Melissa and Clay pivot this season to the oldest island in the Hawaiian archipelago--Kaua`i. They revisit one of their earliest LAND & PEOPLE interviews with retired botanist Steve Perlman, of the Kaua`i Plant Extinction Prevention Program (PEPP). Steve talks about his love of Pacific island peoples in remote places, his start with the National Tropical Botanical Garden, the thrill of discovering new plants, and climbing the highest sea cliffs in the world to save the last of a species.

William (Willy) Kostka is a long-time conservationist and islander who was born and raised on the island of Pohnpei, in the Federated States of Micronesia. In 1998, he helped found and became the first Board Chairman and Executive Director of the Conservation Society of Pohnpei, and then transitioned to lead the Micronesia Conservation Trust for 17 years. He has helped to bridge, fund and formulate island ecosystem stewardship and marine protected commitments from islands and countries across the nearly 7 million km2 of Pacific Ocean. Willy speaks to us about growing up in Pohnpei, as well as the traditional land tenure and agroforestry systems. He speaks to his new role in helping to promote sustainable development projects in energy and water resource care as the Director of Micronesia Regional Office of the Pacific Community.

Ann Singeo is a founding member and Executive Director of Ebiil Society, a non-profit organization that promotes environmental education and conservation in Palau. She holds a Masters Degree in Communications for Social Change from University of Texas in El Paso which enabled her to learn from and work with subsistence communities across Micronesia. For two decades, she has helped to facilitate stewardship learning by young people in Palau in both science and traditional knowledge. Students and researchers are involved in everything from giant clam and sea cucumber restoration, dugong and turtle monitoring, fish weir restoration, marine debris removal, to working with women fishers in sustainable harvesting and traditional medicinal healers in learning Palauan customary land and marine practices.

Craig Santos Perez is a poet, essayist, university professor, and American publisher born in Mongmong-Toto-Maite, Guam (Guåhan) Island, formally considered a U.S. territory. His literary distinctions are many. In 2023 he won the National Book Award for poetry, 2015 American Book Award and the 2011 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Poetry. He immigrated to California when he was fifteen, thus sparking his life-long exploration into what it means to be of a tropical and culturally rich place, and then separated from his CHomorro homeland. His poetry and scholarship settles into the question of identity, navigating place and also challenges many of the contemporary notions of geography and American poetry traditions. Find out more about FROM UNINCORPORATED TERRITORY [ÅMOT] here, and watch his acceptance speech and his reading of the extraordinary poem "ginen ars pasifika" here.

Part II of a two-part conversation with Jermy Uowolo, who was born and raised on the island of Fais in the State of Yap, in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). Jermy's background is as a Micronesian cultural practitioner, anthropologist, historian and Hawaiian ecosystem restoration specialist for the Mauna Kea Forest Restoration Project. He shares with us the value of gathering and recording knowledge from Micronesian elders and culture keepers, as well as the challenges and opportunties of his own immigration story--from Yap to Guam and eventually Hawai`i Island.

Part I of a two-part conversation with Jermy Uowolo, who was born and raised on the island of Fais in the State of Yap, in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). He received his bachelors degree from University of Hawai`i at Hilo and served as a conservationist for the Watershed Alliance in Hawai`i, the Mauna Kea Forest Restoration Project and is the President of the Micronesians United – Big Island (MU-BI) organization in Hawai`i. His knowledge spans the remote atols of his home state, to Guam, Palau, the Mariana Islands and beyond. He shares with us the prehistory and the recent immigration, military and colonial struggles in places like the Marshall Islands, and the challenge of preserving cultural practices and knowledge.

Archie Kalepa Is a retired ocean safety officer who served the County of Maui for 32 years. Archie is not only a world renowned ocean safety expert and dedicated advocate for Hawaiian culture with decades of experience in rescue operations, cultural preservation and team leadership. He is a pivotal leader in West Maui, as one of the first responders on-scene after the Lahaina fires organizing the ocean delivery of needed food, water and essentials to people stranded and desperate for help. While his big wave surfing and ocean rescue accolades are many, he tells us about how helping and connecting people to the land, ocean and each other--especially in times of crisis--are among his most difficult and rewarding experiences.

Abigail Romanchak was born and raised on Maui and is a native Hawaiian printmaker who conveys the Hawaiian environment–the sounds, bird songs, human footprints across Haleakalā–through the medium of printmaking. She has both a Bachelors and Masters in Fine Art with a specialty in printmaking from the University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa and her work has been shown and collected by museums and institutions throughout the world. She takes her inspiration from uncovering the hidden, sometimes minute patterns in nature and art–from nearly invisible watermarks made by Hawaiian kapa beaters on wauke (or mulberry) to the rings made by trees that mark cycles of drought. Through her bold use of abstract lines and geometric shapes, her work is an intentional departure from commercial representations of the Hawaiian landscape, specifically in the following work: her Kahea series (or the visualization of Hawaiian bird calls), the silence of Haleakalā as represented by sound waves in the Ke Ano series, the Pilina series of prints made with ash from the Kula 2023 fires on Maui, and her Tracked series of human conservation activity.