527
All such personages—hermits of Haiti and Socotra; human isolatoes, as Herman
Melville called them, in every apartment building of every city; every last widow
and widower, alone in their thoughts, symbolic of our problématique. And with that
mass of feeling, how to effectively save the world, as one person, two people, even
three. The challenge emerges every day. In the life of the late Senator John Lewis,
or of Boethius, or Tao Tzu. Name your biography. Transforming this idle, lackluster
consciousness, responsive to basics, tending toward non-resistance, be it gravity or
any other silent altercation (one thinks of an electrifying Sen. Cory Booker [D-NJ]
speaking about the first small Congressional steps toward American police reform
and the persistent oppression/brutality of African-Americans, “Words are not
enough” [June 16, 2020]), preferring peace and uncomplicated routines, after all.
From that plateau at some point, any point in life, settled-in for good, to rescuing a
creature much smaller than ourselves, an ant, a mosquito, a gecko. Or, conversely,
watering a plant, leaving food out for the vertebrates who wander by throughout the
days and nights. The hidden comforts of surprising companions. Beyond every
metaphysic is this ease of possibilities, this biophilia of consolations rising to a
zenith of what humanity is capable of.
Haiti is within the Caribbean biological hotspot, with one of the most concentrated arrays of taxonomically endemic species in the world, most threatened by a
near 99% loss of island forest. In relation to the toxic combination of near total
deforestation and high endemism, three phases of Haitian mass extinctions are projected, with, at best, resulting marginalized, “physiologically-tolerant species” that
may “likely survive and expand in poor-quality habitats.”
5
The full contours of this
disaster surface against the context of the Island of Hispaniola’s approximately
5600 plant species, of which some 36% are deemed to be endemic, many on the
Haitian side.
6
Less than one-fifth the size of Iowa (10,714 mi
2
) but nearly four times
Iowa’s population (11.12 million and a continuing total fertility rate of 2.99 births
per woman), with a per capita income of US$2.00 per day, Haiti’s human, animal
rights and conservation needs will not be solved by a solitaire—hence, the nature of
science-and-compassion-driven ameliorative strategies.
In January, 2019, it was announced that Professor S. Blair Hedges, director of
Temple University’s Center for Biodiversity and long-time researcher in Haiti,
along with an airline CEO and multiple conservation groups including the local
Audubon Society, had persuaded Haiti’s government to feverishly endeavor to save
all those species still hanging on within the Massif de la Hotte range of the southwest (towering above the beautific coastal expanse where John James Audubon was
born), by declaring three new national parks: Grand Bois, Deux Mamelles, and
5 See “Haiti’s biodiversity threatened by nearly complete loss of primary forest,” by S. Blair
Hedges, Warren B. Cohen, Joel Timyan, and Zhiqiang Yang, PNAS, Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences of the Unites States of America, October 29, 2018, https://doi.org/10.1073/
pnas.1809753115, https://www.pnas.org/content/115/46/11850, Accessed May 25, 2020.
6 World Conservation Monitoring Centre (1992). Nearctic and Neotropical. IUCN. pp. 384. See
also, https://www.cbd.int/countries/profile/?country=ht; and http://darwin.bio.uci.edu/sustain/h90/
Haiti.htm
56.1 Between Haiti and Socotra
All such personages—hermits of Haiti and Socotra; human isolatoes, as Herman
Melville called them, in every apartment building of every city; every last widow
and widower, alone in their thoughts, symbolic of our problématique. And with that
mass of feeling, how to effectively save the world, as one person, two people, even
three. The challenge emerges every day. In the life of the late Senator John Lewis,
or of Boethius, or Tao Tzu. Name your biography. Transforming this idle, lackluster
consciousness, responsive to basics, tending toward non-resistance, be it gravity or
any other silent altercation (one thinks of an electrifying Sen. Cory Booker [D-NJ]
speaking about the first small Congressional steps toward American police reform
and the persistent oppression/brutality of African-Americans, “Words are not
enough” [June 16, 2020]), preferring peace and uncomplicated routines, after all.
From that plateau at some point, any point in life, settled-in for good, to rescuing a
creature much smaller than ourselves, an ant, a mosquito, a gecko. Or, conversely,
watering a plant, leaving food out for the vertebrates who wander by throughout the
days and nights. The hidden comforts of surprising companions. Beyond every
metaphysic is this ease of possibilities, this biophilia of consolations rising to a
zenith of what humanity is capable of.
Haiti is within the Caribbean biological hotspot, with one of the most concentrated arrays of taxonomically endemic species in the world, most threatened by a
near 99% loss of island forest. In relation to the toxic combination of near total
deforestation and high endemism, three phases of Haitian mass extinctions are projected, with, at best, resulting marginalized, “physiologically-tolerant species” that
may “likely survive and expand in poor-quality habitats.”
5
The full contours of this
disaster surface against the context of the Island of Hispaniola’s approximately
5600 plant species, of which some 36% are deemed to be endemic, many on the
Haitian side.
6
Less than one-fifth the size of Iowa (10,714 mi
2
) but nearly four times
Iowa’s population (11.12 million and a continuing total fertility rate of 2.99 births
per woman), with a per capita income of US$2.00 per day, Haiti’s human, animal
rights and conservation needs will not be solved by a solitaire—hence, the nature of
science-and-compassion-driven ameliorative strategies.
In January, 2019, it was announced that Professor S. Blair Hedges, director of
Temple University’s Center for Biodiversity and long-time researcher in Haiti,
along with an airline CEO and multiple conservation groups including the local
Audubon Society, had persuaded Haiti’s government to feverishly endeavor to save
all those species still hanging on within the Massif de la Hotte range of the southwest (towering above the beautific coastal expanse where John James Audubon was
born), by declaring three new national parks: Grand Bois, Deux Mamelles, and
5 See “Haiti’s biodiversity threatened by nearly complete loss of primary forest,” by S. Blair
Hedges, Warren B. Cohen, Joel Timyan, and Zhiqiang Yang, PNAS, Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences of the Unites States of America, October 29, 2018, https://doi.org/10.1073/
pnas.1809753115, https://www.pnas.org/content/115/46/11850, Accessed May 25, 2020.
6 World Conservation Monitoring Centre (1992). Nearctic and Neotropical. IUCN. pp. 384. See
also, https://www.cbd.int/countries/profile/?country=ht; and http://darwin.bio.uci.edu/sustain/h90/
Haiti.htm
56.1 Between Haiti and Socotra