What Animals Live on Easter Island

Survival of Easter Island - Jan J. Boersema

Using scholarly research and historic resources, such as the maritime magazines of the Netherlands businessman who was the first in Europe to come to the island in 1722, Boersema shows that deforestation did not endanger the island's diet and led to hunger and war. Based on historic and scholarly findings, Boersema shows how Easter Island societies reacted to changes in culture and ecology as they developed and survived.

Cerebral fodder: Protection of the new cave bedbugs on Easter Island

Rollie polices, crab louses and beetles named spring-tails belong to the 10 new found species of insect that only live on the isolated Easter Island in the Pacific. The ecologist from Northern Arizona University, Jut Wynne, and his collegues found eight of these critters. "This is because there where the sunlight can enter the cavern, there can be a photosynthetic process.

They turned out to be limited to cave habitats because they were found in these luxuriant ferns and bryophytes, which we believe were once quite abundant on the surfaces, but when this disastrous environmental change took place, this particular environment was no longer available, or at least no longer available to the degree it once was," Wynne says.

As Wynne says, shortly after people came around 800 AD, large quantities of palms and bushes were cleared on Easter Island for the construction of shelters. This, together with a severe dry spell, could have helped turn much of the island into pasture. Many animals and flora are dead.

Today there are only 31 insects that have developed on the island. "This is because there are over 400 different arthropods on Easter Island today. Ninety five per cent of these were imported deliberately or not. 5% are native to the island.

This means that you have an island that is being overwhelmed by non-native, insecticidal species," says Wynne. Mr Wynne suggests a protection map for Easter Island. To see a Wynne videopresentation for the Explorers Club in New York about his work on Easter Island, click below: .