A wild 'freakosystem' has been born in Hawaii

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250403-the-new-hawaiian-freakosystem-emerging-on-oahu-accidentally-created-by-humans

by pseudolus • 1 year ago

86 105 1 year ago

bbc.com

rbanffy• 1 year ago

Ireland feels the same. A lot of the green spaces have absolutely no indigenous species. You can only find them in places that are being rewilded.

mjburgess2• 1 year ago

O'ahu, at least, is teaching us important lessons that can help protect other environments not yet so degraded

The entire article presumes that novelty is a degradation -- yet offers no evidence for it. So it's just an article of faith that whatever series of major evolutionary catastrophes led to to an ecology are morally or aesthetically preferable to those of human design and intention?

This disneyification of nature is a great stupidity. Nature is just a series of major crises, punctuated by periods with some novelty -- that this process should be preferable to any other, reads quite implausibly to me.

decimalenough• 1 year ago

While I get where you're coming from and agree to some extent, the cost of introducing new species is often the eradication of native species that can't compete. The moral argument is that those species deserve to be protected because they're valuable as is, while the utilitarian argument is that if native species die, we're losing access to genetic diversity that could be exploited now or in the future for medical treatments, innovations in science, etc.

mjburgess2• 1 year ago

They're being replaced by ecologies useful to humans, here a variety of crops and the like. I'm unconvinced that the land should exist for some specific species of mice and birds, but not for us.

All I really hear is that some very small group of aesthetically-minded human apes are precious about one more variety of bird, against the interest of very many other human apes that need to eat.

If the new ecology were really extremely desolate, we might weigh up this a little differently, sure. But the article's entire analysis is that these new ecologies are genuinely "natural" in the sense of self-sustaining, and varied, and so on.

stinos• 1 year ago

The entire article presumes that novelty is a degradation -- yet offers no evidence for it

Isn't the point rather that the novelty itself isn't the degradation, but the disappearance of the other native species as they get replaced by other species which already exist elsewhere, thereby decreasing overal number of individual species should the native ones go extinct? You could then argue that less species isn't a degradation because on a huge timescale that might not matter. However on a more 'current' timescale, I'm not sure how else to treat the man-made huge biodiversity loss other than a degradation.

denom3• 1 year ago

I think your judgement here sets aside the value of ecosystems in balance.

mactavish88• 1 year ago

It's always odd to me how people tend to think that human-created ecosystems are "freakish" or "unnatural".

Humans evolved in the same environment as the ecosystems we're modifying. The buildings and cars and roads we make are made of materials we find on earth, similar to how birds build nests or ants make anthills. (Whether all the things we build are good and healthy for us and our environment is another story.)

My hypothesis has long been that this view of human activity as "unnatural" was actually born of the religious perspective that some religions hold that humans were implanted into the universe from the outside.

eloisius• 1 year ago

Was it George Carlin that joked something like “maybe the earth conjured up humans in order to put all this plastic in its crust for some purpose we don’t understand”?

binarymax• 1 year ago

He certainly decried the use of “all-natural” labels for products, because “everything comes from nature!”

Ygg26• 1 year ago

Maybe that's just the sidequest. The real quest is getting multi planetar.

jemmyw• 1 year ago

Or to release the energy in oil and coal. When you get a build up of stored energy something evolves to use it up.

I'm not being serious, but it's an interesting thought.

Biologist1234• 1 year ago

Well done in getting this up immediately. Pieces like this BBC piece are either implicit or explicit propaganda to define “nature” as a world without humans. Even the word “freakosystem”, as novel as it is, sets up an implicit good/bad dichotomy.

Edit: If you on-board the assumption that all change is bad, you potentially open yourself up to a great deal of anxiety associated with that change.

Ygg26• 1 year ago

It goes beyond that. Depending on ecosystem and size of settlements human leaving may actually decrease bio diversity. Think it was Bulgaria or Romania, but with rural places that had their populations die out, also saw decrease in bio diversity.

dodslaser• 1 year ago

While this is technically correct, there is an important distinction to be made that we are the only species capable of even understanding the ramifications of our actions on an ecosystem, and choosing to change our behavior to have less (or more) of an impact on the environment we are in.

Any species could drive another species to extinction, or carry them from one location to another, but no other species are actively choosing to do so.

BriggyDwiggs42• 1 year ago

I completely agree with disregarding the man/nature dichotomy, it’s complete nonsense. On the other hand, tool use and tool construction aren’t exactly the same as beaver dams, anthills, or bird nests because the particulars of the tool aren’t at all hardwired, which implies that the tool might have unexpected ramifications for the environment that would have otherwise been detected if the behavior had appeared over evolutionary timescales. A wariness towards self-conscious human ecosystem modification isn’t exactly unwarranted.

gman83• 1 year ago

It reminds me of people who won't eat certain foods because it contains "too many chemicals".

haswell14• 1 year ago

Except we know certain chemicals are harmful, and we have no idea about the long term effects of many others. We also have a history of using materials we don’t understand and only stopping after it kills or harms enough people.

bix66• 1 year ago

There’s a big difference between a real strawberry and a vat of chemicals called strawberries.

5423542342352• 1 year ago

I think it is a useful distinction for non-religious reasons. First is that humans change the environment more than anything else, by a large margin. As they say, “the dose makes the poison”. All species modify the environment they live in, but none are reshaping the oceans, every landmass, the air, the climate etc. like humans. Humans created multiple elements that never existed on earth.

Second, humans are conscious of the things we are doing. We can write articles about it and make choices about how we will change the environment in the future. We cannot discuss things with wolves in Yellowstone about how they are changing the area. The cinnamon trees in Hawaii can’t get together and decide how to share space with other plants.

And finally, always have at least three items when listing things.

fallous2• 1 year ago

Life has fundamentally changed the environment multiple times. The reason you live in an oxygenated environment is due to the waste produced by life.

keithalewis• 1 year ago

I see what you did there.

throwaway290• 1 year ago

Humans are part of nature but if humans are also growing to have disproportionate impact on the rest of nature it kinda worth thinking about what's going on then

loudmax• 1 year ago

Incidentally, this concept of modifying one's ecosystem comes up in Richard Dawkins' book The Extended Phenotype, which is a follow up to The Selfish Gene. One of the illustrative examples is beavers turning fast moving streams into convenient slow moving fisheries by building dams. The ecosystem the beavers built is "natural" in the sense that beavers are animals and it's in their nature to chew through trees. But presumably, at least some other animals were pushed to extinction when their habitat was modified by the beavers.

bix66• 1 year ago

I do think there is a difference when you can cause rapid global change. And most animals are benefitting their ecosystem in some way whereas we’re just extracting resources for the highest bidder 3000 miles away. Our ecosystems are struggling to replenish themselves because we lack harmony with nature. We live in an unnatural society that clearly cannot sustain our changes.

declan_roberts• 1 year ago

This is what the headlines say but it's not true. For example look into regenerative agriculture. All of the small scale farms around me are moving to rotational grazing systems because they improve the pastures and fertility of the land over time.

Lutger2• 1 year ago

There are several competing, and sometimes complementary perspectives on what 'nature' means. Some include humans and their activity within it, others do not.

One thing you can ask yourself: if human activity and the impact it has on its environment is included in what you call 'natural', then what even does remain of the word 'unnatural'? What do people refer to, when they use that word? If you don't have any sensible explanation for it, then the whole thing collapses, yet evidently a lot of people really want to keep using the word nature and even seem to have no problem in making themselves understood when doing so.

noja• 1 year ago

I think if you are short-terming your existence by destroying everything around you, that could qualify as unnatural.

kgwxd• 1 year ago

what even does remain of the word 'unnatural'?

Shame.

denom3• 1 year ago

With our consumption humans are drawing down on the ‘reserve’ that ecological services have built up.

Human activities lack the sophistication of an ecosystem that is in balance and cannot recreate the network of benefits thereof.

lproven4• 1 year ago

It's always odd to me how people tend to think that human-created ecosystems are "freakish" or "unnatural".

While this may be true, it's not what this article is about, which is IMHO why it's a refreshing change.

TeMPOraL• 1 year ago

I agree strongly (except with the religion part - I suspect that being guilty for existing is a perspective that was thought of / rediscovered many times over the generations, regardless of religious tradition).

My takeaway from the article is: yes, we can adjust ecosystems, and no, they don't immediately wither and die, nor do they become boring monocultures. Despite popularly repeated memes, we aren't destroying everything we're touching or otherwise "playing god". If anything, this tells me we should study those ecosystems and learn from them, to become gradually more intentional about the changes we introduce.

perrygeo• 1 year ago

Your hypothesis makes sense. I'd call it "human exceptionalism" - the (wildly unsupported) assumption that we are separate from nature.

Religions that see humans and nature as part of the same system don't have this idea of "unnatural" landscapes. They have no concept of "wilderness". All landscapes are landscapes to which we both belong and shape through our actions.

satisfice• 1 year ago

I also don’t see the value of the distinction. You could say that the idea that human-created change is unnatural is a purely artificial construct.

What does concern me is the collapse of natural (meaning tested over millions of years) biodiversity.

JR1427• 1 year ago

Humans have brought with them the ability to dramatically change ecosystems on timescales far shorter than usually seen without them (exceptions being volcanic eruptions etc).

These short timescales mean that the mechanism of natural selection and evolution do not have time to adjust ecosystems to changes, so they can collapse rapidly.

undebuggable2• 1 year ago

An example specie over here would be Canadian goldenrod. It completely dominates other plants and creates monoculture.

lproven4• 1 year ago

An example specie over here

"Specie" means "of the same kind" and generally specifically coins, especially gold coins. It is not the singular of "species". Species is both singular and plural, like "sheep" or "deer" or "salmon".

Where is "over here"?

undebuggable2• 1 year ago

Well TIL, thanks. The location I mean is Poland.

faassen• 1 year ago

A good book about the related topic of novel urban ecosystems is "Darwin Comes to Town: How the Urban Jungle Drives Evolution" by Menno Schilthuizen. For urban ecosystems Schilthuizen argues we should accept it; cities are a new habitat anyway, and we should treasure the novel ecosystem that forms in them.

For non-urban places where thriving existing ecosystems get changed completely due to introductions the picture is more complicated; we should not ignore what has been gained by accident, but also mourn the loss.

Biologist1234• 1 year ago

If you set up (or more likely inherit) a story that change = loss, you will also onboard a needless eco-anxiety.

5423542342352• 1 year ago

If your house burns down, your couch, photo albums, home server, and cats “change” into piles of ash. As amazing as piles of ash are, your previous belongings were unique and had value to you, and would be much more difficult to replace than the ash would be.

Large mammals take 10s of millions of years to evolve. Their extinction due to “change” by humans is irreplaceable, for all intents and purposes. This idea that all changes are somehow neutral and so don’t matter is ridiculous.

PeterStuer2• 1 year ago

Over here forests were planted to drain the swamps and provide hunting grounds 300 years ago. Today, self accredited "eco-experts" double and triple dipping in EU "green" subsidies want to cut down all the forests and burn them off in pellet form in Dutch incinerators to selectively and arbitrarily restore the "original" ecosystem.

lproven4• 1 year ago

Over here

Where is that? You don't say.

PeterStuer2• 1 year ago

Belgium

hoseja• 1 year ago

for millions of years before the arrival of humans.

Actually the islands are only a few million years old, the Big Island is only about 400000 years old. So chaotic flux is the name of the game there.

acdha• 1 year ago

If you’re going to play the “actually” game, at least check Wikipedia first. That quote is about Oahu and it’s correct:

Like all other Hawaiian Islands, Oʻahu was formed from the volcanism associated with the Hawaii hotspot; it started to grow from the sea floor 4 million years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oahu

Your broader use of “few” is also dubious since 28 is not normally considered small enough to include in that number:

From this study and others,[14][15] it is estimated that the northwesternmost island, Kure Atoll, is the oldest at approximately 28 million years (Ma); while the southeasternmost island, Hawaiʻi, is approximately 0.4 Ma (400,000 years).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_Islands

soared• 1 year ago

If you’re interested in this, the garden below is very worth visiting.

https://ntbg.org/gardens/limahuli

It’s built into sections - plants from before any humans landed in Hawaii, plants from early settlers, plants from the plantation period, etc.

My favorite learning was canoe plants (maybe a different name) - plants that early settlers would bring with them when exploring new islands in their canoe that were critical to their survival. They provided food, medicine, etc.

euroderf• 1 year ago

Try the first chapter of James Michener's "Hawaii". It tells a tale of huge catamarans laden with plants, pigs, and other starters for new outposts of a daring seafaring culture.

goda90• 1 year ago

While it's sad the devastation we've had on native species, this also feels like a testament to the ideas of permaculture. The article says the new ecosystem is full of cinnamon and guava. With just enough management to allow sustainable harvesting, such an ecosystem can be beneficial to the environment and people. It'd be better if our farms were freakosystems instead of ecological dead zones.

trelane7• 1 year ago

Kind of weird that they only seem to acknowledge changes by humans in the last few centuries. This despite the fact that the Hawaiian islands have been deliberately shaped by people for well over a millennium prior to Europeans ever setting for there.

lproven4• 1 year ago

Not really, no.

The point of this article is not the human-caused (and ongoing) extinction event of unique island species.

The point here is that a new, healthy, diverse ecosystem has formed in the niche left by the human-induced extermination of a native one, and that this new ecosystem is healthy and diverse and interesting, even thought it is "unnatural" in the sense that it's composed of animals and plants from all over the world which do not normally occur together.

The extinction even goes back a millennium or so.

The new introductions do not.

They follow on motor-powered boat and air travel and the arrival of non-islander humans from all around the world, with pets, garden plants, and accidental introductions.

So this is not about what the original Hawai'ian islanders did: it's about what's happened since that event.

denom3• 1 year ago

Tropical forest ecosystems with introduced species thrive in a way others (e.g. boreal and oak savannas) do not.

Not all ecosystems are resilient enough to handle invasive species, and can be destroyed with the introduction of a single aggressive species.

cadamsdotcom• 1 year ago

Very interesting read. Piques the question of what’s indigenous. In Australia the dingo was introduced by humans - but it’s been so long that there’s a blurred line on whether they’re a pest or not.

The sudden change described - too sudden for the ecosystem to absorb, so the old gets replaced instead - has echoes of disruption in tech.

A wild 'freakosystem' has been born in Hawaii

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