How We Steward

Throughout our work, we engage communities and offer multiple ways to care for and connect to places of deep significance throughout the islands. When we get our hands dirty caring for a place, we grow to know and love that place. Through HILT’s work, we perpetuate Hawaiian values where people care for the lands and it cares for us. 

Hawaiʻi Land Trust is committed to properly stewarding our protected land. While the majority of our daily stewardship work takes place on the lands owned by HILT, we also work collaboratively with our landowner-partners to better care for the land. HILT’s stewardship approach rests on the three pillars of aloha ʻāina, moʻokūauhau, and mālama ʻāina. Each of these principles reinforce one another in ways that create deeper connections to the land, while restoring the structure, function and composition of the ecosystems we seek to heal. Ultimately, our goal lies in building pilina, while improving biodiversity, productivity and resilience of the land.

We welcome and encourage stewardship of HILT’s lands by everyone - communities surrounding them, descendants, Hawaiian cultural practitioners, and visitors. We help to forge reciprocal relationships between community volunteers and the lands they help HILT to steward.