♪♪ -People look to the mountains and they think our native insects are up there, our beautiful snails are up there, but they're being erased.

-The niu is considered the tree of life throughout the world.

We here are resurfacing our understanding for what that means.

[ Birds chirping ] The coconut tree, or niu, is a fundamental practice of food sovereignty, or food security.

I like to view it as ho'iho'i ea, the return to freedom with freedom.

It means we've regained our footing in a natural system that allows us to eat once again more simply, to share once again without money.

It stimulates a sharing economy that allows us to empower ourselves.

So, Niu Now is a movement of beloveds to learn how we can recover this relationship with our beloved tree of life.

♪♪ -Today, the coconut in Hawai'i is considered an ornamental tree, and a liability.

We have thousands of niu on O'ahu, but most coconut trees do not have coconuts in them, as the nuts are cut down before they mature enough to eat.

This has now become an issue because of the food insecurity of our communities.

♪♪ -[ Speaking in Hawaiian ] My name is Manulani Aluli Meyer, and my ohana hails from Mo'o Kapu, Kualoa, and I come from those places, along with Hilo Paliku on Moku o Keawe, Hawai'i Island.

-There is a good coconut.

We can eat it tonight.

We'll have the nut for the dinner and the husk for planting tomorrow.

Mm-hmm.

Aloha.

My name is Indrajit Kumara Samarasingha Gunasekara.

I am from Nadugala, Matara, southern Sri Lanka.

Coconut is a part of our Sinhala culture.

As long as we've been in that island, we ate coconut.

This is a food-producing tree.

This is food.

Working with Aunty Manu, it is her and mine shared hope in Hawai'i having coconut in the tree.

And there's a start in this very nursery to germinate that dream.

[ Laughter ] -So, Indrajit was making -- Everyone thinks it's some ancient -- No, this is his uluniu game plan.

This is the plan for tomorrow to see where the ulu are and the niu.

Can you tell?

Tomorrow is our uluniu last and final planting day.

We've been planting and preparing the soil for the last two years.

They've given us 11,000 square feet to produce a dryland forest.

What a miracle.

-So, to get the ground ready, the first thing is we need to get the husks broken down as small as possible, yeah.

Now we let them sit two days in the water.

So, this water here, this moisture, is going to stay for several month, even in the hot sun.

Putting that underground, that will retain the moisture and will be good for the plant.

-We are so grateful to have Indrajit and his knowledge of the niu that's come from thousands and thousands of years of practice, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

We're all "niu-nates," you know, but he's the head coconut head.

He's the head coconut.

-I think it was a month ago we had the rain here.

You see?

Moisture, water.

This husk, this is our surviving here.

-In Hawai'i, the word for land is 'aina.

'Aina means that which feeds, that which nourishes.

Kumu is the source.

Kumu is teacher.

Kumu is our word for tree.

And so, this kumu niu is the idea that all trees become our teachers.

-This is something our elder told me, somebody that know about this area, a kupuna.

The stories tell that this was a royal coconut grove -- hundreds of coconut, hundreds of niu.

Now it's down to three.

My opinion, I see this as a loss to this place.

What if this was the last tree of this variety being in this island?

-The idea of diversity within niu, within coconuts, is very important.

We have really enjoyed, you know, peoples' faces when they say, "What, there's more than one coconut variety?"

Yes.

There is.

It's like the difference with humanity.

We have to be different to survive.

We have to be different to allow our talents and excellence to be recognized, and then the collaborations are stronger.

Same thing with the niu.

-Most coconut growing places have the record.

People know what varieties they have, categories of coconut.

We don't have it yet here.

This tree, this Manoa green dwarf, they chopped the tree down.

Looking at 4,000 trees and collecting over a thousand coconut, I'm still looking for that pointed-end nut.

I haven't found that variety yet.

You know, I'm still hope.

Hope is still live in these trees, as we give a little bit better care and get some seed to grow.

♪♪ -How we lost the knowledge of niu is a very tender topic, but I can say this, that the United States illegally took my nation, 1893, and we are healing from that.

I believe sovereignty goes to freedom, when we are able to activate ourselves in that healing process, with America, with our Polynesian cousins, with ourselves.

So, the niu became an ornamental tree for tourists.

And the nuts were taken out because they caused danger.

And our tree of life became an ornamental liability.

♪♪ The maintaining of that is my problem to fix.

So, colonization is indeed rampantly choking us, until you realize -- just step away from the choke hold.

Plant.

Feed ourselves with our own forests, with our own trees of sustenance and beauty, and culture, and empowerment.

Feed ourselves.

Do it ourselves.

This is what Niu Now is about.

It's joyful, you know, recognizing that yes, we did get cut away from our land, we did get severed from our government, and now 120 years later, we're able to see that history as part of our own facet of evolution.

And so, people like Indrajit from southern Sri Lanka can help us heal.

It doesn't matter who.

It matters that we are healing collectively.

-Okay, we are going with our inventory here.

And if you see in the chart, this is a 1D, and the 1D over there.

Those two plants will be planted today.

-Are you excited?

-Yes.

[ Laughs ] I'm always excited, but this today is especially... Something about today.

[ Speaking in Hawaiian ] Feel our gratitude.

-One group can work on picking the meat out and putting them down, and the other team can break the husk.

-Any time you expose people, and especially youth, to 'aina work, to land work, you expose them to the possibilities of their own internal wakefulness.

And that is thrilling to me, 'cause the kids love it.

And I'm like, "Wow, you guys like working hard, sweating, and, you know, fatigue work?"

Like, "Yeah, Aunty!"

I love that.

'Cause when the kids can see what they've done, then they can know that anything is possible.

And believe me, to turn these barren, dry, hot lands into a vibrant, living forest, that'll change anybody.

That's our goal.

-What it means for me to know this knowledge as a student and as a future person to come and help the food system, as a future Hawaiian, I see it as a form of liberation, as a form of sovereignty.

Indrajit showed me his connection with niu, with coconut.

I never grew up with niu the way he did, but I have the ability, I grew up with kalo, you know what I mean?

I took that framework that he has and I was able to adopt it to kalo and I feel a great sense of understanding and connection to it because it's my ancestors that used to farm this.

-The beauty of the coconut, right -- the coconut travels -- travels still, yeah -- all over the world by itself.

When we realize that we're just traveling with the coconut and regaining this knowledge and experience from different people, different cultures, different languages, it puts you in a different perspective of, like, what learning can be and what evolution, what a revolution can be for our people.

To me, in its core it's about aloha 'aina, malama 'aina, and really taking care of our people.

[ All chanting ] -Don't be afraid to hold it.

[ All chanting ] The next one is kupu.

[ Indistinct ] Kupu.

-Kupu.

[ Speaking in Hawaiian ] That's the sprout.

-Chanting, you know, conjuring life into our plants is a new thing and old thing at the same time.

And it's new for this group, but old for Hawai'i.

There is the little kupu, there is the sprout.

And mu'o is the new sprout that's forming into leaves -- mu'o.

And then lau is the -- you can start to see the leaves.

And then the lala is the branches.

And then the kumu is the tree.

And then [speaking Hawaiian] -- "Please grow, grow, grow, grow, grow."

Ulu means to grow.

It's like a spiritual connection to life.

So, yeah, we're basically conjuring forth life with our own life.

[ All chanting in Hawaiian ] ♪♪ [ Chanting continues ] ♪♪ [ Chanting continues ] ♪♪ -[ Laughing ] -What can you do to join in a worldwide movement to understand the purpose of trees?

That's a lot.

You can do a lot.

Understand what's around your neighborhood.

Value indigenous knowledge.

Allow for the history of a place to be known.

This is not about coconuts.

This is about friendship.

This is about continuity.

This is about joy.

This is about the essence of life.

And we happen to have the form in growing coconuts, you know what I mean?

-The tree, the seed that can float over 3,000 miles over a hundred days and find the land and grow.

Such a tree with that potential inspired us in thousand years, because that tree lived with us for that long.

We became a part of coconut tree.

Coconut tree became part of us in the tropical world.

When we come to that realization again, it's an awakening.

We call this a Niu Now moment.

Moments have no limitation.

-[ Singing in Hawaiian ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Rustling ] ♪♪ [ Insects chirping ] ♪♪ -We often will search in the day and at night.

♪♪ Our whole team struggles with when to call it.

♪♪ We kind of never want to give up on a site or a species or a population.

♪♪ I think people look to the mountains and they think our native insects are up there, our forest birds are up there, our beautiful snails are up there.

And, I mean, you look at the mountain -- it's green, it's beautiful.

But -- but the animals aren't there.

They're being erased.

-Initially, when I say I work with snails, they're thinking in their heads the garden snails, all those disgusting snails or slugs that you see around your home.

And then they start to process, "Oh, endangered tree snails, Hawai'i."

And then I start showing them pictures, and it's a totally different reaction.

♪♪ -We don't have to go back that far to find those descriptions of snails hanging like grapes from the foliage, multicolored gems hanging from the trees and shrubs.

-It's really, really huge in Hawaiian culture.

The snails had a really big presence and they were the voice of the forest.

-There's limited time before it's game over for a lot of these species.

-Now, if you cannot take care of small stuff, how you gonna take care of big stuff?

-Scientists are mourning the loss of a 14-year-old named George.

George was a snail, a Hawaiian tree snail to be exact, and the last member of an entire species.

That joins hundreds of others that have gone extinct over the past few decades.

They're now saying that 60% to 90% of them -- gone.

-I think when people talk about extinction or think about extinction, it's a really abstract concept that's hard to wrap your mind around.

George was the last known Achatinella apexfulva.

I'm sad that he's not here as an ambassador anymore, because I think that when people see the last of something, I think it kind of -- it hits home rather than hearing it to actually see it.

And on January 1, 2019, he died.

And unfortunately, I think it kind of foreshadows more to come.

♪♪ -Let's see...

When I was a kid, these were relatively common on the trunks of the guava trees.

This lived on the ridges above Hanalei, that area.

But it's gone now, of course.

It would be presumptuous for me as a haole to try and understand the love for the land that native Hawaiians have.

There is something about growing up in a place and knowing that generations of your ancestors have grown up in that place that gives you a special connection that I can never know.

But as a biologist, I do have a sense of why these islands are unique.

♪♪ -There are 1,200 known species of snails in North America, north of Mexico.

That scale really puts it into perspective because Hawai'i is 1/1,700th the land mass of that part of North America, yet we have almost the same number, if not more, species of snails.

Snails that evolved in Hawai'i, they were sort of the cleaners of the forest.

They kept the plants healthy by keeping the leaves clean so they can photosynthesize more effectively.

Why are there so many, right?

And that's really what drives us.

Why are there so many snails here in Hawai'i versus elsewhere?

-Yeah, this one -- this one looks a little... -And then also on the counter-end of that is how much we've lost.

There have been cases where we've gone out, knowing that a population is declining, to recover the last of them and get there and we're too late.

Those are the worst days, you know, 'cause you just -- you just missed that opportunity to save something for a little longer.

-I think that Hawai'i has seen a lot of change.

And we still are in the face of change.

The natural world that existed at the time before contact has changed radically.

♪♪ ♪♪ With climate change, with continued unfettered introductions of potentially disastrous plants and animals that could further disrupt our native ecosystems, we've seen that happening ever since contact, and at an accelerating pace.

-Hawaiian land snails have been disappearing even as early as the late 19th century.

People were recognizing that things that had been collected in, say, the 1840s, had gone.

Even back in the 1960s, we knew that Euglandina was here and we anticipated that it was not a good sign.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ If this keeps going the way it is, the Hawaiian islands are going to be a bunch of warm rocks in the ocean that look pretty much like every other bunch of warm rocks in the ocean.

We will have lost one of, if not the most incredible faunas of native land snails anywhere in the world.

-That which is to be found nowhere else on Earth.

Hawai'i is full of that.

The snails of Hawai'i are one of the more obscure, and yet in Hawaiian culture they were one of the most prominent.

-Here at Bishop Museum, we tell a broader story of Hawai'i's history.

-Do you know where those... -Our collections deserve our respect.

They deserve our physical respect as well as our emotional respect.

-Zero, zero, eight, three, one.

-The museum cares for a shell necklace that belonged to Queen Lili'uokalani.

♪♪ ♪♪ -So, they're like this big.

-So, that's... ♪♪ -Just to think of all the lives that that lei has been in contact with.

To have that understanding that she -- she touched that lei... Yeah, it's...

It was a heavy day.

I was actually a little scared of it.

A Hawaiian understanding of the world, all those lives that the lei has touched imbues some kind of power into it.

We call it mana.

-When you give a lei to a queen, it's an amazing thing.

Because the lei pupu kuahiwi is made up of such a legendary element of Hawaiian culture, to put together a lei of that sort and give it to a queen -- entirely appropriate.

-It's for a photo shoot.

-Yes, photo shoot.

-Thank you guys so much.

-See that lei in front of me, just makes me think of all the stories of my teachers that talk about the hula or the songs that exist about the kahuli.

[ Piano playing ] [ All singing in Hawaiian ] -I grew up on Kaua'i island, and I grew up dancing hula since I was about this small.

[ Laughs ] I was very young.

The first hula that a lot of people learned is the kahuli song.

-It's more than just a kahuli.

It's kind of a generic term for snail.

There's the Hinihini or the Pololei Kani Kua Mauna, Pupu Kani Oe, right -- the shell that sounds long.

-Hawaiians in particular were great observers of nature.

They saw the world and they made connections with the world.

There were names for everything, which meant that everything had a purpose.

When you name something, you give it life.

-[ Singing in Hawaiian ] ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪ -My friends that are doing research and work in preserving these species up on the mountain, and hopefully we can make sure that those species stay alive.

-Can you see the door?

-Now, if you cannot take care of small stuff, how you gonna take care of big stuff?

We have something really valuable that we should be taking care of.

♪♪ I work with critically endangered Hawaiian plants and snails and insects to prevent them from going extinct so that my son can see them.

I know he's proud that I protect Hawaiian plants and animals, that little piece of their culture.

It's the physical, visual, the part you can touch.

♪♪ ♪♪ These things are just up there on the mountain cruising around on plants.

[ Laughs ] [ Rain pattering ] Trying to get location data, trying to determine the habitat.

You got to learn the plants, the forest.

It's not easy.

[ Wind rushing ] [ Rain pattering ] [ Wind rushing ] [ Insects chirping ] [ Rain pattering ] Everybody whose -- who I share these snails with are just blown away.

Yeah, the pattern.

It's, like, almost digital.

They'll join the two others that are on O'ahu now.

Hopefully one's a male, one's a female, and they'll be a breeding pair that has plenty of babies.

-You know, when I was growing up and first getting into biology, you think of extinction as this thing that happens.

Yeah, it's happening, but it's happening over a really long period of time.

But it's happening in, you know, our lifetimes, and, you know, we're seeing it, we're watching it happen.

And I think the most frustrating thing is, sometimes it feels like there's nothing you can do.

♪♪ Dave's job is extraordinarily difficult.

I still see myself as a scientist that helps inform conservation and is really passionate about seeing conservation done.

But ultimately at the end of the day, I'm a scientist.

And Dave's job and his career and his passion wholly depends on being successful at saving these things.

♪♪ -It's like the emergency room for species.

I think people don't expect it to be so high-tech.

Humidity, temperature, day and night, to mimic the habitats where these animals are coming from, which is usually upper elevation in the island's mountain ranges, so above 2,000 feet typically.

We're barreling towards extinction with these species, and if they're going to have any chance, we have to just keep them from going extinct at this point.

Captive rearing is a lifeboat.

It's drastic.

We're taking these species out of their natural habitat and we're bringing them in and we're plugging them in to life support.

I think for most species, we're mimicking their conditions pretty accurately, and they're able to thrive.

But it's not ideal to have all these animals in captivity -- by no means.

♪♪ [ Helicopter blades whirring ] ♪♪ ♪♪ I've been working with rare land snails in the Pacific for over 12 years.

Some of the areas where I first went to in graduate school and saw tons of snails and kind of became really excited about my projects -- there aren't snails anymore, they're gone.

I pulled the last ones out.

-That's what we're looking for out here?

-Yeah.

-We're seeing these populations that people monitored for a long time just completely disappear within a matter of months or a year.

♪♪ We've been racing to try and get to these populations and pull individuals out before it's too late.

[ Woman speaking indistinctly ] -Alright, you guys ready?

-Yep.

-Ready?

-Yeah.

[ Indistinct conversations ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -A lot of our snail sites that we manage and where they exist today are really discreet.

They're relatively small.

Think of something like the size of the footprint of your house.

-...and all the way down towards these Pritchardia.

-We've spent 80 person hours, 100 person hours at sites that are the size of your living room.

♪♪ ♪♪ We often will search in the day and at night.

-Okay.

-But any... -[ Chuckles ] Yeah, it's pretty tricky.

You might see the whole side profile.

You might see the last whorl just behind the edge of a leaf.

♪♪ -Okay.

Thanks.

Bye.

-When I find a snail, just in general, I keep it to myself for just a split second.

-Keep trying.

-Oh, he's walking around.

-It is a snail.

-Oh, and it looks like a... -To find that one snail at the very end... ...it's a huge relief.

It breaks that -- that mounting tension.

But after the joy and the celebration subsides, you realize again, we've only had -- we've only had an opportunity to find one snail.

It's heavy.

It's heavy for a Hawaiian.

♪♪ -I don't feel good about taking snails out of their natural environment.

So you're constantly trying to, um... tell yourself that you're -- what you're doing is worth it.

But what we do in the lab, it works.

-And they make a lot of babies in the lab.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Our job is to get them out of here as fast as we can and back on the landscape in multiple sites.

These are small portions of habitat that we're able to maintain predator free, where populations can flourish without being depredated into extinction.

-Yeah, so we're just checking on predator barriers on our exclosure.

This is our exclosure wall.

Just walking around the exclosure checking the -- under the angle, see if there's any Euglandina trying to get in.

So, we're checking the angle, checking the copper mesh, going around the exclosure, and what do we find?

Boom!

Got a Euglandina up in there.

♪♪ Oh, big boy.

-It's not happening in a vacuum.

There's a lot of people that care about this.

♪♪ ♪♪ -With more eyes on the ground, we are finding things that have been entirely forgotten.

Snails that people didn't realize were still there, right?

That they still have a fighting chance to survive.

This is Auriculella malleata.

It is endemic to O'ahu, specifically in the Waianae mountains.

This is Amastra micans, a very, very, very rare snail endemic to O'ahu.

This is Kaala subrutila, named after Mount Ka'ala.

That's the highest point on O'ahu.

So, you can only find this snail on that mountaintop.

These are very happy, happy stories that we have, that not all are extinct, that they are still around and that we still have time to save them.

♪♪ -I think there's incredible beauty in these places and in the animals we're working with.

♪♪ I want people to feel the urgency that we feel.

We have around a hundred species across islands that we think is vulnerable to extinction within a week to the next decade.

♪♪ ♪♪ -I think that conservation in the long run is going to fail unless there's a strong connection between every single human being and the natural world around them.

It's a connection that was severed through a history of changes in the way people view the natural world.

♪♪ And so, part of my driving philosophy is to share that richness and to have more and more people appreciate it, care about it, care for it, and we reenter into a reciprocal relationship with our environment and with the natural world around us.

That's what does it.

♪♪ [ Birds chirping ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Wind rushing ] -[ Singing in Hawaiian ] ♪♪ [ Singing ends ] ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Singing continues ] ♪♪ [ Singing ends ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Birds chirping ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Leaves rustling ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Singing in Hawaiian ] ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Singing ends ] ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Waves lapping ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Rustling ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Rustling continues ] ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Birds chirping ] ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Rustling ] ♪♪ [ Creaking ] ♪♪ [ Ominous music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Loud rustling ] [ Ominous music continues ] ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Crunching ] [ Clattering ] ♪♪ [ Music softens ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Ominous music plays ] ♪♪ [ Music fades ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Singing in Hawaiian ] ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Singing ends ] [ Fireworks whistle, pop in distance ] ♪♪ [ Crowd cheering in distance ] ♪♪ [ Sounds fade ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Singing in Hawaiian ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Singing ends ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪