Kauluwehi Biocultural Garden

Pu’uhonua Kauluwehi

The Kauluwehi Biocultural Garden at UH Maui College serves as a living lab to promote education, conservation and sustainability of Native Hawaiian plants and natural ecosystems.

The Puʻuhonua Kauluwehi project will develop a rapid response to the recent Maui wildfires by collaboratively establishing a network of biocultural refuges supporting the cultivation of native plants to accelerate landscape-scale ecological restoration, food security, and community well-being strategies. Puʻuhonua Kauluwehi will host immersive, work-based learning experiences for local participants, including youth and adults from disadvantaged and displaced communities in the natural resources sector, to effectively increase community stakeholder's access to environmental, human health, and socioeconomic benefits in disadvantaged communities, broaden youth and adult engagement and education in agroecosystem planning and restoration, increase local capacity for agroforestry restoration across Hawaii’s landscapes, and enhance awareness of the best practices of biocultural refuges to improve resilience to climate change and extreme events like the on-going threat of wildfires.

To learn more, please contact Nicolette van der Lee nhv@hawaii.edu