Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver

conflict between these interests arose when theNature Conservancy undertook to preserve the very last few hundred acres of native Hawaiian rain forest. This tract is a fragile fairyland of endemic ferns and orchids that were being rooted to shreds by feral pigs. Anything native to Hawaii has no defenses against ground predators, simply because these ecosystems evolved without them; thus, nene geese don’t run or fly when humans approach, and native birds are helpless against the mongoose-come-latelies that eat their eggs. For the flora, the problem is pigs: The Polynesians brought them over in their canoes for food (they would later be replaced by larger pigs brought in European ships), and some escaped to the wild, where their descendants now destroy every root in their path. The Nature Conservancy faced an animal lover’s painful dilemma. The extremely difficult terrain and the caginess of the wild hogs made it impossible to take them alive; to save the endangered forest some pigs would have to be killed. Enter, then, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), who set up a remonstration. The Conservancy staff argued that sparing a few dozen pigs would cost thousands of other animal and plant lives and extinguish their kinds forever. They also pointed out that the pigs had come to Hawaii in the first place under a human contract, as a food item. No matter, said PETA; the chain of pig death ends here. The two groups have reached some compromises, but the ideological conflict remains interesting.
    I applaud any religion that devotes itself to protecting life; I applaud it right up to—but stopping short of—the point where protecting one life-form brings an unintended holocaust upon others that are being overlooked. In this contest between a handful of pigs and thousands of native birds, insects, and plants, neither side could fairly say it was simply advocating life . It had become necessary to make a choice between systems—restoring a natural one versus upholding an increasingly damaged one.
    For the sake of informed choices, I took a trip. I walked in that magical forest, by special invitation, so I might carry out a storythat would wring compassion from people far away who would never get to see its wonders. The story is a heartbreaker, so I did the best I could. I could already see the ghosts of the place; it was that near death, and that willfully alive. White mists rose through the curved spines of blue-green fern trees. A single scarlet bird with a sad, down-curved bill spoke its name, iiwi , again and again, like the eulogy a child might sing for himself if every last relative had died of the plague. I want that place to be, forever. I will never step on that soft moss again, I don’t want to leave any more footprints, but I would give anything for that scarlet iiwi to find a mate and produce two small eggs and a future of songs among those ferns. I felt sorrow for being human there and ached for the ignorance of my kind, who seem always to arrive in paradise thinking only of our next meal. For this bowl of lentils—a pork chop, a can of sliced pineapple rings—we sold our birthright to paradise and infected Hawaii with a plague on its native kind.
    This story of pigs and forest is a tale about possession. A pig can be owned; an iiwi can’t. Pigs are a human invention, as are cows, Chihuahuas, and house cats. Over thousands of years our ancestors transformed wild things into entirely new species that they named food, work, or companionship. These beasts are alive, as surely as the yeast that makes our bread is alive, but they are animals only by our definition, not by nature’s. They have no natural habitat. However much we may love them, or not, they are our things, like our houses and vehicles. When cats or dogs or pigs go wild, the effect on nature is something like what would happen if our useful yeast were to transform itself into an Ebola virus: It begins a