Wayne Arthur Whistler ‑ an American ethnobotanist, academic and writer – died on April 2, 2020 from Covid-19.
Whistler, an adjunct professor at the University of Hawaii's Department of Botany, was an expert on tropical flora of the Pacific Islands, especially Samoa and Tonga.
Whistler was born near Death Valley in San Bernardino County, California. He earned a B.A. in Biology from the University of California, Riverside, in 1965; an M.A. in Botany, from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1966, and Ph.D. in Botany, from the University of Hawaii, in 1979. Once he completed his first two degrees, Whistler served in the Peace Corps as a teacher at Samoa College in Apia, Western Samoa (now known as Samoa). He then moved to Hawaii, where he completed a doctorate in botany from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, focusing on Samoan plant life, in 1979.
After completing his Ph.D., Whistler was appointed to a position at the National Tropical Botanical Garden on Kauai and served as a researcher affiliated with the Bishop Museum. He was an adjunct professor at University of Hawaii's Department of Botany and the Lyon Arboretum, a botanical garden managed by the university. He also owned a consulting company, Isle Botanica, and worked on projects focusing on plants in Fiji, the Marshall Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, Samoa, and Tonga.
Art Whistler worked on research projects throughout Oceania, but specialized in the flora of Samoa and Tonga. According to colleagues, he knew the Samoan language name for nearly every native plant in that country. Whistler had first lived in Samoa during the 1970s, before the logging and tourism led to the deforestation of much of the country's rainforests. As a result, Whistler spent several decades training Samoans about the country's flora and its uses. Whistler not only sought to protect Samoa's forests through his programs, but also resurrect some of Samoa's lost cultural and practical uses for its native plant life.
Whistler authored more than a dozen books on the botany and ethnobotany of the Pacific Islands, including "Rainforest Trees of Samoa”, "Polynesian Herbal Medicine", "Flowers of the Pacific Island Seashore", "Tongan Herbal Medicine", "Tropical Ornamentals: A Guide" (2000), and "Plants of the Canoe People: An Ethnobotanical Voyage through Polynesia", which focused on the plants utilized by Polynesian voyagers. He remained active as a researcher into his 70s, and was nearing completion on another book, "Flora of Samoa", at the time of his death in 2020. Whistler also wrote numerous scholarly and scientific articles.
Whistler was already showing symptoms of COVID-19 when he returned to Hawaii from a trip to Washington state to visit family on March 4, 2020. He sought treatment at a Hawaiian urgent care facility, but was not tested for coronavirus, despite his symptoms. Whistler was taken by ambulance to Kaiser Permanente Moanalua Medical Center in Honolulu on March 7 due to shortness of breath. He tested positive for COVID-19 on March 8 and was placed on life support on March 10th, but his condition continued to deteriorate over the next three weeks. Art Whistler died of COVID-19 at Kaiser Moanalua Hospital in Honolulu on April 2, 2020, at the age of 75. His death was Hawaii's third fatality related to the COVID-19 pandemic. He was survived by two children, Sean and Kira Matangi, and one sister.
At the time of his death, Whistler had nearly completed another book called "Flora of Samoa", which he had worked on for most of his professional life. The book was meant to be a definitive guide to Samoa's native plants.