Baldwinwt

Hello, Baldwinwt, and welcome to Wikipedia! My name is Yunshui, and I am your Online Ambassador for Bucknell's History of Ecology course. My job here is to help you to work within Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, to answer any questions that you have about editing here, and to act as your advocate in the (unlikely) event that you find yourself in a dispute with another user.

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Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. Once again, if you need help with any aspect of Wikipedia, please just ask; it's what I'm here for. Enjoy your course! Yunshui 雲‍水 08:47, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Reminders for class on Tuesday, 2/4

Hi Wade! A quick note to check in and share some reminders. How have the Wiki readings been going? Do you have any questions about them? We will be evaluating Alexander von Humbold'ts Wikipedia page on Tuesday in discussion, so be sure to review the Evaluating Wikipedia article quality brochure. Also, remember that you have two other things due Tuesday: creating a User Page (see mine for an example) and introducing yourself to an online ambassador or another student through their Talk Pages. Let me know if you have any questions! --Enstandrew (talk) 18:38, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Outline

Using the sources I listed above in the bibliography section I added, I’m going to expand this article through listing the impact of Saint Helena on Ecology and including it’s ecological past.

Richard Grove’s Green Imperialism outlines the affects of massive deforestation on Saint Helena which contributed to the beginning realizations of human affects on nature. It also was the location of the first colonial conservation legislation, the Saint Helena Forest Act of 1731, which was aimed at combating the deforestation. Grove expands on the contributions to ecological conservation Saint Helena has made in his article “Conserving Eden: The (European) East India Companies and Their Environmental Policies on St. Helena, Mauritius, and in Western India, 1660 to 1854.” He correlates the relationship between colonial expansion and capitalist policies and the destruction of tropical forests.

in Q. C. B. Cronk’s article about Endemic Flora (Native Plants) he explains the likely origins of plant life on Saint Helena and explains what that means for the island. Cronk believes that the island is volcanic in nature and that the limited plant life has been transported there through a prevailing South-Easterly wind. The island is 14.5 million years old and the winds transported the plants there from Africa. However, Cronk notes that most of the native plant life, through deforestation and simple human interaction with an isolated island, has been either destroyed or supplemented with new life.

Saint Helena, being relatively small and isolated, is a perfect natural location to conduct ecological experiments. A study named “Patterns of Success in Passeriform Birds Introductions on Saint Helena” follows a history of nearly 200 years, since 1776, of bird introductions. Because of the islands small size and isolation, the introduced birds were able to be studied and tracked over time. It was also helpful that passeriform birds are not native to Saint Helena so any passeriform bird found would have been at some point introduced by humans.

Saint Helena has even been used as inspiration in fictional depictions of exotic lands, as in The Man in the Moone, by Francis Godwin. The story involves the protagonist, Domingo Gonsales, fleeing from the East Indies after attaining a fortune of jewels and killing a man in a duel. He falls ill on his way home and his servant puts the ship ashore on Saint Helena. During their time on Saint Helena it is described as temperate and healthful. However, the natural characteristics of the island make life somewhat difficult and they are described in great detail.