TS Today - Creating a Vision for the Future of Vacation Ownership Issue #159 May/Jun 2018 | Page 36

TimeSharing Today
Page 36
May/Jun, 2018
View from our lānaʻi.
main highway past Wailua Falls, you
cross a bridge over a small creek where
the highway turns into a somewhat main-
tained dirt and gravel road. Continue on
that road. Eventually you will come to the
remains of the entrance to “Jurassic Park.”
While visiting there several years
ago, we came across a man who was
armed to the teeth with knives, pistols,
and a heavy-duty hunting rifl e. He was
hunting for wild pigs that are doing
great damage to the local vegetation.
We could hear his hounds out in the for-
est as they pursued their prey. I thought
the “hunter” could have been left over
from the fi lm-making era!
We took a guided tour of the Mc-
Bryde and Allerton gardens within the
National Tropical Botanical Garden at the
end of Lāwaʻi Road. It was extremely in-
formative and offered many opportunities
to photograph the current island vegeta-
tion, both endemic and introduced.
We learned that 90 percent to 95
percent of the fl ora on Kauaʻi has been
introduced within the past 200 years.
Most of the native bird species are also
gone, having been replaced by intro-
duced species. Many of the island’s
endemic species are now extinct. The
palm trees you see all over Kauaʻi are
almost all introduced species.
Botanists at the gardens are at-
tempting to bring back some of the en-
demic plants that are near extinction.
Some have already been re-introduced
into the wild. These gardens are another
place where Jurassic Park, Pirates of
the Caribbean, and many other tropical
movies have been fi lmed. A “dinosaur
egg” still rests at the base of a Moreton
Bay fi g tree!
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