GMAC 10.17.23 Mintues Final Draft

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NR: Natalie, District – 7, I am so happy to introduce Kathleen Clark from the Kohala Center and I really appreciate everything you’ve done for our island as well as all the other islands. KC: Thank you, thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here and \[unclear\] hear what you folks are talking about and I see a lot of connections between the work we do at Kahaluu and around Hawaii Island. ?: \[Unclear\] SW: No, no, it’s not showing that’s why… Just a moment while we figure out \[unclear\]. OK. Go ahead. KC: OK. So thanks, Natalie, for inviting me to speak today, I want to share a story about our cauliflower coral at Kahaluu Bay. I have the honor of working down there with Auntie Cindi Punihaole who I know has come to several of your meetings before and she’s an active part of the community and l learn so much from her and just from being down at Kahaluu. So I just wanted to share this story because I feel like it really represents kind of this – you can apply it to many different ecosystems, many different issues and problems but this is specifically about Kahaluu and the Cauliflower coral that we have seen a big decline and now recovering. So basically wanted to share a little bit about the Kohala Center which I am a part of. So we are a community of practitioners in Kohala at our center – working to strengthen aina relationships \[unclear\] return ancestral knowledge research in to daily practice across fields of conservation, education, agriculture and leadership and we envision a state of pono indicated by regenerating forests \[unclear\] coastal \[unclear\] so I’m just kind of a top level summary – I am excited you’ll be hearing from one of my colleagues next month about some of the other work we do but an amazing group of people all really dedicated to sharing for ecosystems around Hawaii. Hopefully you’re all familiar with Kahaluu Bay – just a little ways down the road here – I heard you guys talking about some surf coming through – definitely seeing some of our first big surf of the year and so I want to just share from Auntie Cindi one of the ways that she has described Kahaluu to me and to all of us to work and engage with Kahaluu and that is aina lei alii - the land adorned by chiefs. And so, Kahaluu has gone through a lot of changes over time. This is a picture overhead view of the 1950s –it’s kinda hard to tell but you can still see some of those distinguishing characteristics, the sandy shoreline is now kind of eroded. This is a picture from maybe three or four years ago – you can see some of the big, drastic changes – this is from the 1970s – and then again after that seawall was built some of those bigger changes through time. So we’ve seen all these changes but something has remained the same over time and that is this group of community stewards who are committed to caring for this cherished place, so we have an awesome group of folks from around Kahaluu and the broader community here on Hawaii Island who are just really dedicated to caring for Kahaluu – they show up there every day and engage with folks, at Kahaluu and work on some other issues as well. So, we do our daily on aina education – our ecological monitoring down there – we work on restoration management, planning and advocacy and also kinda the bigger picture working to share this model with other communities, and having it available to apply to other places. Obviously, every place is different and needs are different but Kahaluu really faces a lot of those stressors that communities around Hawaii face so we have been working at this since 2000 and then the Kohala Center took over in 2006 so we’ve been there for a while and Auntie Cindi has really been leading the way, so we’re just really fortunate to have this group of folks working on Kahaluu and really learning 8