creating new agriculture and agroforestry industry areas.

• Identify funding for the nurseries in the Maui Native Nursery Network to expand growing and seed banking operations and funding and partner sites to establish new nurseries in Lahaina/West Maui
• Expand and create regional composting facilities in Lahaina
• Establish partnerships to manage and reforest land surrounding Lahaina