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This chapter looks at the Kauaʻi ʻŌʻō, Moho braccatus—a member of a small taxon of mostly yellow and black birds that all went extinct between the mid-nineteenth and late twentieth century. Long after birds went extinct in prehistoric times at the hands of Polynesian settlers who had no apparent understanding of their role in extinction, a dramatic new understanding emerged, as represented in this chapter by the Kauaʻi ʻŌʻō, through observation and documentation between 1966 and 1982. This period of observation also demonstrated the dramatic role the federal government could play in conservation matters in the islands. It was essential work, for it provided an enormous abundance of information previously unknown to science: the distribution, density, and presence or absence of birds in Hawaiʻi, especially forest birds; the identification of threats; and, possibly, clues to their future survival.

This book examines farming and foraging in the ancient settlement of Nuʻalolo Kai on Kauaʻi Island. Tucked beneath the cliffs of the Nā Pali Coast, Nuʻalolo Kai was home to a Hawaiian community of fishers, farmers, and craftsmen. Although it was relatively isolated from the rest of Kauaʻi, Nuʻalolo Kai supported a healthy population for more than 500 years. This book explores the prehistory of Nuʻalolo Kai by analyzing the Hawaiian fauna, domesticated animals, and related artifacts gathered by archaeologists associated with the Bishop Museum and the University of Hawaiʻi-Mānoa between 1958 and 1990. The analyses are based on artifacts out of the approximately 18,000 items known to exist for the Nuʻalolo Kai archaeological collections. The book investigates the role of animals as food, products made from animal parts, and the effects of hunting, fishing, and farming on the Hawaiian ecosystem.

This chapter places the ancient village of Nuʻalolo Kai in context, first by discussing its ecology and its geographical connection to the Nā Pali Coast. It then examines how Nuʻalolo Kai fits within Kauaʻi Island's archaeological chronologies, based on the idea that the earliest occupations date to the fourteenth-century period of expansion. Earlier use may well have occurred and been limited to episodic foraging trips to the Nuʻalolo Kai beachfront. The cultural features of Nuʻalolo Kai and nearby Nuʻalolo ʻĀina are also typical for Kauaʻi during the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. After analyzing the archaeological features of Nuʻalolo Kai and Nuʻalolo ʻĀina, the chapter describes additional archaeological sites along the Nā Pali Coast.