Where Are The Monkeys and How Come The Reef Doesn’t Look Like It Does In Florida?

Allow me to share a couple of anecdotes with you.

A few years ago I was leading a hiking trip through Kipahulu Valley in Haleakala National Park. Because my personal goal is to teach as clearly and enthusiastically as possible the nuances of the beautiful disaster that is the current state of Hawaiian ecology, I was going to great lengths to point out native stream gobies (that use their fused pectoral fins as suction cups to climb waterfalls) and ruby-red damselflies. I was talking up the finer points of bird’s nest ferns in ohia trees and waxing rhapsodic about carnivorous caterpillars. My group seemed engaged, and I was beginning to believe that they were getting a feel for unique endemic flora and fauna. That’s when a couple turned to me and wanted to know where the monkeys were.

Add to that the people who asked me why there were no koala bears in our introduced eucalyptus trees (that one left me scratching my head—do they believe koalas bud off of the trees automatically?) and the ones who wanted to know why we spray-paint the rare endemic silversword plants on the summit of the volcano, and you get an idea of the general confusion out there.

What I’d like to address in the next couple of blogs can be thought of in this way: First the bad news, then the good news. Because Hawaii, you see, has two concurrent ecological conditions. Above water we’ve got chaos, though it’s a very visually appealing chaos. Below the waterline we’ve got relative stasis, a world that looks much like it did the day before the first Polynesians sighed with relief as their canoes nudged the shore with a soft crunch.

Let’s begin.

Where are the monkeys, indeed? You could just as readily ask where the jaguars are, or the komodo dragons, or the spiny anteaters. If humans ate monkeys (generally) or knew how to use them to pull loads, carry burdens or give milk, or if humans liked to put monkeys on leashes and trot them around on a day at the beach, well, then the monkeys would have been here a long time ago. The fact is that humans brought to these islands only those animals that they had a use for. Pigs and small dogs were first, with Polynesian settlers. A couple of thousand years later the British and French dropped off some cattle and goats, and before you could say “mongoose” the islands were dripping with cats and goats, sheep and deer, horses and, in the case of Oahu, wallabies.

Here’s an easy way to remember what, on land, is a native creature and which is not. If it’s got 4 legs, or no legs, we humans carted it over here. When those weary and joyous Polynesians clambered out of their voyaging canoes about two thousand years ago, the only animals in this archipelago were birds (2 legs), insects (6) and spiders (8). Those settlers carted dogs and pigs here (and chickens) and probably brought geckos along in the canoes. Debate rages over whether rats were along for the ride or not. They also brought over 30 plants for food, medicine and fiber. One thing you can say about this first biological boatload: everything was meant to be useful. On 50-foot ocean voyaging canoes there’s generally not a lot of room for pretty plants that smell good, or animals you’ll never eat, or monkeys. Imagine how annoying the monkeys would have been, had there been monkeys in Polynesia to bring along in the first place.

As for snakes, don’t let anyone tell you that there aren’t any here. Very small blind snakes were accidentally imported here from the Philippines in potting soil or in the soil of potted ornamental plants. They’re about the size of a small earthworm, and black, and they spend their whole lives rummaging around in the soil eating tiny things. Unless you garden on the wetter side of the island you will never see them.

Potting soil and potted plants. Ornamental beauties and handsome songbirds to sit in them and sing—when you arrive in Hawaii you arrive in a seething melting pot of introduced species. Nearly nothing you will see, hear or smell below about 4,000 ft. in elevation was there 250 years ago. There are few showy native flowers, so those have been brought in to decorate yards and hotel grounds. The forest birds that were here have by and large succumbed to loss of native habitat and the introduction of diseases carried by birds introduced from Europe, Asia and the Americas by bird aficionados. Little by little and sometimes a lot by a lot, introduced plants, birds, hitch-hiking insects and other newcomers have been spreading and mixing. This invasive and unbalanced bio-creep is relentlessly upslope and into the last refuges of native plants, insects and birds. On Maui, it’s not until you pay your entrance fee to Haleakala National Park at 7,000 ft, that you really begin to experience a mostly-native ecosystem.

Hawaii is not called the extinction capital of the United States for no reason, my friend.

What’s the big dealio, you ask? Think of it this way: the ever-encroaching swath of Mixed Everything From Everywhere displaces, and usually completely out-competes, organisms that are found nowhere else on earth. If you think of ecological diversity as the planetary immune system, then you realize that for every species lost we lose a little bit more of the resiliency that the overall ecological system (of which you are a part, by the way) needs to rebound and recover from such planetary sicknesses as overpollution, thoughtless and short-sighted development, and industrial accidents. How compromised do you want your own immune system to be? As it turns out, and until you move to Planet Other, this IS your immune system. Just try living without the earth for a while—you’ll get really thirsty.

If you want to meet some of the organisms that called Hawaii home over the vast millennia B. U. (Before Us), trot on down to the Maui Nui Botanical Garden for a lesson in native fauna:

Hours of operation: Monday through Saturday 8:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Telephone: (808) 249-2798
Facsimile: (808) 249-0325 (8:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. Hawai`i Standard Time)
Email: mnbg@maui.net
Address:150 Kanaloa Ave. Kahului, HI 96732

If you live here or plan to stay a while, try contacting the amaaaaaazing folks who are doing work to restore the native dryland forest up on the slopes of Haleakala—the Maui Restoration Group. They host once a month trips on Saturdays to an upland area called Auwahi to plant good plants, remove bad plants, and give the whole situation some long-overdue love. Find Art and Erica at:

auwahi@yahoo.com www.lhwrp.org

See you next blog, when we look under the water at the reef and have a little talk about the good guys and the bad guys, and what you can do to support the former.

A hui hou.

J*