Lesson of the Islands

malnland. T he evolution as well as the extinction of species are charted in the world’s fossil deposits. Mass extinctions, such as the decline of dinosaurs, have generated endless speculation about their causes. But there is nothing mysterious about the wave of extinctions now facing us. This global "biodiversity crisis" is either directly or indirectly attributable to the activities of people, and is rightly the subject of much concern. It may ultimately affect the capacity of the planet to support our descendants. A less well-known wave of extinctions has already cut a swath through the biological diversity of island archipelagos. Like the present crisis, the island extinctions were triggered by the activities of people. Their effects have wide geographical and temporal spread: over millennia in islands of the Mediterranean and Hawaii, over centuries in the Galapagos and New Zealand. Destruction of the New Zealand bird fauna is so comprehensive, the ornithologist Professor Jared Diamond once declared that New Zealand no longer has a bird fauna--just the wreckage of one. In this article, we report on how this ongoing slide towards biological impoverishment is being turned around in New Zealand. We will do this by describing: