We destroyed Eden

In his book, The Future Eaters, Tim Flannery describes how a British ship  came to a remote and small island in the Pacific.
The year was 1788 and the Island that now is called Lord Howe Island had probably been without visitors before.

There the animals and the birds were so unafraid of the newcomers.
They could knock down big birds, as special kind of doves.
Thomas Gilbert who visited the island the same year writes:

        Partridges are likewise in a geat plenty... several of those I knocked down, and 
        their legs being broken. I placed them near me as I sat under a tree. 
       The pain they suffered caused them to make a doleful cry, which brought five 
       or six dozen of the same kind of them, and by that I was able to take nearly 
       the whole of them

Now only six of the original 15 endemic birds have survived.
Black rats from the ships did their job too...

As there are no big top predictors in the small island around, the birds had become so tame so you easily could touch them.

Another of the first visitors describes:

           When I was in the wood amongst other birds I could not help picture myself 
            the Golden Age pictured by Ovid.

Tim Flannery point is that is what happen to most places that man came to.
of course even the first aborigines and maoris killed birds for food .

At New Zealand the Giant Moa was eradicated at the 1600-century.
                                       
reconstruction


But there were eight other species of Moa-birds, all without wings, but all were extinct before the Europeans came to New Zealand.

It's comparable to what happened to the Mastodons int North America who were hunted by prehistoric Indian culture.

So the "noble savages" have probably never been there.

But the noble birds have!

Lets see how long the big cassowary will survive in nature, for instance in Australia. They are endangered but can anyway defend themselves with the toenails...





Good news though, are that  70% of Lord Howe Islands, nowadays is a National Park.
So a bit of Eden i still there...


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