Lessons from Earth

From the Early Pandora Wiki Real world

The Great Hunger is a Pandoran legend, but similar things have really happened on Earth. The big difference is that on Earth, the hungry ones were usually people. The good news is that people have also learned how to bring animals back. Real world

Lost forever

The passenger pigeon

About two hundred years ago, North America had billions of passenger pigeons, and flocks could darken the sky for hours. People hunted them so much that the birds could not lay eggs fast enough. They also lived in huge groups and needed big flocks to breed, so once their numbers fell, they could not recover. The very last one, Martha, died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914, just like the last tak. Real world

The dodo

The dodo was a big flightless bird found only on the island of Mauritius. It had no enemies there, so it was not afraid of people. After sailors arrived around 1600, it was hunted, and the rats, pigs and monkeys the sailors brought ate its eggs. It was gone in less than a hundred years. Real world

Steller's sea cow

This gentle giant, a relative of the manatee up to about 8 metres long, lived in the cold seas near Alaska. Scientists first described it in 1741. Hunters killed so many for meat that it was gone by 1768, just 27 years later. Real world

The great auk

A big black-and-white seabird of the North Atlantic that could not fly, a little like a penguin. It was hunted for its feathers, meat and eggs, and the last known pair was killed in 1844. Real world

Too many eaters

The reindeer of St. Matthew Island

This story is the closest real match to the Great Hunger, because the eaters were not people. In 1944, 29 reindeer were brought to St. Matthew Island in Alaska, where nothing hunted them. They grew to about 6,000 by 1963, but they ate the island's lichen faster than it could grow back. After one hard winter, only 42 were left. Like the Taktswìkyu, they ate up their own future. Real world

The Atlantic cod

For hundreds of years, fishing boats caught cod off Newfoundland in Canada, where the fish were so thick people said you could almost walk on them. Bigger, better boats caught more and more, until in 1992 the fish nearly disappeared and fishing had to be stopped. Tens of thousands of people lost their jobs, and the cod have still not fully come back. Real world

Saved in time

These stories are what happens when people do what Ninat asked: notice early, take less, and let animals grow back. Real world

Animals people helped bring back
Animal	What went wrong	What people did	Today
American bison	Tens of millions hunted until fewer than about a thousand were left, around 1890	Protected herds in parks and reserves	Hundreds of thousands again, most on ranches
Humpback whale	Hunted for oil and meat until very few were left	Most countries agreed to stop commercial whaling in 1986	Many groups have grown back strongly
Bald eagle	A pesticide called DDT made its eggshells thin, so they broke	The USA banned DDT in 1972 and protected the birds	Taken off the endangered list in 2007
Sea otter	Hunted for fur, nearly to extinction	Hunting banned by a treaty in 1911	Back along many coasts, helping the kelp forests
Grey wolf in Yellowstone	Wiped out from the park by the 1920s	Brought back in 1995	Packs live in the park again

Real world

Pandora and Earth

The Great Hunger and Earth's lessons
	The Great Hunger	Passenger pigeon	American bison
Who took too much?	The Taktswìkyu Na'vi legend	People Real world	People Real world
Was there a warning?	Yes, from Ninat Na'vi legend	Yes, but too late Real world	Yes, and people listened Real world
What happened?	All gone; one seed left Na'vi legend	All gone in 1914 Real world	Saved Real world

What you can do

Take only as much food as you can eat, and save leftovers.
Turn off lights and water when you are not using them.
Leave wild plants, animals and their homes alone, or be very gentle.
Reuse and recycle instead of always getting new things.
Plant something native to where you live; it feeds local insects and birds.
Count birds in your garden or park and share what you see. Real scientists use counts like the Great Backyard Bird Count to notice when birds are growing rare, just like a Na'vi keeper of numbers.

References

Category: Ideas