![\"Dr.](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/LUM_0490-1024x683.jpg\")
Dr. David Sischo\u2019s favorite tree snail species, Achatinella fulgens, in the Department of Land and Natural Resources\u2019 Snail Extinction Prevention Lab. It is currently extinct in the wild. (Leilani Combs\/Civil Beat\/2025)<\/p>\n
Individuals in conservation careers work at the forefront of the climate crisis, often responding to things most people assume are far in the future. Environmental scientists can\u2019t take a break from the existential threat of climate change because it has become the very focus of their work.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy team is on the frontline of extinction,\u201d said David Sischo, a wildlife biologist with the Department of Land and Natural Resources and one of the session\u2019s panelists.\u00a0 \u201cWe deal with it every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like Tears In The Rain<\/p>\n
The woman behind the table in Room 312 instructed each person who entered to take one of the pieces of scrap paper and a colored pencil and then write something about grief related to \u02bb\u0101ina \u2014 the Hawaiian word for land and people\u2019s connection to it \u2014 or conservation. In the center of the table sat a wooden bowl to collect those scrap paper entries.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The room filled slowly as a crowd clad in aloha shirts and lei made small talk, reusable water bottles in hand. Members of the organizing team offered grass mats to those spry enough to sit on the floor to keep the chairs open for those who needed them. In the end, those mats were needed: Around 120 people made their way into the session that day \u2014 standing room only.<\/p>\n
Then, it began. The bowl made its way around the room as each audience accepted the offering, selecting a piece of one another\u2019s grief. In the order they were chosen, voices began to reveal their messages.<\/p>\n
\u201cPermanence, employment, funding and connection,\u201d one person called out.<\/p>\n
\u201cFeeling like no matter how much progress we make, we\u2019re always losing ground,\u201d another reader declared.<\/p>\n
\u201cI grieve for earth\u2019s species that are slipping through our fingers like water,\u201d yet another went on.<\/p>\n
The voices continued in quick succession until every note had been read. A hush fell over the room. Some in the crowd wiped away tears, and tissue boxes were passed. For a conference rooted in scientific rigor, it was an unusually raw and emotional moment that got to the heart of why everyone was there in the first place.<\/p>\n
![\"Short](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/LUM_0544-2-1024x683.jpg\")
Short messages about \u02bb\u0101ina and conservation-related grief shared at the Hawai\u02bbi Conservation Conference session called Dialogue on Navigating Grief to Support Capacity in Conservation: Processing the Loss of Species and Climate Change (Leilani Combs\/Civil Beat\/2025)<\/p>\n
Reflecting back on that moment, Pacific said that exercise has garnered the most response from those she has spoken to since. Having everyone read each other\u2019s messages had been a last-minute decision, one that made all the difference for how the session moved forward.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat allowed, first of all, people\u2019s actual voices to be heard, their leo, but also their internal voice,\u201d said Pacific, who helped design the seminar based on how she would run small group grief sessions in her death doula practice, \u201cTheir internal grief voice was then put into the room, and we all held that together.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pacific found her capacity to engage with grief through her own experience with the loss of her father. Now as a doula, she sits with those close to the end of their lives to, in a sense, witness their grief and help navigate the emotional and practical logistics of preparing for death and bereavement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After crashing an afterparty for the previous year\u2019s conservation conference at the invitation of a friend, Pacific recognized the need for grief support within the environmental science and conservation industries. She said that as people at the party found out what she did for a living, the conversation would turn. It seemed to her that these people had a lot to process.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI wondered who was helping you through this grief, like an HR department, and found out there wasn\u2019t anyone,\u201d Pacific told the audience at the conference this year.<\/p>\n
A new \u201ctalk story\u201d session format added to the conference this year made possible the non-traditional science presentation, entitled, \u201cDialogue on Navigating Grief to Support Capacity in Conservation: Processing the Loss of Species and Climate Change.\u201d The panel consisted of six conservation professionals from organizations including the U.S. Forest Service, the Department of Land and Natural Resources, The Nature Conservancy and the American Bird Conservancy.<\/p>\n
![\"Dr.](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/LUM_0492-1024x683.jpg\")
David Sischo sorts through snail species in the Snail Extinction Prevention Lab. Around 40 species within the lab are currently extinct in the wild. (Leilani Combs\/Civil Beat\/2025)<\/p>\n
After the seminar, Sischo, who coordinates the state snail extinction prevention program, said he appreciated getting to hear from everyone in the room.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was painful hearing all that, but it was also really comforting, in a way, to know that everyone is\u2026 feeling the same feels and going through the same thing,\u201d he said, \u201cThat was nice to see, because I think in my professional life and personal life, I don\u2019t always feel that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The snail extinction prevention lab is home to 40 species of snails unique to Hawai\u02bbi that Sischo said are now considered to be extinct in the wild.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you walk into our laboratory and you know what is in there\u2026 you\u2019re like, \u2018Holy shit, like these are the last animals of their species, and they\u2019re all in one room,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cSo it\u2019s heavy.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the session, Sischo told the room about his team\u2019s search for a species of snail on the Punalu\u02bbu summit of the Ko\u02bbolau Mountains on O\u02bbahu. The Achatinella lila is a small mollusc with a beautiful spiral shell, whose colors can vary from a gradient of green and orange to a dark umber. Lighter colors run along the creases that separate sections of the spiral.<\/p>\n
![\"Containers](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/LUM_0528-1024x683.jpg\")
Containers of endangered snails in the Snail Extinction Prevention Lab in Pearl City on O\u02bbahu. (Leilani Combs\/Civil Beat\/2025)<\/p>\n
These tree snails were abundant in the mid-2010s, but the lab decided to establish a backup colony in captivity to be safe. When they returned to collect samples, they could only find one individual.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The discovery set off an extensive 200-man-hour snail hunt that turned up three more.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t realize I was one of the unlucky ones,\u201d Sischo said, tearing up, \u201cThe last to see them.\u201d<\/p>\n
His neighbor on the panel, Sam \u2018Ohu Gon \u2014 a senior scientist and Hawaiian cultural advisor with The Nature Conservancy \u2014 put his hand on Sischo\u2019s shoulder. Gon has seen four species of Hawaiian birds go extinct during his over 40-year career.<\/p>\n
During his fieldwork, Gon told the room that he had had a similar experience with the last of the Maui \u014d\u2019\u014d, a type of Hawaiian Honeyeater and the Maui nukupu\u2019u, a species of endemic Hawaiian Honeycreeper.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the time that you make those sightings, you don\u2019t believe that you\u2019re the last person to see them,\u201d he said, \u201cYou firmly believe that you will see them again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Life Finds A Way<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/241022-kf-Rapid-Ohia-Death-142-1024x682.jpg\")
A victim of rapid \u02bb\u014dhi\u02bba death stands bare in Hawai\u02bbi Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island. A genetic test verified the tree\u2019s demise. (Kevin Fujii\/Civil Beat\/2024)<\/p>\n![\"Civil](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/1753322412_339_logo10.png\"){kind=logo}
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