Just inland from the Hawaiin Island
of Kaua‘i’s famed Na Pali coast, Jim Hobbs flies a Hughes 500 helicopter high over sharply serrated ridges that are draped with a million shades of green. To the north, the breakers of the blue Pacific sparkle.
“I knew it was gonna be a good day when I walked out the door this morning,” Hobbs says from the pilot’s seat, his voice crackling through the helicopter’s intercom system.
Every bit of good weather here is welcome. Home to some of the most rugged terrain on the planet, Kaua‘i is also one of the rainiest spots on Earth, and flying in the island’s canyons is extremely challenging. In the helicopter’s backseat, Stephen Ambagis monitors a pair of cameras as they create a finely detailed map of the ground below, while Hobbs flies the helicopter 1,000 feet over the landscape—the exact altitude necessary for the cameras to work correctly.
When Wainiha Valley suddenly opens below, the diminutive helicopter shudders mightily as Hobbs drops elevation to keep the required 1,000 feet above the ground. “I’m going down as fast as I can,” he says, but even the nimble Hughes 500 can’t keep up with the precipitous topography.
Kaua‘i is rugged and beautiful, but it is also threatened by a host of invasive plants and animals. One of those invaders is the Australian tree fern, a fast-reproducing ornamental that was brought to Kaua‘i almost half a century ago to prettify resorts on the island’s North Shore. It rapidly grows frond to frond and crowds out native plants. . . .
http://magazine.nature.org/features/pacific-invasion.xml#sthash.Rxauoo8e.dpuf
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