Islands are special cases, as I believe the island biogeography
literature shows. The estimates several thousand bird species
"extincted" [what a word] by Polynesian settlers in the Pacific were in
many instances flightless and had adapted to the absence of predators.
They were also greatly affected by habitat change, as in Hawaii where
Polynesian agriculturalists converted virtually all forests below ca.
2000 feet to a mosaic of fields and fallow while introducing exotic
animals such as a rat and pigs. Extinctions due to pre-European
settlement are well documented for Madagascar and New Zealand, rather
large islands, but still islands with quite isolated (and insulated)
native faunas. The extrapolation to continental mass extinctions is not
well justified.

Gene Hunn.

On Fri, 17 Nov 1995, David Wright wrote:

> On Fri, 17 Nov 1995, M. Smith wrote:
> > I believe I've
> > seen literature discussing the extinctions of native Hawaiian birds due
> > to their native peoples.
>
> Yes, and not just Hawaii, but essentially all human-inhabited islands in
> the South Pacific; a paper by DW Steadman (1995; Science 267:1123-1131)
> provides an overview of evidence for this. Humans are humans, and
> whenever we reach critical population densities organisms go extinct,
> period. If Native Americans had a lower impact, it is because they reached
> lower overall population densities.
>
> David Wright
> dwright at u.washingotn.edu
>
>
>