This is bird note.

Sam Ohugan is the senior scientist and cultural advisor for the Nature Conservancy of Hawaii.

And he's something of a rare combination.

I'm academically trained as a conservation biologist, but I was also trained traditionally

in Hawaiian Chantin ceremony by a recognized master,

kumujana kalahu yokalani, no Kamehamehamehah Ikolu Lake.

So that combination allows me to take the best of both knowledge systems to better appreciate

and work toward the protection and preservation of our native Hawaiian bird life.

It started back when Sam was growing up.

Up until high school, he hadn't been exposed to much of Hawaiian culture.

At the time that I was in high school the Hawaiian Renaissance was just getting started and so for most people

who love was cellophane skirts and coconut bras while sipping a mai Thai at a hotel in Waikiki, right?

It had very little to do with the true richness of Hawaiian culture.

But at an all-student assembly, he got to see a performance of real hula and chant, and Sam was amazed.

I was dumbfounded because I had never seen traditional hula or the chant styles and something, something sparked there. off to get a PhD in zoology. And he came back to Hawaii to work for the Nature Conservancy as an exploratory

biologist, hiking around habitats all across the archipelago to see, hear, and study the plants and animals in those places.

At the same time, Sam's future wife was studying traditional hula.

And she was undergoing her Uniki as a dancer.

Uniki is a year of challenges.

They had to do all kinds of things, make certain dies and cordage and the like,

and because by that time I was familiar with

native plants and animals and went hiking all the time I knew which plants

...