The Hawaii Conservation Alliance: Leaders in Environmental Management, Research and Education

The annual Hawai'i Conservation Conference (HCC), presented by the Hawai'i Conservation Alliance, is the largest gathering of people actively involved in the protection and management of the natural environment in Hawai'i and the Pacific Region. The conference facilitates interaction among natural resource managers, the scientific community and the general public. This is an annual opportunity to share experiences and ideas on a wide range of conservation issues affecting Hawai'i and the Pacific. The theme of the 16th Annual Hawai'i Conservation Conference is Island Ecosystems: The Year of the Reef. Although the 2008 theme commemorates the International Year of the Reef, all aspects of science and management of island ecosystems - terrestrial and marine - will be covered.

Sylvia Earle is a world renowned marine biologist, author, lecturer, and explorer leading more than 60 expeditions and logging over 6500 hours underwater. She founded DOER in 1992 following her term as Chief Scientist for NOAA, in response to the ongoing need she recognized to develop new technology for ocean exploration and education.

Dr. Norse has worked at the conservation science-policy interface for his entire career. After earning his B.S. in Biology from Brooklyn College, he studied the ecology of blue crabs in the Caribbean for his Ph.D. at University of Southern California and his Postdoctoral Fellowship at University of Iowa. Since 1978 he’s worked at the US Environmental Protection Agency, President’s Council on Environmental Quality (where he defined biological diversity as conservation’s overarching goal), Ecological Society of America, The Wilderness Society and The Ocean Conservancy before founding MCBI in 1996. Elliott’s 140+ publications include 4 books: Conserving Biological Diversity in Our National Forests (1986), Ancient Forests of the Pacific Northwest (1990), Global Marine Biological Diversity: A Strategy for Building Conservation into Decision Making (1993) and Marine Conservation Biology: The Science of Maintaining the Sea’s Biodiversity (2005). He served as President of the Society for Conservation Biology’s Marine Section and is a Pew Fellow in Marine Conservation.

From his earliest years, armed with sling shot and bb-gun, Bryan Harry tagged along with his dad hunting and fishing. This led to his interest in studying wildlife. He received a B.S. at Michigan and an M.S. at Colorado State, both in wildlife management. After short term jobs as a botanical researcher, canoe guide in Michigan and Ontario, and refuge manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, he settled in with the National Park Service (NPS) for over 50 years. With the NPS he was ranger-biologist and naturalist at Grand Teton and Yellowstone, and Chief Park Naturalist and Valley Manager at Yosemite. He came to Hawai‘i as superintendent of Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park in the early ‘70s and, except for sojourns as Alaska Area Director and superintendent of Glen Canyon, he has been here in that capacity and as NPS Pacific Area Director since that time. Throughout his career he has been involved in the planning of the National Park System. He was intimately involved with studies leading to North Cascades and American Samoa establishment as National Parks. He was a founding member of the HCA and the Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit at the University of Hawai’i.