Restoring Paradise: Rethinking and Rebuilding Nature in Hawai’i by Robert J. Cabin (review)

Hawaii. The name alone evokes immediate recognition to nearly everyone as some idyll of paradise. For most this idyll is vividly seen in television and movies that show the aqua blue ocean full of surfers lapping onto beaches of sugary white sand or verdant forests that have a nearly surreal green to them. All the while the characters inhabiting this idyll drink mai tais, drive sports cars, and live it up in Waikiki. In fact as soon as one deplanes at nearly any of Hawaii’s airports, they drink in this lush, warm, and truly beautiful place. Hawaii’s beauty, however, is often false as viewed through the eyes of an ecologist. Nearly every location that one sees in Hawaii Five-0, Magnum PI, Lost, or in person is novel. That is, the species most people view as Hawaiian are in fact transplants from around the world. Hence the reason Hawaii serves as the ‘generic’ tropical forest in every movie, TV show, or story.

Today little remains of what might be considered intact or native ecosystem left on land, especially on the inhabited islands of the archipelago. What does remain, however, is the focus of great conservation effort to both protect what remains and restore what is possible. In a state that houses both the greatest number of endangered species and the most invasive species, these efforts are paramount to staving off further losses that have lead Hawaii to be dubbed the undesirable term of extinction capital of the world. Robert Cabin (pronounced Kay Bin) seeks to help further this discussion of restoration by promoting the positive steps Hawaii has taken to in his new book Restoring Paradise: Rethinking and Rebuilding Nature in Hawai‘i.

Restoring Paradise is a hybrid book in that it is part autobiography, part history, part philosophy, and part science. Thus, it has both the advantage of offering some broad appeal and the disadvantage of having some disjunct elements to it. The book itself is told over three broad sections comprised of ten chapters. The first section, entitled “If You Plant It, Will They Come” focuses on the author’s time spent in USDA Forest Service working at Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge on the Island of Hawaii (typically referred to as Big Island). Hakalau was established on former ranch land as a means to conserve endangered forest birds and their habitat and is one of the few National Wildlife Refuges focused on endangered species as its primary mission. Since its creation, the refuge has worked to restore habitat primarily via reforestation of native plants and removal of invasive species. Cabin recounts the history of restoration efforts at Hakalau well through interviews with current and former employees and colleagues associated with the refuge, discussing how the refuge went from essentially degraded pastures to a partially restored habitat that is now supporting forest birds. Aside from the history, however, the main focus in this first section is really on the process of how restoration occurs on the ground. Specifically, Cabin focuses on the day-to-day challenges of accessing field sites, the challenges of re-establishing native plant communities amongst a sea of invasives, and the need to be flexible to new challenges.

The second section of the book entitled “Restoration Roundup” starts in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and travels northwest across Maui and ultimately to Kauai in a series of three island-specific chapters. Each of these three chapters carves out a unique case study of how restoration started and continued in very challenging circumstances that would at first glance appeared to have been destined for failure. For instance, established in 1916 primarily for its volcanic scenery, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park was overrun with feral goats that lay waste to the endemic plants for decades until the 1970s when Don Reeser led management efforts to fully rid the park of goats. Although many believed eradicating goats at the landscape scale...