Friends of Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge

06/06/2026

🌿 Help us reach our Endowment GOAL of $3.5 million by December 31! 🌿

Mahalo to our incredible community — we reached $3 million at the end of 2025! 💚

Now we’re working toward raising the final $500,000 needed to secure the future of Hakalau Forest and its native birds.

The Hakalau Forest Endowment is managed by the Hawaii Community Foundation, and once our goal is reached, FOHF will begin disbursing funds for Refuge projects — ultimately around $150,000 every year to support conservation work in perpetuity. 🌳🐦

“When you hear the dawn chorus at Hakalau, that is the closest you can get to the way the Hawaiian forest used to sound.”
— Dr. Pat Hart, UH Hilo

Only about 9,300 ʻAlawī remain today, and an estimated 71% live in Hakalau Forest, making the Refuge critically important to the survival of this endangered species.

Did you know? ʻAlawī are small, inconspicuous honeycreepers found only on Hawaiʻi Island. They feed on insects and spiders in ʻōhiʻa and koa trees and are threatened by avian malaria and habitat degradation.

Every donation helps protect forest birds like the ʻAlawī and the ecosystems they depend on. Mahalo for being part of this important work. 🌺

Please consider sharing this post with friends and family to help us reach our goal sooner.

👉 Donate via the Hawaiʻi Community Foundation:
https://host.nxt.blackbaud.com/donor-form/?svcid=renxt&formId=35ab6016-1b67-473c-a32d-9286786b06f7&envid=p-q80hWdJOQkGrNPxGPtgjtw&zone=usa

👉 Learn more about the Endowment:
https://friendsofhakalauforest.org/endowment/

Friends of Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge is a nonprofit devoted to conserving the unique flora and fauna of Hawaii Island.

06/01/2026

Notes From the Field – June 2026

From: Sharon Scott, Chair, Friends of Hakalau Forest NWR Endowment

Please Help Our Endowment Reach $3.5million; We Are SO Close!

Native habitat on all the main Hawaiian Islands has been under stress for many years. Climate change, development, encroachment by introduced plants and animals, have all played a roll. We now hear in the news about more endangered birds and plants becoming extinct in the wild on several islands due to these and other stressors.

Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge is a bright spot in this scenario. There, the endangered and threatened native forest birds are doing well, and some even increasing their populations, because of the Refuge maintaining fences, working to eliminate pigs and other destructive pest species, clearing areas that had been used for over 100 years as pasture, and replanting the native trees and shrubs that once been part of a lush tropical forest. Refuge staff and hundreds of loyal, hard-working volunteers have re-forested over 2,000 acres in the past 40 years and are still working hard to expand that area. Because of these efforts, native honeycreepers and other plants and animals have returned to use this restored habitat.

These efforts come at great cost, however, and Refuge funding is insufficient to keep the threats at bay and keep expanding the forested area. As a result, 10 years ago we started the Hakalau Forest Management Endowment, managed by the Hawaii Community Foundation. The purpose is to supplement Refuge funding and help keep up with the expenses of fence maintenance, pest and predator elimination, and growing and replanting native trees and other plants to expand the forest habitat for the birds. Although we started the endowment with just less than $60,000, and 12 donors, we now have received gifts from over 1,000 individuals and families, and the total Endowment, including 10 years of earnings, now totals just over $3 million! The endowment was created to grow to $3.5 million before disbursements were started, and we are approaching that amount now.

Efforts to reach the Endowment goal of $3.5 million are especially urgent right now. This past year a large fire burned right up to the gate of the Refuge, and only extraordinary efforts by firefighting teams managed to contain it. Then in the last few months a series of severe storms have downed many trees, damaged fences, and set us back on recovery efforts. Now we understand that an especially severe El Nino is expected this summer, which may create conditions which would bring mosquitoes farther upslope into the Refuge, which is deadly serious for the native birds!

These elements present an opportunity for the Friends of Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge Endowment to raise the funds needed to reach our goal of $3.5 million, after which we can start disbursing funds for urgently needed Hakalau Forest projects, including habitat protection and restoration work.

Please share this link and donate at: www.friendsofhakalauforest.org/endowment

Please be as generous as you can to help save our magical Hakalau Forest and it’s endangered native bird and plant inhabitants.

Mahalo!
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05/01/2026

Notes from the Field – May 2026

From: Noah Gomes

Back when I was a student working on my M.A. degree in the college of Hawaiian language at UH Hilo, I spent a lot of time in the archives and in libraries. The topic of my thesis was on the old Hawaiian bird hunters. I got lucky a few times and found a few sources of information from Hawaiian language newspapers that had been under-utilized. Apparently, I was one of the first to really examine these sources who had both a decent knowledge of the Hawaiian language and an understanding of the birds themselves. They weren’t hidden sources really; other researchers knew about them at the time. I just think that I may have had a specific background that allowed me to notice certain patterns in them.

One thing that I noticed was that one unidentified “mystery bird” was mentioned by multiple sources, something called an “ʻAlawī.” It was a small, shrill and curious bird on Hawaiʻi island that was the color of an ʻŌmaʻo, but with a similar beak, legs and size to an ‘Amakihi. There were also other, similar birds who had names that were clearly cognates of this mystery Hawaiʻi island ʻAlawī, such as the ʻAlauwī on Lānaʻi and the ʻAlawī on Kauaʻi, which is the name for young ‘Anianiau. I realized that ‘Alawī was likely the old name for Loxops mana - a bird that early naturalists suspected had a Hawaiian name, although they never found one.

After I graduated, Alex Wang and Anya Tagawa approached me about what kind of Hawaiian name Loxops mana might be granted, since it didn't have one that anyone knew of. I hadn't yet told anyone about my idea because I knew it would be difficult to prove, but now I knew I needed to say something. So I explained that I thought that I might have the old name for the bird.

We went through a process of asking Māmaka Kaiao - the Hawaiian Lexicon Committee, for their approval of the use of the name ʻAlawī. I also wrote a short article on the reasoning behind the name, which we published in The ʻElepaio. In May of 2017 we conducted a small ceremony to reconnect the name with the bird. At the time I was active in Hālau ʻŌhiʻa, and Kekuhi Kealiʻikanakaʻoleohāililani very generously gave me advice on how to go about even doing such a ceremony. We decided to do an ʻaha ʻawa. In the ʻaha we acknowledged the different people of the forest who have a role in supporting the bird - the trees, the invertebrates, etc. Then we acknowledged the different human people who had a role in supporting the bird. I created a short chant for when we prepared the ʻawa, and a new name chant for the bird. In the poetry I tried to include ideas of bringing the bird back to abundance. In the 1800s the ʻAlawī was abundant in some places, although it is endangered now. Hopefully it will be abundant again, someday.

Please check out my ʻAlawī chant in the attached images. Mahalo to Bret Mossman for the ʻAlawī images and the Hilo Tribune Herald for the ceremony photo.

04/07/2026

Our David Shepard collaboration is underway, and orders are starting to ship! 📦

The FOHF Retail team is busy packing and sending out men’s aloha shirts, which have arrived and are now shipping from Hilo.

This special collection was created in collaboration with Hawaiʻi designer David Shepard, who was inspired by the birds and forests of Hakalau. The designs feature the ʻakiapōlāʻau and Hawaiʻi ʻakepa in their native habitat of koa and ʻōhiʻa trees, with lichen and koa ʻumi covering their branches — a reflection of the unique and fragile ecosystem these species depend on. Each piece reflects the beauty of native birds and helps support the ongoing conservation work at Friends of Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge. 🐦🌳

Men’s shirts are currently in stock and going out now. Women’s blouses and pareaus are expected to ship mid-month.

Pre-sale orders include a complimentary 5” x 7” giclée print featuring ʻakiapōlāʻau in its native habitat.

If you’ve been considering an order, it’s not too late!

👉 Shop the collection here: https://friendsofhakalauforest.org/store/

Mahalo nui loa for supporting this special collaboration and helping protect Hawaiʻi’s native birds! 💛

04/06/2026

Notes from the Field – April 2026

From: Pete Stine, President, Friends of Hakalau

The threat of a large wildfire on Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) seemed unlikely only a few decades ago. But changing climate and the spread of fire adapted invasive plants, particularly gorse, have dramatically changed the landscape. As a result, we now must add severe wildfire as a topic to address in protecting the Refuge.

Thankfully, agencies across the local, state, and federal jurisdictions have risen to the occasion. Now if a wildfire occurs, we have resources to turn to that can significantly mitigate this threat. On Hawaiʻi Island, primary response is handled by the County of Hawaiʻi’s Hawaiʻi Fire Department (HFD), no matter the location. When someone calls 9-1-1, HFD responds immediately. There exists a robust mutual aid agreement between all on-island agencies with wildland fire response capability and kuleana, including the State Division of Forestry and Wildlife, the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI, which includes the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service), the U.S. Army Pohakuloa Training Area (PTA), the State Department of Hawaiian Homelands, and several other agencies and partners.

The mutual aid agreement spells out in detail the specific responsibilities of each partner agency. It also dictates the level(s) of cooperation of and from each agency, driven by land ownership, designation, and proximity and adjacency to each other’s lands. In many cases, while one agency may have primary responsibility, the agreement gives leadership of other on-island agencies automatic authorization to respond if the incident is on adjacent lands.

On the remote upper eastern slopes of Mauna Kea, including the area of the Hakalau Forest NWR, the variety of land ownership and uses dictates strong inter-agency response and effort. Under the mutual aid agreement, DHHL lands are HFD kuleana. Because Refuge lands are adjacent, as are state Forest Reserve lands, those agencies (DOI and Forestry and Wildlife) are authorized to respond immediately upon request from HFD and routinely do. All agencies utilize a common incident command system for managing any response and will typically enter a unified command structure once all resources are in place.

Over the past 30+ years this ever evolving and refined cooperative mutual response structure has proven impressively effective in responding to and mitigating wildfire on Hawaiʻi Island, and our communities and the resources are the beneficiaries. The recent Mana Road fire, in November 2025 is evidence that the various firefighting organizations on island are highly capable of timely and effective response to the threat of wildfire. We thank all of them for their courage and expertise.