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February 6, 2019 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Laysan Island Cyclorama

“Almost exactly in the middle of the Pacific, midway between our Pacific coast and Japan, there is a small island, a coral atoll with a surface of about three and a half square miles, which supports perhaps the most dense bird population in the world”.

“Here, on a level plain from which every vestige of vegetation has been worn away, is a mass of these great birds nearly a square mile in extent. He may have seen birds before by the thousand, perhaps by tens of thousands; but surely not literally by the million!”

“(A)lbatrosses, some two million of them, are by no means the most numerous bird inhabitants of this great oceanic aviary. Most of the surface, save that just described, is covered with a coarse, sedge-like, tufted grass among which several millions of terns of about six species, have their homes.”

“In another place is an exceedingly picturesque bit of rocky scenery in which the immaculately white “love birds” have established a rookery. These, unlike other terns are silent birds, and hover like great white butterflies close above the visitor, silently inspecting him without either fear or anger.”

“A very different scene presents itself in the rookery of the great, greenblack ‘man-o-war birds,’ the outcasts and pirates of this oceanic aviary. Graceful beyond compare while on the wing, they have a particularly savage and cruel aspect when seen at close quarters on their nests.”

“But any description of the scene would be inexcusably defective were we to omit mention of the weird color effects produced by the combination of the snow white coral sand, the dark green vegetation, and the intense blue of the tropic sky …”

“… often mottled with purple clouds; while embracing all is the thundering surf of intense green, white crested waves near shore, and, further out, the wonderful deep blue of the Pacific.”

“Try as we may; this scene can not be described, and as day after day the wonder of it grew and deepened, the writer found constantly recurring and intensifying the great desire to have it reproduced as a masterpiece of art for the benefit of the State University and the people of Iowa.”

“And then the ‘Laysan Island scheme’ had its birth.”

“To any one who has seen a really good cyclorama, such as that of the “Battle of Gettysburg,” where the observer gazes upon hundreds of thousands of men and miles of space, a veritable miracle of vast numbers in intense action …”

“… the actual figures in the foreground so skillfully joined to the painted background as to deceive the very elect, the ‘Laysan Island’ scheme will make an immediate appeal.”

“The plan is, briefly, to construct in our new museum a cyclorama of Laysan Island. … It was with the Laysan idea in view that room was reserved for this exhibit in the north end of ‘Bird Hall’ in the new museum, and marked ‘Laysan Room’ in the plans.” (Nutting; Iowa Alumnus, 1909)

“Laysan Island Cyclorama offers a 360-degree view of Laysan, an outpost of the Hawaiian atoll and a bird sanctuary, at its heyday, when it boasted 8 million birds of 22 different species in 1.5 square miles.”

“In 1902 Charles Nutting, director of the UI Museum of Natural History, first traveled to Laysan as a scientific advisor to a government expedition. He was so inspired by the multitudes of terns, albatrosses, finches, boobies, and other birds that he vowed to re-create the scene in Iowa City.”

“Nutting led the UI in a nine-year fundraising campaign. Laysan frequently made headlines in The Daily Iowan. In 1909, the football team even performed a skit at a lecture on Hawaii to raise funds for the trip.”

“In 1911, Nutting sent Homer Dill, who managed the museum’s bird and mammal collections, along with UI students Horace Young and Clarence Albrecht and muralist Charles Corwin back to Laysan to gather specimens for an exhibit.”

“The party found the island very different from the paradise Nutting had described almost a decade earlier. In addition to evidence of feather poaching, rabbits introduced by a guano miner in 1903 had overwhelmed the island, stripping it of its vegetation and decimating insect populations.”

“Lacking food and shelter, some seabirds took flight to other islands, but land birds were unable to fly the long distances to other islands.”

“Despite this, Dill returned to Iowa City with 36 large crates of specimens (total of 398 birds representing 23 species), including plants and sand. Museum studies students handcrafted thousands of wax leaves for the display, and Corwin painted a 138-foot-long backdrop.” (The mounting of the 106 birds and installation of the cyclorama foreground required nearly three years.)

“When it opened, the cyclorama was one of the first in the world to feature a natural theme and is one of a handful of cycloramas still existing today.”

“In 1912, UI sophomore Alfred Bailey returned to the island, but ran out of poison and ammunition, barely affecting the rabbit population.”

“In 1923 the Tanager Expedition killed the last of the rabbits on Laysan Island — too late for the Laysan rail, Laysan honeycreeper and Laysan millerbird, which went extinct due to the devastation. Two more species, the Laysan finch and the Laysan duck, remain endangered. All of these species are featured in the Cyclorama.”

“No major modifications have been made to the cyclorama, but renovations in the early 2000s included the addition of interpretive signs and a soundtrack of bird calls of all 22 living and extinct species that have inhabited the island. While museum staff have hand-cleaned parts of the background mural, no major conservation work has been done.” (U of Iowa)

Over 100-years later, Laysan Island Cyclorama, on the third Floor, West End of Hageboeck Hall of Birds in the University of Iowa Museum of Natural History, is still open.

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Laysan Island Cyclorama-Laysan Albatrosses-UIowa
Laysan Island Cyclorama-Laysan Albatrosses-UIowa
Laysan Island Cyclorama-Fairy Terns-UIowa
Laysan Island Cyclorama-Fairy Terns-UIowa
Laysan Island Cyclorama-Black-footed Albatrosses-UIowa
Laysan Island Cyclorama-Black-footed Albatrosses-UIowa
Laysan Island Cyclorama-Laysan Duck-UIowa
Laysan Island Cyclorama-Laysan Duck-UIowa
Laysan Island Cyclorama-Terns on Laysan-UIowa
Laysan Island Cyclorama-Terns on Laysan-UIowa
Laysan Island Cyclorama-Great Frigatebirds Nesting-UIowa
Laysan Island Cyclorama-Great Frigatebirds Nesting-UIowa
Laysan-albatrosses
Laysan-albatrosses
Laysan_Island_Munro_June-1891-(DenverMuseum)
Laysan_Island_Munro_June-1891-(DenverMuseum)
Laysan-Island-Munro-June_1891-(DenverMuseum)
Laysan-Island-Munro-June_1891-(DenverMuseum)
Layan-shed
Layan-shed
Homes Dill (rear) preparing bird skins with Student Clarence Albrecht-Laysan-1911
Homes Dill (rear) preparing bird skins with Student Clarence Albrecht-Laysan-1911
Gathering Albatross Eggs-Laysan
Gathering Albatross Eggs-Laysan

Filed Under: General, Place Names, Economy Tagged With: Hawaii, Cyclorama, Laysan, Laysan Island Cyclorama

December 26, 2018 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Kauō

Kauō (Laysan Island) is the second largest land mass in the NWHI (1,015 acres) just behind Sand Island at Midway Atoll. It is about 1 mile wide and 1-1/2 miles long and roughly rectangular in shape (shaped like a poi board).

Laysan Island is a member of the Hawaiian archipelago situated 790 sea miles to the northwest of Honolulu, latitude 25” 2’ 14” N, longitude 170” 44’ 06” W.

The island has a maximum elevation of about 30 feet. A fringing reef surrounds the island protecting its shores from violent wave action. (Baldwin)

Kauō (egg) describes both the shape of this island and, perhaps, the abundant seabirds that nest here. The island also previously harbored five Hawaiian endemic land birds, of which two, the endangered Laysan finch and the endangered Laysan duck, still survive. (PMNM Management Plan)

The Laysan Millerbird, along with the Laysan Rail and Laysan Honeycreeper, went extinct in the early 20th century when Laysan Island was denuded by non-native rabbits. (PMNM)

The island’s easy access and large number of seabirds made it a base for traders of guano (bird droppings used as fertilizer) and feather harvesters in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Although the practices were declared illegal, poachers killed hundreds of thousands of birds and caused dramatic changes in the island’s ecosystem. Remnants of guano piles remain from this era.

Rabbits released in the early 1900s devastated the island’s vegetation. These events caused a public outcry which led to the creation of the Hawaiian Islands Bird Reservation by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1909. (Dill)

The endangered Laysan duck, is the rarest waterfowl in the Northern hemisphere and has the smallest geographic range of any duck species in the world.

It once lived throughout the Hawaiian Archipelago but vanished from the main Hawaiian Islands with the arrival of rats around 800 years ago. They later disappeared from the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands except for a small population that existed in isolation on Laysan Island for more than 150 years.

In 1911, only 11 ducks were observed on Laysan Island. Today, under present management operations, there are over 707 Laysan ducks – 40 on Kure, 290 on Midway and 377 on Laysan Island. (PMNM)

In addition, approximately two million seabirds nest here, including boobies, frigatebirds, terns, shearwaters, noddies, and the world’s second-largest black-footed and Laysan albatross colonies. (PMNM Management Plan)

Laysan has a large saltwater lagoon occupying about one-fifth of the island’s central depression. It is well vegetated (except for its sand dunes) and contains a hyper-saline lake, which is one of only five natural lakes in the State of Hawai‘i. (PMNM)

Laysan has been protected as a bird reserve since 1909, introduced mammals have been extirpated, and the island has no infrastructure besides a small field camp. (USGS)

“The Hawaiian Islands Reservation was established by Executive order in 1909 to serve as a refuge and breeding place for the millions of sea birds and waders that from time immemorial have resorted there yearly to raise their young or to rest while migrating.”

“In 1909 a party of feather hunters landed on Laysan, one of the twelve islands comprising the reservation, and killed more than 200,000 birds, notably albatrosses, for millinery purposes.”

“Through the prompt cooperation of the Secretary of the Treasury, the revenue cutter Thetis, under the command of Capt. W. V. E. Jacobs, was dispatched to the island and returned to Honolulu in January, 1910, with 23 poachers and their booty, consisting of the plumage of more than a quarter of a million birds.”

“In the spring of 1911 a cooperative arrangement was effected with the University of Iowa … whereby an expedition was sent to Laysan, the largest and most important island of the group, to ascertain the present condition of the bird rookeries and to collect a series of birds for a museum exhibit.” (Wilson & Henshaw, Expedition 1911)

Here’s a link to the Google ‘Street View’ on Laysan Island.

https://goo.gl/63WGFK

While I was Chair at DLNR, we created State Refuge rules whose intent is “To establish a marine refuge in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands for the long-term conservation and protection of the unique coral reef ecosystems and the related marine resources and species, to ensure their conservation and natural character for present and future generations.” Fishing is prohibited.

This started a process where several others followed with similar protective measures. The BLNR unanimously adopted the State’s Refuge rules, President Bush declared it a Marine National Monument and UNESCO designated it a World Heritage Site.

Some ask why we imposed such stringent limitations on use in this area. For me, it ended up being pretty simple; it is the responsibility we share to future generations, to allow them to see what it looks like at a place in the world where you don’t take something.

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© 2018 Hoʻokuleana LLC

Laysan-Island_Munro-June_1891-(DenverMuseum)
Laysan-Island_Munro-June_1891-(DenverMuseum)
Laysan Albatross (Dan Maxwell)
Laysan Albatross (Dan Maxwell)
laysan_duck_translocation_1
laysan_duck_translocation_1
Laysan_Island_Coast_Guard_Cutter_Thetis-1913-(DenverMuseum)
Laysan_Island_Coast_Guard_Cutter_Thetis-1913-(DenverMuseum)
Laysan_Island_Munro_June_1891-(DenverMuseum)
Laysan_Island_Munro_June_1891-(DenverMuseum)
Laysan_Island_Munro_June-1891-(DenverMuseum)
Laysan_Island_Munro_June-1891-(DenverMuseum)
Laysan_Island_Munro-June_1891-(DenverMuseum)
Laysan_Island_Munro-June_1891-(DenverMuseum)
Laysan_Island-1911-(DenverMuseum)
Laysan_Island-1911-(DenverMuseum)
Laysan_Island-1913-(DenverMuseum)
Laysan_Island-1913-(DenverMuseum)
Gathering Albatross Eggs-Laysan
Gathering Albatross Eggs-Laysan
Laysan_Island-Alfred_M_Bailey_at_headuarters-1912-13-(DenverMuseum)
Laysan_Island-Alfred_M_Bailey_at_headuarters-1912-13-(DenverMuseum)
Laysan_Island-Munro-June_1891-(DenverMuseum)
Laysan_Island-Munro-June_1891-(DenverMuseum)
Laysan_Island-or-Midway-Munro-June_1891-(DenverMuseum)
Laysan_Island-or-Midway-Munro-June_1891-(DenverMuseum)
Laysan-Island-1911-(DenverMuseum)
Laysan-Island-1911-(DenverMuseum)
Laysan-Island-Munro-June_1891-(DenverMuseum)
Laysan-Island-Munro-June_1891-(DenverMuseum)
Papahanaumokuakea-Marine-National-Monument-Map
Papahanaumokuakea-Marine-National-Monument-Map

Filed Under: Sailing, Shipping & Shipwrecks, Economy, General, Hawaiian Traditions, Place Names Tagged With: Hawaii, Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, Laysan, Kauo

Images of Old Hawaiʻi

People, places, and events in Hawaiʻi’s past come alive through text and media in “Images of Old Hawaiʻi.” These posts are informal historic summaries presented for personal, non-commercial, and educational purposes.

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