They call themselves the mangrove manglers. Members of the Kailua Canoe Club and several volunteers took to Ka'elepulu stream Sunday to clear-out the invasive trees, that are threatening their practice area.
"We got a fair amount, we had 2 canoe loads, we filled up 2 barge and all these little small barges too, one of our bigger clean-up days," said Brad Wong, Kailua Canoe Club Coach.
The group has spent 1 to 2 weekends every month for the past 9 months, hacking, sawing and chopping away at the trees.
"Getting it out is easy now that we have the back-hoe but you're in their with hand clippers and pulling out all the pieces of everything, and the chainsaw was a huge help we got the chainsaw out today," said Debbie Solis, Kailua Canoe Club paddler.
So far the group has filled 20 large trash containers to the brim with mangrove.
"It's good to see them coming out here and learning about where they live and where they paddle actually, taking care of it a little bit," said Wong.
Mangrove is an invasive species in Hawaii that can quickly over crowd and stink up the waterway.
"We paddle here every day so we wanted to have this area not go to that extreme and so we wanted to start now and clean-up the areas that we could," said Solis.
To give them even more motivation The Castle Foundation will reward the club with $20,000 for the removal of all the mangrove from the stream. Funds that will go towards a new canoe.
"The joy of getting a new one and we race all the distance races in those fiberglass canoes, and you really go fast in those new canoes it's a noticeable difference to have a brand new canoe," said Solis.
After today's heavy haul, the club is one step closer to getting that canoe.
"We've got a couple little patches here and there but our major work has been done," said Solis.
The club hopes to get a new canoe by the start of race season this summer.
