High above the Hamakua Coast, beneath the windy slopes of Mauna Kea, is a young koa wood forest. Koa, revered in the Hawaiian tradition, once blanketed our islands. Stands of koa are rare nowadays, but efforts are under way to reverse that trend.
A Honolulu company called Hawaiian Legacy Hardwoods (www.legacytrees.org) is repopulating the aina with koa that will serve to both reinvigorate the local ecosystem and provide a precious, sustainable product.
What’s different about this forest is that every sapling is tagged with an RFID chip. RFID (radio-frequency identification) is a technology that can trace everything from pets or musical instruments to railroad cars, trucks or containers. If you’ve been shopping at just about any retail store, you can’t help but notice that every Anne Taylor blouse or Levi’s jeans has a tag with an RFID chip to facilitate inventory control and prevent theft.
Why would a koa tree need an RFID chip?
Jeff Dunster, founder of the company said, "For the same reason that you’d want to track anything of value — whether it’s your dog or a Fender Stratocaster."
"However, it’s not just that koa has monetary value — it has intrinsic value to the owner," he said. Dunster explained that every tree in HLH’s forest either belongs to an individual investor or has been sponsored as a "legacy" tree in memory of a loved one or to commemorate a birth, an anniversary, etc.
"People who sponsor a koa tree as a memorial may want to visit it because of the personal connection," he said.
So, how do you find a tree in a forest?
HLH has integrated a GPS system with the RFID so that you can easily drill down to the square yard where your tree is planted.
The electronic tagging begins when a seed is first planted in the nursery, which is located at Umikoa Village, a remote settlement several miles up a winding road from the Hamakua Coast. Each seedling has its own RFID tag encoded with a unique ID number initially linked in the database with the mother tree that provided the seed for that specific plant.
The exact location and biometric data of the mother tree is also stored in the database. Every time the tree is fertilized, pruned or weed-controlled, the database is updated. HLH also collects extensive weather data that can also be examined related to the history of each tree.
The RFID system was developed in-house by Darrell Fox, HLH’s chief operating officer. By linking RFID with GPS technology, HLH has a wide range of applications. For example, if you know the owner of the tree and it’s harvested as part of a sustainable forest products program, the financial benefit can be precisely assigned to an individual owner.
"Anyone who buys a tree will have a certificate that has the GPS coordinates and RFID tag number so they can mark the spot," Dunster said. With more than 140,000 trees already planted, the company is well on its way to its Hawaii island reforestation goal of more than a million trees in the next few years.
Try keeping track of every koa tree with an index card.
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Mike Meyer, former Internet general manager at Oceanic Time Warner Cable, now manages IT for Honolulu Community College. Reach him at mmeyer@hawaii.edu.
