News about Sustainability at BYU–Hawaii

Brigham Young University–Hawaii Academic Vice President John Bell announced two leadership changes in Academics today. Yifen Beus has accepted an appointment to serve as the associate academic vice president for faculty replacing David Bybee who will be leading and coordinating campus efforts in sustainability. "We are grateful to Yifen and David for their diligent and long-standing service to the campus. Please join us in expressing your appreciation and welcoming them to their new assignments," said Bell.

Five students from the Biology 350 class had the opportunity to fly via helicopter up to the Koloa mountain range with David Bybee, associate professor and director of sustainability for BYU–Hawaii. Bybee explained their goal was to collect data as part of a research project initiated by U.S. Army biologists with the construction of an exclusion fence in 2011 and BYUH became involved with the project in 2012.

BYU–Hawaii’s Sustainability Farm’s manager, Leslie Harper, suggested several ways to be self-sustaining, such as using low-flow shower heads, learning organic gardening and raising animals for food.

BYU-Hawaii graduate Eritai Kateibwi was titled as one of the first Young Champions of the Earth by the United Nations in December 2017 for introducing a hydroponics system to Kiribati that provides fresh food, nutrients, and self-reliance to his home country.

Each year, BYU–Hawaii students walk down the streets surrounding the Laie Hawaii Temple and pick up litter. While this is not an unusual sight in Laie, in this case the students are also writing down what they have collected. Each individual piece of litter is assigned a category, and a tally-mark is made on a sheet of paper on a clipboard. This is the trash survey, the first one was done in 2019.

As a former biology teacher in Mongolia, Otgontuya Lily Tumursukh said while growing plants at the Sustainability Center’s garden she has come to value hard work, getting dirty and the joy of eating food she grew herself.

Munkhzul Galbadrakh, who goes by Muugii, has worked at BYU–Hawaii’s Sustainability Center as a chicken team lead for two years. From the skills she’s gained while working at the center, she said she feels confident she could live without a grocery store. She also developed a great love for the chickens she’s looked after.

Farmers and researchers are using oysters in a more than 800-year-old loko ia, or fishpond, on Kualoa Ranch, blending Hawaiian heritage and modern innovations to overcome problems pre-contact Hawaiian farmers didn’t face. The problems include not having enough fish to eat pond algae, explained Kualoa Ranch employees, and a lack of banana and coconut leaves to help grow taro better by keeping down weeds.

Saving endangered snails and butterflies in Hawaii requires raising them in the safety of a lab, releasing them into carefully crafted environments where they can thrive without getting eaten by predators and then surveying them using tiny field cameras, explained biologists in the Snail Extinction Prevention Program and Pulelehua Project.