Aloha,
E Komo Mai or Welcome to the HFI community! With your permission, we’d like to occasionally send you a short email to tell you about one of our projects. We’d like to get to know you, too, so by all means, please contact us if you have any ideas, questions, or concerns related to our mission.
Yours truly,
Paul Arinaga
Connecting people with nature, PART I
Did you know that only 3-5% of native dryland forest remains in Hawaiʻi?
To preserve our native forests, it’s very important to connect people with nature. This is exactly what the Ka Pilina Poina ‘Ole “Connections Not Forgotten” project does. At Ka‘ūpūlehu Dryland Forest, Kalaemanō Cultural Center, LaʻiʻŌpua Preserve, and Pālamanui Dry Forest Preserve, site coordinators share stories of place, ancestral connections, and the natural history of these rare ecosystems. They integrate traditional ecological and cultural knowledge into restoration activities including collecting and dispersing seed, out planting seedlings, building trails, and weeding.