Statewide County HI Archives News.....Wiki Mo'olelo Part 15 . November 13, 2008 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.org/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.org/hi/hifiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Darlene E. Kelley donkeyskid@msn.com November 16, 2008, 8:54 am Keepers Of The Culture, A Study In Time Of The Hawaiian Islands November 13, 2008 Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley donkeyskid@msn.com November 13, 2008 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Historical Collections of Hawaii Keepers of the Culture A Study in Time, of the Hawai'ian Islands Wiki Mo'olelo - Part 15. by Darlene E. Kelley +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Part 15 Wiki Mo'olelo Natures Balance in Hawai'i There are a few interesting facts about the plants and animals of the Hawai'ian Islands which evryone should know and understand. These facts explain the "why" of many things that are puzzling. It is not necessry to learn a lot of long tongue twisting names as names are only handles for objects by which we can pick them up, unless we intend to do a lot of " picking up, " it is quite a waste of effort to learn a lot of names. But we should have some understanding of the general ideas and relationships which explain so much about the plant and animal life of the islands. There are three words which are used by scientists to indicate the relationship of a plant or animal to the region. These are 1- endemic which means that kind of organism is found in that region and nowhere else. 2. -indigenous -- means that it is at home in the region, but got there naturally from somewhere else. 3. -introduced -- which means that it got to the region accidentally or on purpose, directly or indirectly, through the help of man. The distinction between the three sometimes are a little hard to determine. For instance, if a seed reached Hawai'i floating on a log, and the seed is cast up on the beach and sprouts, you would have to call the plant indigenous; certainly its descendants would be. But if the seed arrived in a packing case, on a ship, even if the man who owned the case did not know it was there, the resulting plant would be called introduced. However, the general distinction between these three terms is plain. A surprisingly large percentage of the plants and animals which occurred in the Sandwich islands before the coming of man are found nowhere else in the world. We say," before the coming of man " because man has accidntly or intentionally brought into the islands a great many foreign plants, birds, insects, domestic animals, and other forms of life, which would probably not otherwise have found their way there. There are about 2500 different kinds of flowering plants known in the islands and 1500 of them have been introduced, either accidntally or on purpose, through the angency of man. This leaves 1000 of them which are native. Of these approximately 900 are endemic and 100 indigenous. In round numbers, 90 percent of the native plants are endemic , or found in no other place of the world. There are about 150 species of birds which have been recorded as living in the islands. About 40 of these should be calssified as introduced. Of the remaining 110 species, some 88 are endemic and some of the 22 are migratory birds which fly down from the far north, so tat again we can say that between 80 and 90 percent of the native birds are endemic. The same proportions is found for the famous Hawai'ian land snails, and for various other forms of life in the islands, but these few examples should be enough to indicate that the fana and flora of Hawai'i are very specialized, with a high percentage of the species which were not brought in quite recent times in men's shipping found nowhere in the world except in the Hawai'ian islands. Another interesting thing about Hawai'i's animal and plant life is the fact that most of the serious insects and pests are not native insects, but introdced species. This might be expected in the case of cultivated crops nearly all of whch were introduced. But it is also equally true for the native plants of the forest, whose chief insect enemies are introduced epecies. The native insects seem to do little or no damage, Consider just one of many examples of this; there are about 150 different species of leafhoppers, which are native to the islands, and are found in the mountain forests. Not one of these does any particular damage to the plants with which it associates. But three species of introduced leafhoppers cause immense damage to the sugar cane, one to corn, and one ( the torpedo bug ) to both ornimantal and forest trees. If we ask why the native birds are so rare, we are again led back to the reason underlying the effect of native and introduced insects. We hear it said that the birds are scarce because the Hawai'ian feather gatherers; because the mynah birds have driven them away;; because they have been klled by the mongoose. Thousands of birds must have been snared, and, no doubt, a few were killed by the men who were employed as professional feather gatherers. Still this is not the reason why native birds of the forest became extinct. The feather gatherers commonly captured only three knds of birds, the mamo, the oo, and the iiwei. Of these, the one which was most generally killed, the iiwi, is one of the few native forest birds which is at all common in the forests today. The mynah is a pugnacious, quarrelsome fellow, but one can hardly blame him for the extinction of birds in the dense forest where he seldom goes if ever. It is true that the mongoose has been the downfall of several kinds of ground nesting birds. But the forest birds on Kauai, where there is no mngoose, are little better off then those on other islands. The underlying reasons for all these conditions are the same; Nature's balance in Hawai'i has been upset. This story is a long and somewhat complicated one and it is fundimental in the study of Hawaiian natural history that one can try to understand what this balance is of nature. and why it has been upset. Hawai'i isolation The Hawaiian islands are the summits of a great range of volcanic mountains which rises 18,000 feet above the floor of the ocean in order to reach the surface of the sea. Were the water be removed, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa would be found to be the highest mountains in the world, nearly 32,000 feet high, with a continuous slope. This chain of islands is separated from other masses of land by broad stretches of deep ocean. It is over 2000 miles to North America; over 4000 miles to japan and the Philipines. To the south are only small scattered islands, the nearest of which are 900 miles away. The Hawaiian islands are among the mst isolated areas in the world. Having been built up by successive outpourings of lava, flow upon flow, these islands were not always covered with plants and animals. the plants and animals which are native to these islands today are the decendeants of others which found their way sometime in the past. Some people think that they came by floating on the ocean, blown by the wind or associated with flying birds or floating logs. Other people think that the islands were once connected with the other island groups, or perhaps the mailand, by areas or ridges of land, which they cal " land bridges," along which the plants and animals spread. We do not know which explanation is true, for it is hard to see how some of our palnts and animals could have gotten here by wind, sea logs. or birds; and on the other hand, the islands are surrounded by great stretches of very deep water , giving no hint of former land bridges. Natures Balance and How it was Established in Hawaii. In any event, the palnts and animals came slowly, over a long periods of time. Thsse which could not get along with the others either perished or were forced to become modified so that they could get along. Thus, the native plants and animals reachd a state of harmony with each other and teir environment; which we call a balance of nature. If aninsect arrived in the islads which was a serious pest of some plant, one of two things happened; either the plant became killed off until it no longer served to support the insect, which in turn, through the loss of food, becme reduced in numbers until it no longer destroyed all the plants of that kind, and a balance was formed; or else the insect was preyed upon or parasited by another insect, which kept it under control. Thus, by strife, all lived in a seeming harmony; and in the native forest, as well as elsewhere, there was established a balance of nature. As the ancestors of the present plants and animals arrived,they gradually became spread throughout the different islands and became isolated from each other, even as they were isolated from their original homeland. Hawaii is noted for its great range of enviromental conditions. Within a few miles one can find rainfall varying from amost none at all to huge quantities. As one goes up Manoa Valley from Moiliili to Konahunui the rainfall increases from 25 inches or so to 150 inches a year. The greatest range within a limited area is found on Kauai, where Waialeale has a rainfall of about 500 inches a year, and a few miles away, Mana has only dozen inches. Thus, plants and animals, isolated in different enviroments, tended to become different; and in the course of thousands of years they formed new species, different from their ancestors. Many of the ancestral species may have died off, because they were not too well suited to their enviroment. This would account for the great number of endemic forms, found nowhere else in the world. Although the forests were formally much more extensive than they are today, they probably did not cover all of the islands. There were dry and lava covered areas where forests could not grow. The physical environment played a very large part in nature's balance. But the fresh lava flows gradually weathered, and on them a succession of plants followed one another. Lichens, mosses, grasses, hardy shrubs, and tree ferns, lehua trees, vines, and undergrowth, gradulaly turned porous rock into fertile soil, in which luxurainat rainforests could grow. But at every stage there was harmony. The ferns, mosses, and undergrowth caught and conserved the moisture about the bases of the trees. The trees in turn shaded and protected the moisture loving undergrowth The insects were not destructive, but lived in happy, though seemingly harsh, association with the plants. The native birds ate the insects or sipped the nectar from the flwers. Excess was soon put down by its very excessiveness; that is , by keen , but harmonious, competition. There was balance in nature. How This Balance Was Upset. Then came influences which upset this balance. For instance, there were the Polynesian with his gardens, his foreign plants, his pigs, and his dogs, and later his greed which led to the gathering of sandalwood for the foreigner. There was the haole, with his cattles, sheep, goats, cultivation, roads and trails, along with the spread of the foreign weeds and insects which came with his shipping. The cattle, first introduced by Captain Vancouver in 1792, oon rn wild in the forest. Goats, a present from Captain Cook, may have been the progenitors of those which we have to kill off today to keep them from making all our mountains as barren as Kahoolawe. These and other introduced animals trampled down the protecting.undergrowth. Strange plants, inharmonious to these surroundings, such as the ulahi fern, and foreign grasses, took the place of the undergrowth which died off ad prevented the native trees and shrubs from propagating themselves. As the vegetation went, so went the insects, the land shells, and the birds. Our old men of Hawaii in their youth gathered land shells from sturdy trees where only grassland and pineapple fields are found today. The extinction of the birds may not have been wholly due to the dying back of the forests, but both were victims of the advance of " civilization," the upsetting of natures balance. It has been pointed out that many birds died off on Lanai at a time when, and in a region where, the forests were not dying back. It is believed the cause was some kind of bird disease, introduced by foreign birds and poultry. Eventhis was an upsetting of nature's balance. The arrival of the mongoose might also be considered. Domestic cats and other animals that have gone wild are also terribly destructive of birds. So know we are able to partlly understand most of the curious and iteresting facts about the plant and animal life of these islands by knowldge of nature's balece and its upset in Hawaii. Today, many of the earliest islands in Hawaii are under a protection act, in which the government have laid strict laws. It is hoped that one day Nature will be able to correct this unbalance in these beautiful islands and let nature do its balancing the way it was intended. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Next - part 16. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.org/hi/statewide/newspapers/wikimool97nnw.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/hifiles/ File size: 13.4 Kb