No land on Earth stands further away from a continent than the Hawaiian Islands. South of the archipelago, the Big Island is the higest mountain of the world - if measured from its abyssal base. It's the only place I know where in just a few hours, you can snorkle with sea turtles and dolphins, then climb 4,205 m above seal level, walk in the snow hit by a strong altitude-sickness, and go back to the seashore to walk right on a viscous lava flow that bursts itself into the ocean's waves.

But Hawaii is a also zone of mass extinction, one of the biggest ecological catastroph we know about. Hawaii occupies only 0.2% of the land area of the United States, but nearly 75% of the nation's documented plant and bird extinctions are from Hawaii. Invasion by exotic species, imported diseases that wipe native species out, suburban sprawl, habitat destruction by hooved animals have added up to devastation for native animals, plants and the ecological connections that bind them. If there is one thing experts all agree on, it's that the situation is only going to get worse, as human impacts keep growing.

The last two times I went to the Hawaiian Islands, I worked for Hamer Environmental to study the impact of aerial structures on endangered seabirds. Hawaiian petrels and Newell's Shearwaters are attracted to the city lights and collide with the power lines on their way to their nesting ground in the mountains. Click here for more information.