Chancellor Irwin and President Hensel visit ʻIole Hawaiʻi, a Hawaiʻi Island modern-day ahupuaʻa
“It’s exciting to be part of the planning for a modern-day ahupuaʻa to open up opportunities for our students to get more hands-on experience with sustainability and regeneration activities.” —Chancellor Bonnie D. Irwin
By Susan Enright/UH Hilo Stories.
University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo Chancellor Bonnie Irwin, along with UH System President Wendy Hensel, on Monday visited the vast landscape of ʻIole Hawaiʻi in North Kohala, Hawaiʻi Island.
ʻIole Hawaiʻi is a modern-day ahupuaʻa (traditional division of land), just over 2,400 acres running from mauka (mountain) to makai (ocean), chock-full of ecological resources and cultural history.
Managed through a non-profit with the support of the Hawaiʻi Community Foundation, the vision of ʻIole is to create a 21st-century ahupuaʻa, a place where an Indigenous worldview meets conservation and resource management. Partners in the vision are the UH System and Arizona State University.
“It’s exciting to be part of the planning for a modern-day ahupuaʻa to open up opportunities for our students to get more hands-on experience with sustainability and regeneration activities,” says Chancellor Irwin. “If our natural science, geography, Hawaiian studies and anthropology students can become practitioners of aloha and ʻāina, we can prepare them for local and Pacific Island jobs as well as have them give back to the community.”
President Hensel recently joined the ʻIole board, and Chancellor Irwin, who has been a member of the board for several years, accompanied her for the tour on April 20. “We rode an ATV from mauka to makai to see first hand the potential of the space for education and as a demonstration site for sustainability projects,” says Irwin.
“Projects that faculty and students undertake at ʻIole will range from mapping the site to understanding the distribution of native and invasive species to understanding the historical ecology of ʻIole,” Irwin explains. “This work, done in partnership with ʻIole, colleagues from UH and Arizona State University, and the Hawaiʻi Community Foundation, has the potential to demonstrate how we will live and work on islands far into the future and begin to slow the damage wrought by ignoring our environment.”
Story by Susan Enright, public information specialist for the Office of the Chancellor and editor of UH Hilo Stories. She received her bachelor of arts in English and certificate in women’s studies from UH Hilo.
