Samuel M. 'Ohukani'ōhi'a Gon III is an American scientist and Hawaiian cultural practitioner, currently serving as Senior Scientist and Cultural Advisor for

The Nature Conservancy The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is a global environmental organization headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, United States. it works via affiliates or branches in 79 countries and territories, as well as across every state in the US. Founded in ...

of Hawaiʻi. He was born and raised in Nuʻuanu on the island of

Oʻahu Oahu (, , sometimes written Oahu) is the third-largest and most populated island of the Hawaiian Islands and of the U.S. state of Hawaii. The state capital, Honolulu, is on Oahu's southeast coast. The island of Oahu and the uninhabited Northwe ...

. Gon studied

Hawaiian culture The culture of the Native Hawaiians encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms practiced by the original residents of the Hawaiian islands, including their knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits. Huma ...

under Kumu John Keolamala'āinana Lake. Gon works to integrate Hawaiian culture, values, and knowledge into conservation efforts, for which he was named a Living Treasure of Hawaii by the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii for his contributions towards preserving Hawaiian culture and Hawaiian ecology.

Early life

Gon was born in Honolulu Hawaiʻi on December 16, 1955, and graduated in 1973 from McKinley High School and earned a Bachelor's in Zoology (1978) at the

University of Hawaii at Manoa A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Univ ...

. He continued his education at the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university, research university system in the U.S. state of California. Headquartered in Oakland, California, Oakland, the system is co ...

at Davis earning his Master's in Zoology (1980) and a PhD in animal behavior (1984), studying the Happy-face Spider, ''Theridion grallator''.

Career

After attaining his Ph.D., Gon worked for a year in the Entomology Department of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Honolulu, before being hired by The Nature Conservancy of Hawaii in 1986. In that organization, he served as an exploratory ecologist (1986-1990), Director of the Hawaiʻi Natural Heritage Program (1991-2002), and Senior Scientist and Cultural Advisor (2003-present) through his career, he orchestrated research and initiatives that supported The Conservancyʻs work to preserve Hawaii's

biodiversity Biodiversity is the variability of life, life on Earth. It can be measured on various levels. There is for example genetic variability, species diversity, ecosystem diversity and Phylogenetics, phylogenetic diversity. Diversity is not distribut ...

. Gon managed biological inventories for the Conservancy and the state of Hawaii. His work as the Director of the Hawai'i Natural Heritage Program directed a team of biologists and data managers working to protect the rarest endemic species and ecosystems across all of the Hawaiian Islands by tracking their locations, management needs, and protection status. Later, he worked with the Conservancy's island programs strengthening conservation and management strategies. Gon helped establish ecological analysis and biodiversity data management systems for projects in East Asia, Latin America,

Polynesia Polynesia ( , ) is a subregion of Oceania, made up of more than 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are called Polynesians. They have many things in ...

, and

Micronesia Micronesia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania, consisting of approximately 2,000 small islands in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean. It has a close shared cultural history with three other island regions: Maritime Southeast Asia to the west, Poly ...

. In 1991, Sam sailed on

Hōkūleʻa ''Hōkūlea'' is a performance-accurate ''waa kaulua'', a Polynesian culture, Polynesian double-hulled voyaging canoe. Launched on 8 March 1975 by the Polynesian Voyaging Society, it is best known for its 1976 Hawaii to Tahiti voyage com ...

around the Hawaiian Islands. He served on the board of the Ōhi'a Project, focused on Hawaiʻi's endemic and most abundant native tree. He was an executive committee member of the Hawaiian Conservation Alliance. Gon was a board member for Ahahui Malama i ka Lokahi which is a native Hawaiian organization conserving native plants and animals in Hawaii, and for the Kaho'olawe Island Reserve Commission with a focus on

habitat restoration Ecological restoration, or ecosystem restoration, is the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, destroyed or transformed. It is distinct from conservation in that it attempts to retroactively repair ...

. In 2015, while Gon was a part of the Board of Land and Natural Resources, he was an advocate for the protection of the native species, such as O'opu (''

Awaous stamineus ''Awaous stamineus'', commonly known as ‘O‘opu nakea, is a species of goby native to the Hawaiian Islands. It has been previously considered a synonym of '' Awaous guamensis'' but recent work based upon morphological and genetic differences h ...

'') at risk of extinction. Biocultural Conservation Gon has been a strong advocate for biocultural conservation, melding indigenous Hawaiian knowledge, values, and practices into mainstream conservation. With the Hawaiʻi Conservation Alliance, he drafted the alliance's position paper on Hawaiian Culture in Conservation in Hawaiʻi, providing guidance to all conservation partners in multiple sectors (government, academia, and NGO) on integrating Hawaiian culture into conventional conservation practice. ection requires expansion and citations

Research, publications and speeches

Gon has given numerous presentations about Hawaiian ecosystems and culture to global audiences, such as the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of the American Indian, the Ethnological Museum in Dalem, Berlin, Germany (2011), the

National Museum of Natural History The National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. With 4.4 ...

in Paris (2012), and the Museum of World Culture in Paris, France (2014)^. In 2014 Gon gave a

TedTalk TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "Ideas Change Everything" (previously "Ideas Worth Sprea ...

Maui Maui (; Hawaiian language, Hawaiian: ) is the second largest island in the Hawaiian archipelago, at 727.2 square miles (1,883 km2). It is the List of islands of the United States by area, 17th-largest in the United States. Maui is one of ...

on combining science and Hawaiian cultural practices. Gon and colleagues at The Nature Conservancy of Hawaiʻi and the

Office of Hawaiian Affairs The Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) is a self-governing corporate body of the State of Hawaii created by the 1978 Hawaii State Constitutional Convention. It is often described as the fourth branch of government in Hawaiʻi. OHA's mandate is ...

contributed to a collaborative effort calculating the

ecological footprint The ecological footprint measures human demand on natural capital, i.e. the quantity of nature it takes to support people and their economies. It tracks human demand on nature through an ecological accounting system. The accounts contrast the biolo ...

of pre-contact Hawaiʻi. Gon has published many articles on Hawaiian natural history, conservation biology, landscape history, biocultural conservation, and sustainability, including ist of publications requires reorganization and correctionsaltitudinal effects on the general diversity of endemic insect communities in Leeward Hawaiian forests (1978), invertebrate domestication (1984), water bears (1986), endemic Hawaiian plants (1987; 2008), sex-biased pattern variations in birds of prey (2003), applications of traditional Hawaiian knowledge (2008), using historic human ecological footprints to inform biocultural restoration and sustainability (2018), the

Hawaiian Renaissance The Hawaiian Renaissance (also called the Hawaiian Cultural Renaissance) was the Hawaiian resurgence of a distinct cultural identity that draws upon traditional Kānaka Maoli culture, with a significant divergence from the tourism-based culture ...

and global sustainability (2019), optimizing

ecosystem service Ecosystem services are the various benefits that humans derive from ecosystems. The interconnected living and non-living components of the natural environment offer benefits such as pollination of crops, clean air and water, decomposition of wast ...

s (2020), conservation of subterranean

biomes A biome () is a distinct geographical region with specific climate, vegetation, and animal life. It consists of a biological community (ecology), community that has formed in response to its physical environment and regional climate. In 1935, Art ...

(2021), and methodologies for exploring indigenous conceptualizations of nature and conservation (2022). He is also the creator of a globally-recognized website on trilobite classification and biolog
Trilobites.info
A Guide to the Orders of

Trilobite Trilobites (; meaning "three-lobed entities") are extinction, extinct marine arthropods that form the class (biology), class Trilobita. One of the earliest groups of arthropods to appear in the fossil record, trilobites were among the most succ ...

Publications

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References

American biologists Year of birth missing (living people) Living people University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa alumni University of California, Davis alumni {{DEFAULTSORT:Gon, Sam