Drive past the Princeville Community Center on the right Tuesday and you will see more cars in the lot than usual, folding chairs set up near the Princeville Public Library, and a handful of neighbors walking in around five o'clock. Most residents who pass it on their way home from Foodland or the golf course have never actually gone inside on one of those evenings. They assume it is a homeowners' association meeting, or a private event, or something that requires an invitation. It is none of those things. It is free, it is open to anyone who lives on the North Shore, and it has been quietly building one of the more substantive community habits in Princeville.
The series is called Princeville Moʻolelo, a partnership between the Princeville at Hanalei Community Association Events Committee and Friends of Kauai Wildlife Refuges. Every month, the same free talk-story format brings in a scientist, a cultural practitioner, or a longtime conservation advocate to spend an hour and a half explaining something specific about the land, water, or wildlife that surrounds this neighborhood. No admission fee, no membership required, sessions held at 5 p.m. at the Community Center on Emmalani Drive, with many talks also streamed on Zoom for residents who cannot make it in person.
Why September Is Not a Random Month to Start
The timing of this fall's opening session is worth pausing on. On September 15, the speaker is the Kauaʻi Endangered Seabird Recovery Project, and the subject is seabird fallout awareness. That date is not a scheduling coincidence. September 15 is the official start of fledgling season for the ʻaʻo, the Newell's shearwater, an endangered seabird that nests nowhere else on earth except the mountains above Kauaʻi's North Shore. The season runs through December 15, with the heaviest fallout typically arriving in mid-October.
Here is what that actually means for someone living in Princeville. Young shearwaters leave their burrows in the interior mountains at night, guided by moonlight toward the ocean. Porch lights, streetlights, and resort lighting can pull them off course. Disoriented birds circle until they exhaust themselves and drop to the ground, where they become vulnerable to cars, cats, and dogs. Since 1979, the Save Our Shearwaters program has collected more than 32,000 grounded seabirds on Kauaʻi, three out of four of them Newell's shearwaters. Last October, the program released three rescued birds back to sea, part of a group of 15 rescued that single fledgling season. Jacqueline Nelson, the program's senior program manager, put the ask to residents plainly, asking people to "dim their patio or shut their lights so that the birds have a higher chance" of making it out to open water.
That is a real, current-season request, not a general environmental platitude. A homeowner in Princeville who leaves outdoor lights on through October is participating in a hazard whether they realize it or not. The September 15 talk exists specifically to close that knowledge gap before peak fallout arrives.
The Fall Lineup
| Date | Speaker or Organization | Topic |
|---|---|---|
| September 15 | Kauaʻi Endangered Seabird Recovery Project | Seabird fallout awareness, timed to the start of ʻaʻo fledgling season |
| October 13 | Susan Scott and the Hawaiʻi Audubon Society | The kōlea's annual return to Kauaʻi |
| November 17 | Linda Moriarty | Niʻihau shell tradition, book signing and moʻolelo |
October's session on the kōlea, the Pacific golden plover, tracks a different but equally real seasonal rhythm. These are the same birds that arrive from Alaska each fall to spend the winter on Kauaʻi lawns and golf courses, including the ones inside Princeville itself, before flying back north in spring. Residents who have watched the same bird return to the same patch of grass year after year are watching a migration pattern most have never had explained to them. November's talk shifts entirely, moving from wildlife science to Hawaiian material culture with a look at Niʻihau shell lei, one of the most labor-intensive and prized traditional art forms in the islands.
What Past Sessions Have Actually Covered
The range of subjects gives a sense of why this series has staying power instead of fading into another line on a community calendar. Hob Osterlund, founder of the Kauai Albatross Network, presented on the mōlī, the Laysan albatross, describing it as one of the few places on the planet where this species nests inside a human neighborhood. Thomas Daubert of Friends of Kauai Wildlife Refuges introduced her simply as "a wildlife enthusiast who knows a lot about moli, or Laysan albatross." That framing undersells it. The North Shore's mōlī colonies are a genuine rarity, and residents who have spotted the birds nesting near Princeville's cliffs and fairways are looking at something that does not happen anywhere else in the world.
Lucho Gomez of the Kauaʻi Forest Bird Recovery Project spent a session walking through the urgent conservation work underway to save Kauaʻi's native forest birds from extinction, with a particular focus on mosquito suppression methods, including Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis and Incompatible Insect Technique. Another installment brought in a community advocate who had been part of the group that worked to secure Crater Hill and Mōkōlea Point for conservation rather than development, a reminder that some of what protects the North Shore's open space happened through exactly this kind of local organizing. Jean Souza, program specialist for the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary, covered the marine heat wave nicknamed "the blob" that disrupted humpback populations in the North Pacific starting in 2015, tying a global ocean event back to whale counts residents can watch from Princeville's bluffs every winter.
Why a Neighborhood Association Is the One Running It
It would be easy to assume a series like this belongs to a museum or a university extension office. Instead it runs through the Princeville at Hanalei Community Association Events Committee, the same body that handles the neighborhood's more conventional business. That choice says something about how this particular community treats its convening power. Rather than limiting its calendar to social mixers and holiday parades, the PHCA has used its Community Center to host working scientists and cultural practitioners talking about the specific creatures and traditions tied to this stretch of coastline. Sessions are recorded and posted afterward through Friends of Kauai Wildlife Refuges for anyone who missed the live evening.
If You Want to Go
Sessions are free and open to the public, held at 5 p.m. in the Princeville Community Center at 4334 Emmalani Drive, near the Princeville Public Library. Several sessions offer a Zoom option for residents who cannot attend in person. No RSVP fee, no association membership required. The only real barrier has been awareness, which is a fixable problem for anyone who now knows what those Tuesday evening cars in the lot are actually there for.
If you are weighing a move to the North Shore, or already call Princeville home and want a clearer read on what makes this stretch of coastline distinct beyond the view from the lanai, Andrews Collection has spent decades paying attention to exactly this kind of detail. Contact us when you are ready to talk about property here, or simply to compare notes on the neighborhood you already know.
