Though known historically by the inhabitants of the island, and used as a grave site by ancient Hawaiians, the cave’s paleontological value was first realized in 1992 by David Burney, Lida Pigott Burney, Helen F. James and Storrs L. Olson, who found the cave’s access sinkhole while searching for fossil sites on the south coast of Kauaʻi. The traditional name of the cave, Makauwahi, or “smoke eye” in Hawaiian, was rediscovered in 2000 by a local archaeologist, William Pila Kikuchi, who found the name in a high school student’s essay written over a century previously.[1]
In 2004 the Burneys acquired a lease on the cave property, now the 17 ha (42.0 acres) Makauwahi Cave Reserve, which is subject to environmental restoration after having been used for sugarcane and maize farming before being abandoned to weeds. The area is being planted with threatened native plants, such as the local Pritchardia palm.[1][2]
Description
The site is apparently geologically unique in the Hawaiian Islands, comprising a sinkhole paleolake in a cave formed in eolianite limestone. The paleolake contains nearly 10,000 years of sedimentary record; since the discovery of Makauwahi as a fossil site, excavations have found pollen, seeds, diatoms, invertebrate shells, and Polynesian artifacts, as well as thousands of bird and fish bones.[1][3]
The findings document not only the conditions before human colonization of the Hawaiian islands, but also the millennium of human occupation with the drastic ecological changes that occurred since first Polynesians, and later Europeans and Asians, arrived in the islands along with a suite of invasive alien species such as Feral pigs and Feral dogs, Feral cats, Norway rats, Asian tiger mosquitos, and the Indian mongoose. They reveal the existence of a large number of native birds that became extinct as a result.[1] The cave has also shown that certain plants previously believed to be Polynesian introductions, such as Kou (Cordia subcordata) and Hala (Pandanus tectorius), existed on the islands prior to human settlement.[4]
Remains of some 40 species of birds have been found in the cave; half of these species are now extinct. New discoveries of extinct species include the turtle-jawed moa-nalo (Chelychelynechen quassus), the blind and flightlessKaua'i mole duck (Talpanas lippa), and the Kauaʻi palila (Loxioides kikuichi).[1]
