NEWS

When Kamuela Plunkett looks at Hawaiʻi’s landscapes, he sees more than forests, fields, and shorelines. He sees the deep wisdom of kūpuna kahiko o Hawaiʻi nei, or Hawaiian ancestors of old, who carried in their minds detailed maps of the land from mountain to sea. These maps weren’t just about geography. They were living guides, tracking changes in watersheds and vegetation to safeguard community wellbeing for generations.

As an Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) fellow, Plunkett is collaborating with the Pacific Islands Climate Adaptation Science Center (PI-CASC) to reconstruct these ancestral baselines of vegetation patterns, tracing back to a time before sugar and cattle altered the land. By doing so, he hopes to create a clearer picture of how Hawai‘i’s ecosystems have changed and how communities today can plan land use and restoration with both cultural insight and scientific understanding.

“The kūpuna had systems that allowed them to sustain themselves for centuries in isolation,” Plunkett explained. “Today, climate change and disrupted supply chains are reminding us how vulnerable Hawai‘i is. If we want to build resilience, we need to learn from how they balanced people, culture, and ʻāina.”

Plunkett’s journey to this work has been shaped by lived experience. Growing up in Hawai‘i from the 1980s to the 2000s, he witnessed rapid changes—new neighborhoods replacing open land, shorelines eroding, and familiar landscapes being transformed. Later, after working in tourism and construction, he returned to school to explore how his ancestors sustained thriving communities without dependence on outside markets. From an AA at Windward Community College to a BA in Anthropology at UH Mānoa, and then an MA in Heritage Management at UH Hilo, he built a foundation for linking cultural knowledge with sustainable planning.

This summer at the Hawai‘i Conservation Conference, Plunkett and his partners hosted a forum, “Project Wao: Developing a Methodology for Societal Cross-Sector Land-Use Planning and Indigenously Informed Watershed Restoration.” The strong turnout and audience engagement affirmed that the project is resonating with its audience. 

“At first I wasn’t sure we were ready to present, but with encouragement from my colleagues, we put together a panel and small-group discussions,” Kamu said. “The feedback has been really positive, and we’re already seeing collaborations start to form.”

Currently, Plunkett is drafting a co-produced scope of work alongside the project’s five working groups while continuing discussions with potential collaborators met at the conference. His long-term objective is to integrate traditional ecological knowledge with modern scientific approaches to inform sustainable land-use planning and ensure Hawai‘i’s resilience into the future.

“Responsible land-use planning,” Kamu says, “means acknowledging the missteps of the past while carrying forward the knowledge of those who came before us. Project Wao is about weaving those threads together.”