Hawaiʻi Conservation Program 2025

OVERVIEW
The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) is soliciting proposals to strategically protect and enhance essential habitats in Hawaiʻi, from mauka to makai (from the mountain to the ocean), to reduce extinction risk and sustain resilient populations of native species relating to NFWF’s Hawai‘i Conservation Program Business Plan. Species and habitats of interest include palila (finch-billed Hawaiian honeycreeper), kiwikiu (Maui parrotbill), Oʻahu elepaio (monarch flycatcher), ʻuaʻu (Hawaiian petrel), ‘alalā (Hawaiian crow), and conservation objectives on Lānaʻi. The Hawaiʻi Conservation Program anticipates awarding approximately $2.1 million in grants. Major funding partners include the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), U.S. Forest Service (USFS), Department of Defense’s Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration (REPI) Program, and Pūlama Lānaʻi.

GEOGRAPHIC FOCUS
To be eligible for funding, projects must occur within the areas illustrated in Maps 1-3 below.
Priority geographic locations include those found on the islands of Hawaiʻi Island, Maui, Lānaʻi, and Oʻahu.

PROGRAM PRIORITIES
All proposals must specifically address how projects will directly and measurably contribute to the accomplishment of one or more of the program priorities as identified in the Hawaiʻi Conservation Program Business Plan. Projects that incorporate community outreach, foster community engagement, and pursue collaborative management while elevating traditional knowledge that will lead to measurable conservation benefits are encouraged.

In 2025, the Hawaiʻi Conservation Program will award grants to projects that address the following program priorities.

Bird Conservation: Reduce extinction risk for a suite of endemic bird species by addressing direct threats and improving habitat conditions. Pervasive and ongoing threats for Hawaiian birds include avian malaria, habitat loss and degradation, invasive predators and plants, and climate change. In 2025, NFWF seeks projects that support listed birds on Oʻahu, Maui and Hawaiʻi Island with a primary emphasis on the following priorities:

Landscape-scale mosquito control for endemic forest birds – Support the deployment of the Incompatible Insect Technique (IIT) to suppress populations of the invasive southern house mosquito to reduce or eliminate the occurrence of avian malaria at a landscape-scale to prevent the extinction of endangered forest birds. Project activities may include implementation planning, data collection to inform prioritization of control locations, coordination and planning among Birds, Not Mosquitoes partnership, and community outreach and education on the conservation need and tool(s) available.
Kiwikiu – Support the kiwikiu steering committee’s efforts to address short and long-term conservation needs. Activities may include establishing a captive population or establishing a new population by translocation to reduce extinction risk. Specific actions such as captive rearing or translocation planning and/or assessments, locating and capturing individuals, infrastructure support, and species monitoring, will be considered.
ʻAlalā – Support the establishment of a self-sustaining population of ʻalalā on Maui. Project activities may include implementing a monitoring program to learn about survival, health, and space use of released ʻalalā through data obtained by radio telemetry and monitoring the effectiveness of predator control. The monitoring program will inform adaptive management actions for current and future releases.
Palila – Prevent extinction of palila. Support one of several key activities to insulate palila from continued decline. Project activities may include predator control and fencing with an emphasis on cat control, supplemental feeding during chick rearing, establishing a captive population, fire management including invasive vegetation management, outplanting native plants, maintaining ungulate-proof fences, and removal of ungulates within fenced units.
Oʻahu elepaio – Increase Oʻahu elepaio territorial occupancy. Project activities may include rodent control through trapping, predator surveys, and efficacy monitoring.
Kuahiwi a Kai: Lānaʻi Watershed Conservation Program: Lānaʻi is home to unique natural and cultural resources, stretching from the island’s mountain to its surrounding ocean. However, the landscape faces threats from uncontrolled ungulate populations, sedimentation runoff, invasive plants, and non-native predators. Over the past 150 years, mismanagement of and overgrazing by non-native ungulates, including axis deer and mouflon sheep, has led to unnatural erosion patterns, burying historic cultural sites near the coast, smothering the island’s coral reefs and white sand beaches with sediment, and destroying terrestrial habitats that are home to native fauna. Invasive plants, such as strawberry guava and fire-tolerant grasses, have changed the hydrology of the watershed, increasing soil compaction and flash flooding, and decreasing water infiltration to the island’s aquifers.

The Kuahiwi a Kai Program was launched in 2019 to protect and enhance Lānaʻi’s watershed health, coral reefs, native plants and animals, endangered Hawaiian petrel habitat, and sensitive coastal cultural sites, while fostering coordinated connection between Lānaʻi’s community and the land. In 2025, the Kuahiwi a Kai Program seeks projects in the following program priority areas:

Installation of ungulate-proof fence – Install the second segment of ungulate exclusion fencing, approximately 4.53 miles long, to enclose a core segment of the Kuahiwi a Kai program area. A grant to install the first segment of fencing was awarded through the program’s 2021 RFP and is currently under construction. The purpose of creating mauka to makai fenced management units is to strategically manage invasive ungulate populations, improve watershed conditions, and protect native habitats.
Restoration implementation planning – Develop a comprehensive restoration strategy and implementation plan for the Kuahiwi a Kai Program focusing on priority habitat management for: 1) lowland mesic forest within the completed Hiʻi predator exclusion fence to benefit ʻuaʻu, 2) lowland mixed native and introduced mesic forest across Lānaihale (see ʻuaʻu focal area on Map 2), 3) lowland scrub-shrub and bare earth at mid-latitudes on windward slopes of Kuahiwi a Kai program area, and 4) coastal kiawe (Prosopis pallida) forest and shrub lands. Successful project(s) will:
Engage program partners and stakeholders to create a framework for landscape habitat restoration.
Integrate data and findings from past grants to the U.S. Geological Survey for vegetation and sediment modeling.
Classify and prioritize management sub-units within identified ecosystems. Detail specific restoration actions and plant production goals for each management sub-unit, and include proposed schedules and budgets in alignment with the Kuahiwi a Kai program’s priorities and objectives. Results should clearly state a cost opinion related to each proposed management area and year-over-year cost schedule.
Integrate seed collection and propagation efforts, currently underway by Kuahiwi a Kai grantees, in proposed native plant production schedules.

Include implementation recommendations at a fieldwork-level specification for:
Invasive species management such as herbicide type and concentrations, treatment methods, debris management, equipment, and recommended PPE.
Native plant revegetation including recommended species and densities for each management unit based on verifiable reference ecosystems.

Adaptive management protocols including survey methodology, schedules, and benchmarks for monitoring of implementation areas, thresholds for amended actions, and proposed and projected schedule budgets.

Community engagement – Integrate the community and its cultural history into the priority conservation activities referenced above. Potential project activities may include engaging students and/or community members in educational, hands-on internships and/or volunteer projects focused on invasive plant management, native plant restoration, ungulate monitoring, and ungulate control.