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A reprint from American Scientist the magazine of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society This reprint is provided for personal and noncommercial use. For any other use, please send a request to Permissions, American Scientist, P.O. Box 13975, Research Triangle Park, NC, 27709, U.S.A., or by electronic mail to [email protected]. ©Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society and other rightsholders Feature Articles Nature Is Dead. Long Live Nature! Our view of what constitutes the natural world has evolved and, as restorative conservation efforts on the island of Hawai’i show, must continue to do so Robert J. Cabin An idea, a relationship, can go extinct, The years since the publication of restore Hawaii’s remaining “natural” just like an animal or a plant. The idea The End of Nature have proved Mc- areas. Environmentalists can be under- in this case is “nature,” the separate Kibben’s prescient warnings about the standably impatient with people they and wild province, the world apart escalating consequences of human- perceive as slow to act on conservation from man to which he adapted, under induced climate change depressingly issues: How can they while away their whose rules he was born and died. accurate. But was his vision of the time pondering esoteric topics such as death of nature similarly prophetic— the nature of nature while our planet is —Bill McKibben or greatly exaggerated? going down the tubes? After spending Hawaii’s many paradoxes provide a more time in what often felt like the tri- n his best-selling and influential 1989 globally important microcosm in which age room of Hawaiian conservation, I I book The End of Nature, Bill McKib- to examine this question. Although it sometimes felt like shaking such people ben surveyed nature and found it dead. represents a mere 0.2 percent of the land and yelling, “Wake up and do some “By the end of nature,” he wrote, “I area of the United States, this archipela- real work before it’s too late!” do not mean the end of the world … I go contains all of Earth’s climates, most Over time, however, I became in- mean a certain set of human ideas about of its ecosystems and some of its most creasingly less sure about exactly what the world and our place in it.” For Mc- diverse human communities. Despite real work we should be doing. Which Kibben, the nail in nature’s coffin was Hawaii’s relatively low overall biologi- species and ecosystems should we human-induced climate change: “By cal diversity, three-quarters of all of the focus on, and what should we do to changing the weather, we make every bird and plant extinctions in the United them? Why do so many seemingly like- spot on the earth man-made and artifi- States have occurred there, and the is- minded people within the conservation cial.” His pronouncements were boldly lands now contain more endangered and scientific communities often dis- stated, but they reflected the conclusions species per square mile than anywhere agree with each other so passionately? of many ecological thinkers at the time. else in the world. Of the 59 endangered The evolution of my thinking is well ex- species listed by the Obama administra- pressed by the environmental historian tion in the past two years, 48 have been William Cronon, who edited the 1996 Robert J. Cabin is a professor of ecology and en- Hawaiian plants and birds. book Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the vironmental science at Brevard College. He lived I first landed in Hawaii in 1996 on a Human Place in Nature. In the book’s and worked in Hawaii for five years, first as a post- postdoctoral fellowship at the National doctoral fellow at the National Tropical Botanical introduction, he astutely observed: Garden and then as a research ecologist for the U. S. Tropical Botanical Garden on the island Forest Service. His professional interests include of Kauai. Throughout this fellowship, At a time when threats to the envi- ecology, environmental science and conservation and later as a research ecologist for the ronment have never been greater, biology. He is also actively involved in promoting U. S. Forest Service, I was immersed in it may be tempting to believe that more sustainable practices—especially carbon re- the scientific and conservation commu- people need to be mounting the duction strategies—within and beyond the greater nities’ efforts to better understand and barricades rather than asking ab- Brevard College community. He blogs about envi- conserve the islands’ remaining native stract questions about the human ronmental issues for the Huffington Post, and is species and ecosystems. My ideas about place in nature. Yet without con- the author of Intelligent Tinkering: Bridging the nature and conservation were irrevoca- fronting such questions, it will be Gap Between Science and Practice (Island Press, bly changed as I transitioned to doing hard to know which barricades to 2011) and Restoring Paradise: Rethinking and Rebuilding Nature in Hawaii, forthcoming in more applied research. That work led mount, and harder still to persuade summer 2013 from the University of Hawaii Press. me to interact and collaborate with the large numbers of people to mount Address: 1 Brevard College Drive, Brevard, NC numerous stakeholders involved in our them with us. To protect the nature 28712. E-mail: [email protected] on-the-ground efforts to preserve and that is all around us, we must think 30 American Scientist, Volume 101 © 2013 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction with permission only. Contact [email protected]. Figure 1. The nen¯ e¯ (Branta sandvicensis, or Hawaiian goose) has the distinction of being the world’s rarest goose. One of several species that evolved from the Canada goose after it migrated to the Hawaiian Islands around 500,000 years ago, the nen¯ e¯ is the archipelago’s only remaining native goose species. In 1951, its number in the wild was estimated at fewer than 30. Intensive captive breeding and release programs have helped wild popula- tions to grow, and they now total around 2,000 individuals. Still, without intensive human assistance, the geese decline in number because of their reduced genetic diversity, their vulnerability to exotic predators and the degradation of their habitats. And where they thrive, the birds are beginning to test the limits of human spaces: Hawaii’s Department of Transportation is engaged in efforts to move the geese away from the Kauai airport’s run- ways. The plight of the nen¯ e¯ illustrates some of the complex questions that attend conservation and restoration efforts in Hawaii. Above, nen¯ e¯ walk across a golf course, their legs banded for monitoring. (Photograph courtesy of Dan Culver/Wikimedia Commons.) long and hard about the nature we colonized them on their own. The ef- “natural disasters” such as volcanic carry inside our heads. fects of these human interactions with eruptions and tsunamis caused enor- the Hawaiian landscape continue to mous physical and biological changes Our mental images of the “real na- create puzzles for conservationists and throughout this period. The arrival of ture” of a particular place are creat- environmental philosophers alike. some new species also drastically al- ed in part by our knowledge of and tered the islands’ ecology and caused perspective on that area’s history. The A Tangled Web the extinction of species that had ar- Hawaiian archipelago’s vast prehu- Today, some see Hawaii’s prehuman rived before that time. man history ended and its prehistoric era as the epitome of McKibben’s idea If we consider the early Polynesians period began when Polynesian sail- of a pure, “uncontaminated” nature. as being separate from nature, it follows ors first reached the islands around Those with a Romantic bent may pic- that they were the first nonnative spe- 1,000 years ago. Hawaii’s modern era ture this time as a golden age in which cies to reach Hawaii. Consequently, if abruptly began when Captain James a rainbow of delicate species and pris- our goal is to restore these islands to Cook accidentally “discovered” the is- tine ecosystems coexisted harmonious- their natural condition, we should strive lands in 1778. Like the Polynesians be- ly in a perpetual Eden. Modern ecolo- to erase as much of these humans’ foot- fore him, Cook and his successors de- gists, by contrast, view the prehuman print as possible. But if we view these liberately and unintentionally brought world of Hawaii and everywhere else people as being as natural as the species many new species to these remote is- as being neither harmonious nor un- that colonized the islands before them, lands—species that never could have changing. For instance, we know that trying to erase their presence would www.americanscientist.org © 2013 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction 2013 January–February 31 with permission only. Contact [email protected]. based on their present ecological effects, of new lava cooled and weathered, it that some of the species brought to the is- was slowly colonized by the species in lands by prehistoric and modern peoples the adjacent forests. The result of thou- are natural, and others are unnatural and sands of years of this dynamic cycle should be removed. However, if we rig- was a mosaic of forests of different idly employed this model, we would at ages, with different species assemblag- least occasionally find ourselves in the es growing sometimes side by side. awkward position of eradicating some Tragically, more than 90 percent of beloved and long-established Polyne- Hawaii’s original dry forests have been sian species while preserving others that destroyed, and many of their most eco- recently arrived from ecologically and logically important species and pro- culturally distant places such as Europe cesses are actually or functionally ex- and South America.