Arthur Whistler

Following his death the Samoa Conservation Society and Samoa's Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment established the Art Whistler Memorial Garden at the Vailima Botanical Gardens to collect and display rare and endangered species, many of which were categorised by Whistler. The garden formally opened in August 2021.

Whistler was showing symptoms of COVID-19 in March 2020. He sought treatment at a Hawaii urgent care facility, but was not tested for coronavirus, despite his symptoms. He tested positive for COVID-19 on March 8 and was placed on life support on March 10, but his condition continued to deteriorate and he died at Kaiser Moanalua Hospital in Honolulu on April 2 at the age of 75. His death was Hawaii's third fatality related to the COVID-19 pandemic. 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.

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 logging and tourism led to the deforestation of much of the country's rainforests. As a result, he 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. Due to this work he was known in Samoa as Tupu o le vao — "king of the forest".

Whistler was born near Death Valley in San Bernardino County, California. He earned a BA in biology from the University of California, Riverside, in 1965; an MA in botany, from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1966, and PhD 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.

Wayne Arthur Whistler (October 12, 1944 – April 2, 2020) was an American ethnobotanist, academic and writer. 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.