Going native
– or are we?
We just got back from a few days in Hawaii. Once again, it was
just what the postcards promise: palm trees, beaches, tradewinds,
balmy nights
– no shirt, no shoes, no problem.
We lived in a flat surrounded by an acre or so of grounds.
Birdsong filled the air, much of it familiar. House sparrows
chirped. Mynahs screeched and chattered. Northern and Brazilian
cardinals flitted around the shrubbery. One day at the beach, a
magnificent frigatebird circled high overhead.
Going native – or are we?
We just got back from a few days in Hawaii. Once again, it was just what the postcards promise: palm trees, beaches, tradewinds, balmy nights – no shirt, no shoes, no problem.
We lived in a flat surrounded by an acre or so of grounds. Birdsong filled the air, much of it familiar. House sparrows chirped. Mynahs screeched and chattered. Northern and Brazilian cardinals flitted around the shrubbery. One day at the beach, a magnificent frigatebird circled high overhead.
Of all the birds mentioned, the only one native to those mid-Pacific islands is the frigatebird. The house sparrows are European, mynahs Asian and the cardinals from the Americas. The only non-domesticated mammals we saw were mongoose, again, travelers themselves.
But the whole experience has had me thinking again about what exactly makes a native.
Even the word “nativity” has come to have a much larger meaning than the place and time of one’s birth – at least among Christian peoples.
But what is a native? The Hawaiian Islands are a great place to ponder that question, because as a relatively young archipelago, the islands were home only to what flew, drifted or floated there until the arrival of Europeans just a few hundred years ago.
Those palm trees? Many authorities aver that they arrived with the first Polynesian voyagers. Imagine: paradise without palms.
In our own landscape, pitched battles are waged among plant and animal people over what is/is not native.
The blue gum eucalyptus that dots our landscape is poster species for non-native problem children. The trees have shallow roots, and are prone to toppling in high winds. They displace native plants, since their litter is toxic to them. And that litter? Couple a thick layer of dried bark and leaves with the trees’ high oil content and you have an inferno on the hoof. The native birds that feed on the trees can suffocate under a thick layer of gooey sap.
But I’ll confess to liking these Australian interlopers. I like the sound of their leaves rustling, the sharp scent of them, their bark that begs to be touched.
Wild turkeys are a much less controversial non-native. Some years ago, a pitched discussion occurred among ornithologists, since there’s fossil evidence of wild turkeys in California. But it’s irrefutable that the birds strutting around rural fields today are the descendants of introduced populations. Ditto wild pigs.
Humankind itself isn’t native to North America, if you draw the native/non-native line back far enough. Some paleontologists and anthropologists link the extinction of a host of mega-fauna like the giant sloth to the arrival of humans and their hunting abilities on the continent.
It’s a conundrum similar to that of a historian who is assigned to bring a place back to what it was. Take Mission San Juan Bautista: what year does one pick? The mission began in tents, developed into a fort. A belfry was added – and removed. The place evolved. What plants would be selected for its gardens? Only varieties available when the mission was established in 1797? When the mission was secularized in the early 19th Century?
It’s a question that invites few conclusions, but one that’s fun to ponder. As soon as I come up with a definitive answer, I’ll let you know.
