{"id":609,"date":"2014-01-13T21:53:22","date_gmt":"2014-01-13T21:53:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wanderlust.com\/?p=609"},"modified":"2014-01-13T21:53:22","modified_gmt":"2014-01-13T21:53:22","slug":"local-lowdown-nurturing-native-forests-oahu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wanderlust.com\/ro\/journal\/local-lowdown-nurturing-native-forests-oahu\/","title":{"rendered":"Local Lowdown: Nurturing The Native Forests of O’ahu"},"content":{"rendered":"

We know that environmental change is inevitable. \u00a0Certainly, man erects superstores in the suburbs, and paves paradise for the proverbial parking lot. Sometimes, though, it\u2019s harder to detect when a \u201cnatural\u201d habitat is not natural at all – when invasive species of plants have been introduced and overrun the native plant life. Returning the land to its \u201cpure\u201d state, then, requires killing off a whole lot of plant life, \u00a0which seems to run counter to most people\u2019s ideas of environmentalism.
\n\"OahuPaul Zweng has dedicated his life to this goal, and has raised a lot of eyebrows in the process. Working one day at a time to restore the pristine beauty of O\u2019ahu\u2019s original plant life and prevent the extinction of native Hawaiian forests by killing harmful trees. \u00a0Not your average „tree killer,” Paul Zweng kills the invasive trees so that the native species can take root and spread, as the\u00a0New York Times<\/a>\u00a0originally reported. „When we kill the invasive trees, the forest starts to heal itself. \u00a0The forest is naturally re-generating itself by us cutting out the bad trees,” he explains in the video below.<\/p>\n