Bertarelli Summer2024 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 12
to manage that resource for today and for tomorrow.
The traditional leaders of Ant and a lot of Pohnpei
had taken proactive efforts to sustain and manage the
natural resources underwater, and that management
went from land to sea.
This experience got me really thinking about the
human relationship with underwater resources. We’re,
by and large, a terrestrial species. We live on land most
of the time, and I started to think more about the
human legacy of our relationship with the ocean. The
human relationship has traditionally been one of land
to sea management.
For example, the Hawaiian ahupua9a model takes a
holistic, progressive approach to environmental management that sees the sea and land as connected. And
it’s not just in the Hawaiian islands. In Tahiti, we talk
about rhui, which are protected areas for conservation and preservation of resources. And in Fiji and the
Solomon Islands, there are analogous patterns of land
to sea management. Think about the actions taken
upslope influencing what happens downslope. And
these systems aren’t as simple or linear as “don’t farm
too much near a river, otherwise, soil will come into
the river.” They are dynamic and responsive. When
the Hawaiian population reached a maximum around
1400 A.D., at about a quarter-million people, there
was some decimation happening to the natural marine
resources. The population responded and updated
some of their harvesting schemes and their food production schemes. And we can see in the archaeological
evidence that the marine environment got healthier
again. It was dynamic “ridge to reef ” management—a
holistic form of environmental stewardship that takes
the land and the sea together.
Invasive species have a huge impact on terrestrial
ecosystems—but they also affect ocean ones. This
is not news to anyone who knows islands to think
that the foraging and burrowing of invasive pigs, the
predatory activities of invasive rodents, or the grazing
activities of invasive ungulates could have a dramatic
impact on the terrestrial ecosystem. And those have
knock-on implications, from vegetation to the animals, including important connector species like seabirds, sea turtles, and some of our marine pinnipeds.
10
F R ANTI S EK H OJ DYS Z / S H UT TER STO CK
SHARK! Large predators like sharks are a sign of a healthy coral reef.
