Responding to Garry Trompf’s Islands, the Humanities and environmental conservation

My comments are last in this session, and I want to start by very briefly sharing what it is I have gleaned from this paper before presenting a number of observations that have been prompted by my readings of it.

We have been treated to a paper of wide scope and detail, and to a work that has a simple elegance of structure. For example, Garry leads us without haste over conceptual terrain that marks out some of the salient features of islands. His work contours a discussion about conservation, and posits a particular shape and vital purpose to the humanities. In addition, Garry invites us to consider the power of myths and of legends and of histories as these relate to islands, their peoples, their resources, and the exploitation or conservation of both.

He bids us to reflect on the ways in which the varied disciplines that comprise the humanities have informed, or do now or could sometime inform, our understanding of island life and the conservation of such life.

And he reminds us that islands provide object lessons best not to dismiss or ignore. What lessons have I derived?