Hawaii News Now - KGMB and KHNL HomeZipping over Maui

Zipping over Maui

By Howard Dashefsky - bio | email

(KHNL) - For seven generations and more than 200 years the Baldwin family of Maui has served as caretaker of one of the most beautiful and fragile places on earth. 

The Piiholo ranch in Makawao, is comprised of thousands of acres, and is home to incredible views, towering eucalyptus forests, dozens of indigenous plants and now, a new fast and fun attraction.

The five ziplines at Piiholo Ranch make up Maui's newest eco-adventure. A place to not only test your nerve and enjoy the view from an entirely new perspective. But a place to become part of nature.

"You get to see the ranch from a much different perspective" says ranch owner Jeff Baldwin. "It's real low impact, you fly over some of the reall rugged terrain here that would take us literally hours to hike over."

Baldwin says the zipline is the family's way of keeping up with the times. 

But more importantly he says, it's a way of educating locals and visitors, and ultimately protectiing the land, which is home to 50 percent of the country's endangered plant species.

"We have a real target rich environment as far as educating people nad showing people how eco-systems over-lap and really the balance between all of these things" said Baldwin.

"What we want to do is have people go back to where they live and be able to take what they've learned here and see if they can apply it to what ever part of the world they're from."

"I live in a city where there's no green" said Roseanne Bleiweiss. "And to see green and to see vegitation and animals, it's something i don't see on a daily basis."

And that is exactly what the Baldwin family hopes every guest will take away at the end of the line.

"One of the last things we tell people before they depart on our tour is malama o ka aina" said Baldwin.  "And i'm as much of a guest of the land as they are."