koa landowners
Originally Posted by khrome
A Koa Mythbusters thread would be excellent!! Yes, please make one.
I thought it was illegal to cut koa too. Or at least, I thought it was getting endangered enough that they are under some sort of protection. So is it true they are endangered? And if so are things being done to replant them? How old must a koa be before it is mature enough to be cut?
QUOTE from Kaneohe til the end:
from what i learned today from one of the guys at work, the state and bishop estate own about 90% of all the koa. it is illegal to use that.
the other 10% is private land owners, which is where all of the koa for instruments comes from. so imagine, out of the miniscule 10% that is used, how much of the 10% is actually master grade.
Hello again!
I just want to make sure we are all on the same page... it is illegal to do something (i.e. cut koa) if the rightful owner says you cannot do it. That being said, if the State or Kamehameha Schools (KS) says you can go cut their koa, you can. Over the years, I've had contracts with various landowners to harvest koa, one of which was a contract with the State of Hawaii, Dept of Hawaiian Homelands to salvage, harvest, cut, and replant a particular area of koa forest. With that contract, I was legally cutting the koa, and only my company was allowed to.
The is an ongoing project to replant koa. the 100-year lease with the rancher ended and the State decided to put the lands back into a native forest again, rather than the grass-lands it turned into over the last 100 years.
Is koa endangered? simple answer, No. read on...
How old must a koa tree be before mature enough to cut? generally 30-40 years is the youngest, but ask Bart about his 18 year-old wind-blown koa tree that produced some of the nicest color, 5A curl, guitar-size material you'd ever find. that was probably not typical, but it exists, so even 20 year-old trees are sometimes ok. We did a study a few years back with the Univ. of Hawaii testing some of the different properties of koa at different ages. turns out when they are in their "teens" they are heavy with sapwood. During the teens they don't grow in diameter much, but rather grow the heartwood. And, like humans, koa trees vary in growth from tree to tree. So bart's 18-year old tree was probably like the sophmore in High School who had to shave twice a day!
Mythbuster #02... by the way, cows LOVE koa seedlings. Don't ever let anyone tell you that ranching and koa forestry mix well. The only way it can mix well if the cows aren't allowed into the area where koa seedlings are trying to grow. after a few years and the trees are big and strong enough, the cows and koa koa can comingle, BUT every time a new koa tree tries to sprout and grow, the cows will eat it. so basically they cannot really live together well. Not to mention, cows generally need grass to eat, and the grass covering prevents koa trees from sprouting. So, in reality, ranching and koa forestry don't mix well, unless the ranch is big enough and cows few enough.
Ranching has generally been the demise of the koa forests- not LOGGING or CUTTING the trees. Koa trees, like vegetables and flowers, have a life cycle but will grow back, IF ALLOWED to grow back. When non-native species of plants and animals are brought into the mix, the native forest has a harder time to survive. Ranching has been one of those killers- clearing the forest to make way for grass (100 years ago that is what happened).
Anyway, I"m starting to stray from the topic of grades, but thought some might be interested in a little bit about what is really going on with the koa forests.
By the way, we are NOT running out of koa. there is more koa falling over and dying, and coming back to life, than what we could ever use. It is just not being harvested right now. Basically, there is very little koa that is commercially available because the larger landowners, such as KS and the State, want to make sure they harvest it properly. they are responsible to far more people than say a single landowner who has a small plot of land with a few koa trees on it. That person can pretty much do anything he or she wants. Whereas the State has to answer to the taxpayers and KS is such a visible entity, they are going to be scrutinized for anything they do. Sadly, it is often easier to do nothing, than to attempt to try to do something good, since their will always be a few that will not agree with what they do.
On a brighter note, KS has been working towards an enviromentally sound project to harvest around 30,000 acres (I think that is the correct number, but it could be 20,000, either way, it is over 10,000 acres) of land with a variety of species, much of which is koa. they have been working on this for years and seem to be getting closer, but not really sure yet.
As far as material for ukuleles goes... we are SO lucky the ukulele is SMALL. The guitar world has been having a harder and harder time over the years to acquire quality woods because of the size of the instrument. With the ukulele, you can use trees much younger, and also many of the bigger branches.
Because of the size advantage, not only do you use less wood, but you can use a LOT more of the wood out there. Because of the size limitations of the guitar and the uke. If you have a 4" wide quartersawn board, pretty much no guitar maker can use that narrow of a width, but an uke maker can pretty much get a top, back or side out of it for a soprano, concert, and probably even a tenor.
Regarding 5A stock- there still really isn't all that much out there, so if your uke has the killer wood on it, please have some appreciation for what it took to get it there, no matter where it was made.
Jorma