Kalaupapa National Historical Park

Hopa Mountain, in partnership with the National Park Service, is pleased to announce the 2019 awardees of the Connecting with our Homelands travel grants. Twenty-one Indigenous organizations, schools, and nonprofits have been awarded travel funds for trips to national park units across 12 states/territories within the United States.

In 1883, Mother Marianne Cope arrived in Hawaii with six other Sisters of St. Francis to care for patients with leprosy on the Hawaiian Islands. With the arrival of patients and caregivers on the isolated peninsula, the Kalawao and Kalaupapa Settlements developed into a settlement community with facilities for religion, medical care, recreation, and agriculture. In addition to her lifetime of service, Mother Marianne played a critical role in the landscape's development.

How unique marine assemblages at Kalaupapa National Historical Park and Kaloko-Honokōhau National Historical Park provide an excellent opportunity to study nutrient inputs into nearshore waters, and its influence on benthic communities and the associated fish assemblage.

Kalaupapa National Historical Park, on Molokai Island, is best known as the isolated peninsula where people afflicted with Hansen’s Disease (leprosy) were sent between the years 1866-1965. However, the park also preserves thousands of archeological features which represent pre-leprosy settlement life. In April and May 2013, cultural resource staff from Kalaupapa National Historical Park inventoried a remote landshelf on Molokai’s north shore, called Kuka’iwa’a.

He mele no Kalaupapa (A Song for Kalaupapa) by “Bay View Girl” provides a glimpse into the life and spirit of one resident of the Kalaupapa Hansen’s disease settlement on Molokai, where she was banished and left to die. Her song, sung by Park Ranger Mikiala Pescaia, shows that Kalaupapa brimmed with life. Her voice captures the beauty of the land and the strength of the Bay View Girl who endured the pain and loneliness of being forcibly removed from her family and home.

Three national parks in Hawaiʻi, Hawaiʻi Volcanoes, Haleakalā, and Kalaupapa. are utilizing GAOA funding to rehabilitate approximately 64 miles of perimeter exclusionary fencing - an essential tool for protecting native ecosystems and watersheds from the destructive impact of non-native animals.

As climate changes, significant changes in weather conditions impact the natural environment by shifting patterns of precipitation, promoting extremes in storm behavior, and influencing bird migration, invasive species spread, coral reef decline, and much more. The Pacific Island Network (PACN) undertakes systematic long-term monitoring of a wide variety of natural resources to accurately determine if change is occurring and why.

The evolutionary record from previous climate perturbations indicates that marine mammals are highly vulnerable but also remarkably adaptable to climatic change in coastal ecosystems. Consequently, national parks in the Pacific, from Alaska to Hawaii, are faced with potentially dramatic changes in their marine mammal fauna, especially pinnipeds (seals and sea lions).