The Rotary Club of Upcountry Maui will host a community volunteer service day Friday, May 29, at the Kula Community Watershed Alliance Community Restoration Nursery in Upper Kula, giving residents a chance to help with fire restoration work tied to the August 2023 wildfires. The event runs from 9 a.m. to noon at Pūlehunui Sanctuary, just off Kekaulike Avenue near Kula Lodge, and is open to the public.
Volunteers will plant and propagate Native Hawaiian species including pukiawe, pilo, maile and ʻaʻaliʻi, work that supports large-scale replanting in the Kula burn area. KCWA has been restoring more than 200 acres of the Waiakoa watershed since the fires, which destroyed dozens of homes and structures in Upper Kula.
The nursery effort has been built out with outside support. In 2025, the Hawaiʻi Rotary District 5000 Foundation awarded KCWA a $103,000 grant through its Maui Fires Relief Fund, money that paid for a solar-powered irrigation system and a shade and community workshop structure. That grant matched a $481,800 award from the Hawaiʻi Community Foundation’s Maui Strong Fund in 2024, which funded two 60-foot hoop houses to help steward fire-affected land.
Community volunteers are central to the work, but the restoration effort also depends on donated land and grant funding to keep moving. The Nāhele Hou Foundation provides the land for KCWA’s Community Restoration Nursery, and organizers say the partnership is what allows the site to keep producing plants for future replanting cycles.
Rotary Club of Upcountry Maui said it has 15 available slots for Friday’s service day, and light work gloves are recommended. Some of the activities can be done while seated at a table, making the event accessible to community members of all ages and abilities. Winfrey said the goal is not only to work the nursery, but also to give participants a tour of KCWA’s operations and a closer connection to the ʻāina.
KCWA was formed by Kula residents to nurture the valleys and gulches of Kula through wildfire resilience, land restoration, watershed preservation and native plant propagation. Friday’s turnout will show how much of that work can be carried forward by volunteers, but the larger question is whether the community can keep matching the scale of the damage with the land, money and labor needed to heal it.
