Except it isn’t “the same thing”.

The point of the myth of Rapa Nui ecocide wasn’t “watch out for ecological damage”, it was “primitive barbarians are too stupid to manage their own resources, even when it kills them; we civilized people have to protect them by taking their island away from them and turning it into a park.”

It was a pro-colonialism meme.

When, y’know, in reality those resources, and the people, were being stolen by slavers.

So the lesson really should be “slavers are bad” … which we already knew.