• Cindercones dot the landscape in the Wilderness Area

    Haleakalā

    National Park Hawai'i

Environmental Factors

Soil erosion caused by rooting pigs--non native to the park.
Soil erosion is colossal in a rainforest climate where non native pigs have ravaged the ground cover on steep slopes.
NPS photo by Bryan Harry
 

Rainforests on Haleakalā's steep windward slopes receive as much as 120 inches of annual rainfall. These forests are stable and enduring when not subject to depredation by pigs and goats. Ungulate's rooting and grazing quickly break down the native plant cover triggering devastating erosion. Such landscape scale erosion on tropical mountain slopes devastates both the native biodiversity and the island's precious groundwater reserve.

 

But Haleakalā upper elevations are now free of pigs and goats, and serves as a core area in the East Maui Watershed Partnership to protect this native rainshed and its groundwater from this destruction.

  • Haleakalā Haleakalā

    Silverswords Read More

  • Checklist of Plants Checklist of Plants

    of Haleakalā Read More

  • Bird List Bird List

    of Haleakalā, illustrated Read More

  • Inventory & Monitoring Program Inventory & Monitoring Program

    Pacific Island Network webpage Read More

Did You Know?

Did You Know?

You might find squid beaks at 10,023 feet (3055 m) above sea level. Haleakalā National Park is home to the ʻUaʻu - the Hawaiian Dark-Rumped Petrel - sea birds that eat squid and regurgitate the indigestible beak ouside their burrows in the summit area.