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As a deadly inferno tore through Lahaina and West Maui in August 2023, another fire raged Upcountry in Kula. The blaze burned hundreds of acres, destroyed dozens of homes and transformed much of Haleakalā’s landscape into a scorched and barren wasteland.

By mid-December this year, an emerald sea of baby black wattle trees blanketed the mountainside as the forest began to reemerge from the burn scar.

But Kula residents do not welcome the fresh greenery. The invasive trees fueled the Kula fire, and they are largely why Maui’s Upcountry region remains one of the most fire-prone places to live in �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ��, said local resident Kyle Ellison.

“They make it very arid and dry, and they fall over and are basically tinder lying on the ground,” said Ellison, 40. “We’re surrounded by fuel in Kula, so we’re a sitting duck, waiting to be �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ��’s next big mega-fire.”

Unlike Lahaina, no lives were lost in Kula — famous for its misty mountain hiking, agricultural history and paniolo, or Hawaiian cowboy, culture — or in either of the other two fires that burned on Maui that day. But the rural area sustained more than $32 million in damage.

Recovery efforts in Kula are being spearheaded by nonprofit groups founded by local residents committed not only to clearing debris, but preventing future fires by removing invasive plants and restoring the mountain’s native flora.

Their work also involves trying to ensure their needs are not totally overshadowed by those affected by the devastating Lahaina fire, according to Ellison, who founded the nonprofit group in response to the Kula Fire.

The , a land restoration initiative, has also taken steps to make sure Kula benefits from any legislation or public funding geared toward Maui wildfire recovery efforts, said Sara Tekula, the group’s executive director.

The alliance is the only Kula organization explicitly in the official “,” released by the county earlier this month.

“We all lost people we loved in Lahaina and we were heartbroken, so we didn’t want to be like ‘Hey, what about us?’ But we did have to say, ‘Hey, don’t forget about us,’” Tekula said. “Because we were also deeply impacted.”

Combating Maui’s Growing Wildfire Risk

Though Kula Community Watershed Alliance and Mālama Kula have taken different recovery approaches, both groups have prioritized community outreach and removing fire fuels such as invasive trees.

Kula —— exists in the wildland, where human development meets undeveloped wilderness and wildfires are more likely to ignite. �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ��’s wildfire risk has rapidly grown over the last century in conjunction with the spread of invasive species, according to released by the �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ�� Attorney General in September.

On a Tuesday earlier this month, more than a dozen people spent hours volunteering with Mālama Kula and removing wattle that had begun to regrow. Most were students from Azusa Pacific University in California who had traveled there with a Christian group called

One by one, they uprooted each plant by hand before tossing it aside. Nearly a thousand volunteers — locals as well as visitors from other parts of the world — had spent thousands of hours removing the invasive plant over several months, but fields of fresh wattle grew as far as the eye could see.

“It kind of looks like we didn’t do anything, which can be defeating,” said Mikaylee Garcia, 22, a volunteer who recently graduated from Azusa Pacific. “But we try to remember the impact it makes long-term. We’re getting rid of these to prevent fires in the future.”

The volunteer hours of people who travel with organizations like Praying Pelican and have been critical to Mālama Kula, Ellison said. Though some of the work being done by volunteers might eventually be paid for or contracted by government agencies like the Department of Agriculture or the Natural Resources Conservation Service, Ellison said, the group decided not to wait. Taking immediate action would benefit the community’s mental health while also alleviating some immediate fire risk, he said.

After clearing debris and invasive plants, Mālama Kula has been turning some of the waste into wood chips that act as mulch, hold soil in place and discourage regrowth of invasives. They also installed two of the state’s first cameras that can detect smoke 20 miles away and alert the local fire department.

“It’s been hard because government speed is government speed. People know it’s not fast. It doesn’t mean the resources aren’t there, and it doesn’t mean they won’t come in the future,” Ellison said. “Our goal is to get our community back to whole and help people get back in their homes. The first step in doing that is you have to visualize what your new home is going to look like. You have to be able to go to your property without crying.”

Making Ends Meet, One Way Or Another

Many community members have appreciated the visible progress since the fire, said Hala Macknight, a police officer who lost his home. 

“The local nonprofit efforts, the good people who have worked tirelessly have really saved the community a lot of time, effort, money and tears,” said Macknight, 45, who has lived in Kula for 16 years. 

Ellison recalled the state’s following another fire — stirred up by winds from Hurricane Lane — that swept through part of Lahaina in 2018 and and scorched 2,100 acres.

“It was eerily similar to this Kula fire. It almost burned the whole town. It was kind of a wake up call, a shot across the bow of like, ‘Hey, you guys better get it together’, and then nothing really changed. There were a lot of studies, a lot of talk, a lot of meetings, but what action actually happened?”

Tekula acknowledged how difficult it is to continue living in a burn zone, surrounded by reminders of a traumatic experience. But she said the Kula Community Watershed Alliance has tried to balance that sense of urgency against the need to do the work properly and take other plans for landscape restoration into consideration. 

For example, Tekula said, the alliance wants to acknowledge and support the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s already-funded plans to clear and stabilize much of the burn zone through .

“We’re working on the landscape-scale restoration of all 200 acres that burned,” Tekula said. “We’re talking about tens of thousands of trees.” 

But the group — guided by a neighborhood council of Kula’s fire survivors, subject matter experts and other advisors — also recognizes the value of making visible progress. 

To that end, the group has cleared invasive trees from dozens of acres and stabilized more than eight acres of burned land with wood chips made from invasive wattle and eucalyptus trees. They also recently planted a 600-square-meter native plant teaching garden at the edge of Pōhakuokala gulch, where the fire is believed to have begun. The goal for the space, surrounded by a metal fence to keep away animals such as deer and pigs, is to teach local students and community members about responsible watershed management. 

While working to secure additional funding and waiting for funding that has already been awarded through grants from the U.S. Forest Service, the Environmental Protection Agency and others, Tekula said the alliance has relied on roughly $480,000 from the �Ჹ�ɲ���ʻ�� Community Foundation’s Maui Strong Fund and at least $400,000 from other organizations and private donors. 

Mālama Kula, meanwhile, was until recently entirely privately funded, and raised close to $300,000 from about 100 individual donors between November 2023 and December 2024. Earlier this month, the organization was awarded significant funding from the Rotary Foundation and Maui County, according to Ellison, and it has continued applying for grants.

“Restoring an entire landscape requires a lot of paperwork, planning and waiting, according to Joseph Imhoff, who has worked in conservation on Maui for more than two decades and is among the alliance’s advisers. 

“It’s super slow and it’s painstaking,” Imhoff said, “but the funding that is coming in is millions and millions of dollars and will fund stuff that we can’t afford to do on our own.”

Civil Beat’s coverage of Maui County is supported in part by a grant from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.