Over The Horizon

Global Lessons from Easter Island

The stone statues of Easter Island provide a timely warning of the dangers of environmental mismanagement, according to research by Massey University geography professor John Flenley.

Enthusiastic statue builders effectively deforested their small island to erect the enigmatic figures. Environmental devastation, famine and war were the result, and Flenley sees this as a chilling story with international implications.

Core samples show that the now treeless island was once covered in lush rain forest. Some 350 years after the arrival of the first Polynesian settlers, changes in pollen count and types show that the forest had begun to decline. The settlers also brought the Polynesian rat with them. Fossilised palm nuts bear the toothmarks of the rodent, suggesting a role in limiting forest regeneration.

Part of the deforestation was a result of the statue building, with large logs and rollers needed to move the 80-ton objects. The bulk of the island's 600 or so statues were erected from 1100 to 1680.

"There must have been a phase where the island was so productive, people had spare time on their hands and could do these sorts of things," says Flenley.

At one stage, 20,000 people were living on the 170-square-kilometre island. The deforestation, loss of soil fertility and loss of transport saw famine and warfare break out, reducing islander numbers sharply after the 1500s. In the 1800s, European diseases and Peruvian slave traders saw only a little more than 100 people left on the island. The current population has climbed to just over 2,000.

Ironically, the loss of trees condemned the islanders to remain on the increasingly barren island.

"The forest was also their means of transport," explains Flenley. A visit by Captain James Cook in the 1700s recorded that the local canoes were small and unsuitable for deep sea work, limiting the islanders' marine food supply. Flenley sees global parallels in the Easter Island experience.

"I suspect you could find the Easter Island story in other places," he maintains, citing similar problems in early Iceland and, currently, in Haiti. The impact of dwindling resources closely follows the global predictions of the Club of Rome model, which forecasts major famine and war as the Earth's population increases and resources decrease.

The story has also gained interest from Hollywood, with a Kevin Costner film currently under production on the island. Accuracy has apparently prevailed over romanticism -- an ending based on the now-discredited "long ears versus short ears" racial massacre espoused by Thor Heyerdahl is said to have been replaced by a battle over whether to fell the final tree.

The sad thing, according to Flenley, is that the islanders knew it was their last tree, but chose to cut it down anyway and so doom themselves.