ABSTRACT
One of the most dramatic known examples of deforestation occurred on Easter Island (known to its inhabitants as Rapa Nui). The world’s most isolated habitable land, Easter Island is blessed with a mild subtropical climate and fertile volcanic soils. It was settled around 400 CE by Polynesian seafarers who found a magnificent forest-crowned by the now-extinct Easter Island palm-and an equally productive marine ecosystem. On a diet of fish, porpoises, land birds, seabirds, and Polynesian domesticates, their population grew and prospered. The social complexity and cultural richness of Easter Island society is validated by the island’s famous stone statues (called moai). Yet when Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen encountered (and named) the island in 1722, it was a wasteland with not a single tree or bush over ten feet in height. The islanders he met had no firewood and no native land animals larger than insects. They possessed only flimsy rafts for boats. Indeed, they were near starvation, subsisting on small sea snails, chickens, and (occasionally) other humans. What happened?
