Listening-to-the-Land

The ‘Alala, or Hawaiian crow, is on the verge of extinction, with the last sighting in the wild in 2002. A captive breeding program has been underway for decades, but the last attempted release in the 1990s was unsuccessful. The program will be trying releases again over the next five years, hoping for more success by releasing the birds into fenced areas. Deep Green Resistance works for land restoration and protection. We’re very excited about the possibility of bringing these bird backs to the wild, where once again they can fulfill their traditional responsibilities to the rest of their community as seed dispersers and omnivorous foragers. ...

Will Falk writes the next entry in his “Protecting Mauna Kea” series after journeying to the sacred mountain’s peak. He contrasts the natural beauty and living community of the mountain to the impositions of industrial artifacts ― multiple telescopes in place already, with the buildings and roads necessary to support them. Falk addresses the facile claim that the Thirty Meter Telescope is a project for the higher good of humanity, so it doesn’t matter if a sacred place, its inhabitants, and a human culture holding it in reverence are all further damaged: ...

From his new perspective as part of the Thirty Meter Telescope blockade, more than nine thousand feet above sea level, Will Falk contemplates our modern jet-fueled culture in which everything is a commodity with no place or relationship truly sacred. He contrasts this to the glimpses he’s already seen into the multi-generational, deeply connected relationships and stories formed by Native Hawaiians with Mauna Kea and the rest of the aina. The dominant culture systematically ignores, denies, or actively destroys those stories and the respect they engender for the landbase. The lessons of ancient wisdom are anathema to a system based on exploitation and short-term profit couched in religious, economic, and scientific trappings. ...