Museums & UN Sustainable Development Goals: IV #1, #13, #15, #17 on Oahu

This post is a call to action for Honolulu's museums to work together on community resilience to climate impacts, and to provide an example for peers in other cities, especially in the 100 Resilient Cities. 

When the world around us changes profoundly, culture and community are our best resources as we work to adapt and thrive. The recent flooding in the islands has brought as many stories of generous assistance and sacrifice as they have of tragedy. This is common in a disaster: the most prevalent summary of the disaster experience is how community came together in unanticipated ways.

We need not wait for a crisis to connect more deeply with community; there are ways to prepare our communities so that they experience less damage, and the people feel their common strength and more agency in creating the safe future they deserve. Resilience planning, particularly with the support of cultural institutions, is a valuable way to do that. If we leave it to government alone, then we will not be able to shape the result as much as we desire. Certainly, the work is too wide-ranging, too detailed, too important to leave to one authority. We must share the authority and responsibility.

I urge Hawaii’s charitable institutions, particularly those with an emphasis on arts and humanities, and science and technology, to take the lead in hosting resilience discussions around the state. Our institutions are more trusted than government, other nonprofits, and even credible news outlets (Dillenschneider, 2017). Our sites are familiar and welcoming locations for important, potentially challenging discussions. Our staff and collections have many of the intellectual resources and professional connections to inform these discussions and to educate participants on the science and history that can guide us in finding new solutions. Museums and similar institutions can take the lead in bringing together emergency and public office planners, and residents so we can co-create a stronger, thriving future.

(c) Sarah Sutton 2018

We find culture in our family and neighborly traditions and habits, in our community history and present-day efforts, and in the histories and stories of the land, sea, and people. We find community wherever we look on our islands. I commend the Bishop Museum for its resilience planning session during March, and the Resilient Oahu staff for its willingness to work with cultural institutions to contribute to the island’s resilience plan. Let’s expand that work.

Strawbery Banke Museum is facilitating community discussion on response to nuisance tides and sea level rise in Portsmouth, NH, where its neighbors also own and worry about historic structures. The Annapolis Historical Commission, MD, is leading the country in addressing nuisance tides and sea level rise in historic economic districts.

What conversations does your community need around resilience? How can your institution make these happen? Use the materials provided, for free, on the websites of the National Institution Standards and Technology (complex), and the National Park Service (much more accessible) to plan your resilience study and response. Ask your local cultural institution to host and help design those talks with government and emergency planners, college and university staff, business owners, architects and landscape designers, scientists and heritage practitioners. Work with the City & County of Honolulu Office on Climate Change, Resilience and Sustainability.

This is our home; if we wish it to shelter and nurture us, we must help it to do so.   

Sarah Sutton is principal of Sustainable Museums, a Waialua-based consultancy helping museums, zoos, aquariums, gardens, and historic sites become more environmentally sustainable and work with their communities to become more resilient to the changing climate. She spoke at the Hawaii Museums Association’s conference May 4^th and will be speaking on July 11^th  in ‘Iolani Palace’s Nā Mo'olelo Lecture Series , both in Honolulu. 

Museums and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): The Hawaiian Land Snail Extinction Prevention Program

Meet George. 

George is the last known living individual of Achatinella apexfulva.  David Sischo and his team from the Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) named him “in homage to …Lonesome George, the Pinta Island tortoise who was the last individual of his subspecies.” George’s home would normally be the mid elevation forests on the Hawaiian island of O'ahu rather than the safe environment of the new labs of the DNLR, but he’s here, having outlived his siblings. Nearby there are another 500 at-risk snails of other imperiled species, safely tucked into protective nests of ‘ōhi'a lehua, 'ie 'ie, and branches of other native plants, in climate controlled Caron Growth Chambers.  

There are 44 Hawaiian land snail species listed as endangered under the US Endangered Species Act. The other 706 that are known and described haven’t been studied enough to receive listing status. Achatinella, George’s genus, is the most studied, but conservationists estimate Achatinella species are only 6% of the native snail species present in the islands; the other 87% are largely unresearched but likely declining at similar rates. That gap in understanding seriously limits work to prevent their extinction.

That’s where the museum and zoo fields are helping the natural resources team. 

Norine Yeung is working to gain intellectual control of the largest collection anywhere of Pacific Island land snail specimens, and the 2^nd largest malacology specimen collection in the world (over 6 million). It is at the Charles Montague Cooke, Jr., Malacology Research Center at the Bishop Museum. The collection’s field notebooks tell us the story of 100 years of original research, conducted by scientists from all over the world. George is a member of the first species of Hawaiian land snail to be described by researchers. It was part of a lei giving to a Captain George Dixon while he was on Oʻahu in 1786-1787.  

Yeung’s goal is to create research access, and public access, which is one of the first steps to take to start clarifying Hawaiian Land Snail systematics: naming species (taxonomy) and determining relationships among its groups (phylogeny). Systematics supports the applied conservation that David Sischo and his team at DNLR, George’s keepers, conduct on a daily basis. Conservation scientists need this access and information to help them understand the evolution of a species, species relationships, the likely threats to the species, and how species become dispersed among the mountain ridges and valleys throughout the Hawaiian Islands. This knowledge guides decisions when identifying and rescuing snails, protecting new habitats, and reintroducing sufficient populations into predator-proofed and legally-protected areas.

Yeung became interested in malacology (study of mollusks) in 2008 when she accepted an invitation to join a survey team from University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.The team recorded 200 new species in 10 native families during almost a decade of work. Seeing the threatened state of the snails, and realizing how very few scientists studied and protected them, Yeung chose to change her focus from ornithology to malacology (study of mollusks). She procured a grant for her position at the Bishop in August 2016, and started bringing the focus back to research, which Charles Montague Cooke, Jr. had in mind when he became curator of the deparmtnet in 1907. The collection has not had a curator or researcher for about 15 years, but has been maintained primarily by a half-time malacology technician (Regina Lkawamoto), and extraordinarily-committed volunteers, including the retired curator, Dr. Carl Christensen. Now, with the help of a research assistant supported by funds from the National Science Foundation, Yeung is stepping-up the work to improve access to the collections.

They are rehousing the specimen collection, inputting taxonomic data, which includes spcies name, collection locality and date, into an in-house database that will be used to create a searchable database. They will also digitize  the historical field notebooks collected by Cooke and his peers from the early 1900s . These notebooks are a treasure trove of information on extinct, endangered, and threatened species. They tell researchers what specimens alone cannot. Once the collections database work is complete, DNLR’s Sischo and other researchers worldwide can query by geographical location, taxon, and other collection data to improve their understanding and support their critical conservation work.

The biodiversity of the islands is at stake. O'ahu is part of the most isolated island chain on the planet. 99.5% of the land snail species are endemic to the Hawaiian Islands. So many of the plants and animals “co-evolved” here on Oʻahu or the other seven islands that “the extinction of one species could lead to cascading extinctions of other species” according to Hawai’i’s DNLR.  Such serious losses threaten the ecosystem and Hawaiian cultural heritage. George’s extinction is due mostly to introduced invasive predators, habitat destruction through widespread and rapid development of wild spaces on the island, over-collection, and limited knowledge of the snail populations across this island. But it’s not just about George; it’s about how his story is a Pacific Islands story.

Loss of land and habitat, and the introduction of invasive species forever change the appearance and usefulness of the landscape, and remove it from cultural access. The land snails are part of historic native Hawaiian chants, they support folk stories and heritage symbolism, and their shells were used for making ceremonial lei. The snails are also an important component of healthy native ecosystems. Fewer snails mean fewer food sources for native birds, and loss of ecosystem benefits to keep the forests healthy: detritivore snails eat the dead plant materials on the forest floor and recycle nutrients for plant growth; other snails eat leaf-based fungi that thrive in the moist environment and potentially threaten plant health. Snails are tiny, but mighty.

Still, with no way to escape disease, habitat loss, introduced predators, or climate changes, George and the rest of the snails depend upon humans to reverse these changes or create alternative solutions. Sischo and his team study snail habitats and food sources, and work with community members to identify new protected spaces. They rescue snails, cultivate stronger and larger populations, predator-proof the new habitats, and release and monitor the snails. This is a tough battle that requires teamwork. Recently Hawaiʻi’s DNLR and the Division of Forestry and Wildlife have expanded the Snail Extinction Prevention Program team of collaborators to include The Honolulu Zoo. In 2017 the Zoo will open a new Reptile and Amphibian Complex. It will have an invertebrate research and recovery lab that is a separate location for Hawaiian Land Snail populations – a duplicate gene pool for safety - and public engagement space promoting conservation in Hawai'i. Laura Debnar, Curator and Conservation Chair of the Zoo’s Aloha ‘Āina Conservation program, says this is one example of how the zoo expects to increase involvement in Hawaiian conservation programs and engage citizens in science and conservation.

This Hawaiian Land Snail Extinction Prevention Program is a perfect example of the future of conservation. I met Sischo and Yeung as they presented at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) recent World Congress.  The conference leaders emphasized that to protect biodiversity and the planet’s air, land, and water resources, it requires partnerships of research scientists and informal educational institutions. These conferences and partnerships strengthen science by raising awareness, teaching skills, and creating agency among many more of the planet’s citizens, than conservationists can alone.

Sischo, Yeung, Debnar, and their colleagues at the Bishop Museum, Honolulu Zoo, DLNR and DOFAW, are doing the hard but, important work of furthering the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals through their passionate commitment to George and his friends.

SDGs #13 Climate Action, #15 Life on Land, and #17 Partnerships for the Goals.