After careful consideration, the Hawaiʻi Conservation Alliance and Foundation have decided to host this year’s Hawaiʻi Conservation Conference as a virtual event. This decision was made primarily to exercise an abundance of caution in consideration of the uncertainty around the impacts and threats of the COVID-19 virus.
The 2020 Ola Ka ʻĀina Momona: Managing for Abundance Conference was originally planned to hosted jointly by the Hawaiʻi Conservation Alliance and the Society for Conservation Biology Oceania (SCBO). As previously advised, we determined that an international conference will not be feasible this year, and will instead work on a joint conference for the Pacific conservation community in 2021.
Although the conference will now be hosted solely by HCA, SCBO members are welcomed to participate in this virtual gathering. HCA hope to release a revised registration fee schedule along with virtual platform details in early May. For presenters, your abstracts will still be evaluated against the original call for proposals and they will share information about the software platform when they send acceptance notifications.
Hosting a virtual conference presents challenges, but also great opportunities to innovate and develop technologies and procedures that will facilitate lower-carbon networking into the future. We wish HCA the best of luck! If anyone has any experience with virtual conferences, they would greatly appreciate any insight. You can reach the team at: conference@hawaiiconservation.org.
For further updates, please follow the Hawaiʻi Conservation Alliance Conference Page.