I dashed throughthe pounding rain into the Ford Bronco, turned the wipers and defrosters on high, and headed out for another day of research at the Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge. Although this refuge is only about fourteen miles northwest of Hilo, I knew it would take me over two hours to get there due to the rain, fog, and primitive roads. When I added in another forty-five minutes of driving within the refuge to get into and out of my field site and the hour and a half round-trip journey from my home in Volcano Village to the...

Shortly after finallyemerging from the worst of the gorse infestation, I turned onto another rough road that took me to the entrance gate of the Hakalau Forest Refuge. I shut off the engine and jumped out, eager to inhale fresh mountain air after the long, bone-rattling drive in our moldy truck. The outside world was perfectly still, and the dew on the tall pasture grasses sparkled in the morning sunlight. The thick clouds over Hilo were beginning to break, and behind them were reassuring blue skies over the ocean for as far as I could see. I turned toward...

I drove pastthenēnēand slowly began my descent through the refuge’s degraded pastures along a winding and rutted dirt road that led to my prospective research site some 1,500 feet below. Except for the occasional forlorn remnant koa or‘ōhi‘atree and clump of native ferns, these pastures were mostly one big amorphous mass of deceptively innocuous-sounding alien grasses such as kikuyu (Pennisetum clandestinum), meadow rice grass (Ehrharta stipoides), sweet vernal grass (Anthoxanthum odoratum), and velvet grass (Holcus lanatus). But inevitably, just when I would start to feel that the grand vision of restoring all those miles of...

Five months later,I drove back up to Hakalau to recensus my experimental nurse logs. I was hoping to find at least a few new seedlings among the 2,970 different spots into which we had sown a seed or transplanted an‘ōhi‘aseedling, but as I walked from one barren plot to the next I found that little had changed since my previous visit one month earlier. Although I knew that many Native Hawaiian species were notoriously slow to germinate and establish even under ideal greenhouse conditions, I couldn’t help wondering why so few of my seeds had sprouted. Could...

Over the nextfew years, Don, Alan, several Native Hawaiian Forest Service interns, students, volunteers, colleagues, and I collectively spent many hundreds of hours working on that Nurse Log Experiment. In retrospect, I believe we learned a tremendous amount from performing that research, talking amongst ourselves and with the many other people we encountered along the way, and perhaps most importantly, simply spending time together in the field.

In the end, however, luck was not on our side. Perhaps due in part to the extended drought that occurred throughout much of that experiment, relatively few of our seeds ever germinated...

Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park(HVNP) literally became my backyard after I moved to Volcano Village in 1997. I came to know and love the park’s spectacular 323,431 acres (an area comprising over 12 percent of the Big Island and nearly 8 percent of the entire state) through many subsequent hiking, running, and camping adventures. I also participated in professional activities there, such as helping other scientists with their research, conducting VIP tours, and contributing to resource management advisory sessions. Over time, I developed close relationships with some of the park’s employees and came to increasingly appreciate their accomplishments and dedication...

In the botanicalliterature, Auwahi refers to a centrally located, 5,400-acre subsection of the southwestern rift of the Haleakalā Volcano on East Maui at an elevation of three to five thousand feet. Auwahi has been translated as “smoky glow” and “milk of fire,” and the region is honored in an early Hawaiian song that begins, “Hot is Auwahi/Glowing, the lava of Hanaka‘ie‘ie.”

The famous botanist Joseph Rock identified the remnant dry forests at Auwahi and North Kona on the Big Island as the two botanically richest regions in the entire territory of Hawai‘i. The tragic story of the subsequent devastation...

Although all myfilthy clothes were still spinning in the washing machine, I couldn’t stay inside any longer. The night was too inviting; the gurgling stream beneath my window too tantalizing; the moonlight filtering down through the branches of the swaying breadfruit trees too hypnotic. “What the heck,” I finally told myself as I tentatively stepped outside stark naked, “I’ll never get a chance to do this again.”

Outside, the heavy sea air was warm, moist, and salty. I stood on the steps, listening to the frogs croak and making sure the coast was clear. Satisfied, I stepped off the...

What makes peoplededicate their lives to preserving and restoring Hawai‘i’s remaining native species and ecosystems? Despite their seemingly common causes and struggles, why is there so much contention and even animosity among some of the individuals within Hawai‘i’s larger environmental community?

To explore these kinds of topics, I conducted extensive interviews with a diverse group of people working in Hawai‘i’s environmentally related academic, conservation, education, regulatory, resource management, and scientific research communities. In addition to our typically far-ranging, general discussions, I asked each interviewee four overarching questions:

1. Why do you care about biodiversity in general and Hawai‘i’s native species...

In 1989, theenvironmental journalist Bill McKibben publishedThe End of Nature. In this best-selling and influential book, he explained, “By the end of nature I do not mean the end of the world. The rain will still fall and the sun shine, though differently than before. When I say ‘nature,’ I mean a certain set of human ideas about the world and our place in it.” For McKibben, the nail in nature’s coffin was human-induced climate change: “We have changed the atmosphere and thus we are changing the weather. By changing the weather, we make every spot on the...