The Merrie Monarch Festival Royal Parade wasn’t the only march Saturday in Hilo.
The Merrie Monarch Festival Royal Parade wasn’t the only march Saturday in Hilo.
The local showing of the international March For Science also took place, with participants joining in the Merrie Monarch event.
The march, one of 610 taking place around the world Saturday, when Earth Day is celebrated globally, was organized in part as a response to actions taken by President Donald Trump that include proposed cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institutes of Health.
The national March for Science website states, “We face a possible future where people not only ignore scientific evidence, but seek to eliminate it entirely. … Science should neither serve special interests nor be rejected based on personal convictions. At its core, science is a tool for seeking answers.”
Earth Day is “a great day to march for science,” said Hilo march outreach coordinator Angela Beck. The Washington, D.C., event coordinators hadn’t taken into account that Hilo might have another event that day, though.
Merrie Monarch Festival organizers were “very positive and excited about us joining the parade,” Beck said, adding that being part of the parade also was fitting given King David Kalakaua’s enthusiasm for technology and science.
“He was very forward-thinking and pro-technology,” she said. One of the science march signs featured Kalakaua’s portrait next to a light bulb: “The king brought light bulbs to ‘Iolani Palace five years before they were installed in the White House,” it read.
Beck, a Waiakea High School grad, is now a graduate student in the University of Hawaii at Hilo’s tropical conservation biology and environmental science program. She studies bioacoustics, specifically ‘i‘iwi birdsongs.
On Friday night, the group hosted a kickoff event featuring student speakers from East Hawaii middle schools and high schools as well as the local science community of teachers and researchers. More than 200 people attended.
“We figured it was already April 22 in a few places in the world, like Australia and New Zealand,” Beck said. “We also wanted to showcase the science that is happening in our local community. I think a lot of people aren’t aware that a lot of world-class research happens on this island.”
The Friday event ended with a twilight March of Lights, with attendees “lighting the way for science,” as organizers described it.
“It couldn’t have gone better,” said organizing committee chairwoman Heather Kimball.
Saturday marches statewide took place in Honolulu, Kahului on Maui and Lihue on Kauai. About 100 people were scheduled to participate in the Hilo march.
“We’ll be in solidarity with them and all the other marches happening today,” Beck said.
“Science includes everybody,” said conservation biologist and energy scientist Topaz Collins. “We do science every day … we observe, we investigate, we test hypotheses.”
Collins, who is Native Hawaiian, was born and raised on the Big Island and attended Pahoa High. A TCBES graduate, she was marching to help inspire more local people to be scientists and explore their home community.
“You don’t have to have a degree (to do science),” she said.
Residents came from around Hawaii Island, from South Point to Kailua-Kona, to participate.
Peter Tomich of Honokaa drove to Hilo to march in honor of his father, a zoologist who moved to Hawaii to work for the state Department of Health, trapping rats and mongoose.
“So, science brought us to Hawaii,” said Tomich, whose sign read “Question. Explore. Discover.”
“I’m marching in his memory, and just for staying curious about things.”