Photographer, naturalist Nate Yuen found dead at cliff bottom

Members of Hawaii’s conservation, hiking and Native Hawaiian communities and others are mourning the death of photographer and naturalist Nate Yuen, whose body was found Tuesday morning roughly 100 feet below a cliff off the Waimano Ridge Trail in Pearl City.

Roughly 150 to 200 people showed up Tuesday morning to search for Yuen, missing since Sunday, a friend said. Some arrived at 1 a.m. after word got out that his car was discovered at the top of Waimano Home Road near the trailhead.

The 61-year-old accountant cultivated an appreciation in others for rare native Hawaiian plants and animals through leading hikes in the forest and through his beautiful photography on social media and in environmental newsletters.

“Huge loss for conservation,” said Joby Rohrer, operations manager for the Army’s Natural Resources Program on Oahu. “He wasn’t a conservation professional, but he was a great advocate and such an enthusiast. He loved the plants. He loved the snails. He loved the insects.”

Yuen created an effective bridge from a nonscientific, nonacademic view to the general public, he said. He was “down to earth and passionate about the resources, and it’s clearly infectious.”

He was out every weekend and would take anyone who wanted to hike with him, mentoring others about Hawaii’s biodiversity, and put an incredible amount of effort into capturing photos and “pushing it out to the general public, showing the public how important conservation and native resources are,” Rohrer said.

“He was an expert at what he knew. … He was truly a naturalist — to study and to understand the rarity and the peril that our resources face.”

Francis “J” Joy, who was mentored by Yuen, said before he began hiking with Yuen 15 or 16 years ago, he knew nothing about native plants. “Now I’m a horticulturist and I work in conservation helping to protect all the things he helped me learn about.”

Joy, also a collection technician for the Bishop Museum’s herbarium, uses his photography knowledge gained from Yuen to maintain the museum’s photos.

Yuen “was a major proponent of all things Hawaiian — culture, Hawaiian flora and fauna, aina, water, the ocean, Hawaiian political rights,” said Joy, a Native Hawaiian.

While not a Native Hawaiian himself, Yuen’s “love for Hawaiian culture far exceeds some who have Native Hawaiian blood.”

He was “a pure, positive person, always smiling, always optimistic,” Joy said. “He is a role model of how you should be, how you should conduct yourself. He was all love.”

Yuen also supported efforts to protect equal rights for all, including LGBTQ, women’s and workers’ rights.

The labor union Unite Here Local 5 on its Facebook page posted photos of Yuen standing with hotel workers in Waikiki during a strike.

Yuen, an at-large member of the Sierra Club Hawaii’s leadership board, had joined decades ago.

He was on the front lines of its efforts to shed light on the fuel-contaminated water system at Red Hill, said Kau‘i Pratt-Aquino, chair of the board, who called Yuen a “gentle warrior.”

“He was a protector of Earth and people,” she said. “His advocacy demonstrated that. He was fierce in his advocacy, never letting up.”

A longtime Hawaiian Trail and Mountain Corp. member, Yuen “managed to get beautiful photos of turtles and happy-face spiders that you just don’t normally see, and he really captured the real spirit of Hawaii,” said fellow member and friend Grant Oka.

The Honolulu Fire Department got a call at 6:31 a.m. Tuesday for the missing man and launched a ground and air search.

Friends and family put out the word on social media that Yuen was missing, and on Tuesday morning announced a call for search volunteers.

A volunteer search party found his body and notified HFD, which airlifted his body to a nearby landing zone where Emergency Medical Services assisted in the death pronouncement at 11:20 a.m., saying the body was found about 100 feet down a cliff.

“It’s just so shocking,” said Jane Beachy, a conservation manager. “He was an experienced hiker. … It emphasizes how we need to be careful and how we need to have a buddy” while hiking.