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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Hawai'i flora/fauna

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  • From: John Schinnerer <eco_living@yahoo.com>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Hawai'i flora/fauna
  • Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 23:08:05 -0700 (PDT)

Hi Kirby,

Thanks for forwarding my loosely structured case study... :-)

> What are some of the principle animals for helping maintain Hawaii's
> flora?

The short version of the rest of this post is that maintaining
Hawai'i's flora *before* humans arrived was enabled by the *absence* of
most animals other than birds, bats and insects. That is, what flora
got there and survived did so with the help of mostly birds, bats and
insects and has since been in many cases decimated by human-introduced
critters - or just plain human critters...

Humans mostly still are, and probably always were, the principal
animals influencing the flora, ever since there's been any humans
there. All other critters that have messed with the pre-human flora
significantly were brought by humans.

The place is a case study in doing absolutely every stupid human trick
in the book to make a mess, as well as in some of the best (way
pre-Mollison/Holmgren ;-) human "permaculture" systems created.

Hawai'i is what's called "disharmonic" biota-wise. Everything that got
there had to cross 2000+ miles of ocean somehow. So many plant and
animal groups from surrounding continenal source areas are just not
there at all. Historically, amphibians and mammals were essentially
absent.

What got there most easily was birds, bats, large insects. Large
floating seeds too (the mamane, for example, but *not* coconuts and
mangroves - they were introduced...).

So, no megafauna (or even medium- or minifauna if you mean mammals) at
all prior to humans bringing 'em (Polynesians brought pigs and rats
along in their voyaging canoes - sheep, goats and cattle, as well as
different kinds of rats, came with haole
visitors/colonizers/conquerors).

What was (and in some cases still is) there: A variety of (now mostly
rare and endangered or extinct) native birds, most evolved into various
interesting niches. They're not doing well - tough to survive human
activity and human-introduced predators (ranging from rats and mongeese
that eat bird eggs on down to mosquitoes which carry avian malaria that
native birds have little or no resistance to, along with food and
habitat loss to more aggressive alien species such as common
cardinals). Some birds are small types (finch family) feeding on
nectars and insects; there's a native hawk, the 'Io, and an endemic
goose, the Nene, both endangered I believe, or at least 'threatened'.
Lots and lots and lots of spectacular insects - I'm not real up on that
aspect, though I do know there are 'albino' moths (and their larvae),
spiders and crickets that live in utter darkness in lava tubes, and of
course the happy-face spider. Tree snails too.

Best short and sweet bunch of articles on Hawai'i flora/fauna
(including marine) I know of is the 'Biotic Environment' section of the
"Atlas of Hawai'i," 3rd edition, 1998 Univ. of Hawai'i Press, ISBN
0-8248-2125-4 (also covers physical, cultural, social elements, has
reference maps in each of these areas, etc.). Find my name and win a
prize... :-)


=====
John Schinnerer, MA
-------------------------
- Eco-Living -
Cultural & Ecological Designing
People - Place - Learning - Integration
john@eco-living.net
http://eco-living.net

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