Joe

Some food for thought but, as you say, "visiting a rain forest does not
automatically make one an environmentalist" and this guy is obviously an
economist who thinks he has learnt the "cradle-to-grave" concept from
the rain forest. I particularly like his metaphor of Microsoft being the
mangrove swamp of industry. I think the corollary of your statement must
be that every environmentalist must make at least one visit to the rain
forest to see what it is all about. I've visited several, mostly in
Asia. The one I would like to visit most, now, but have never managed
to, despite several trips to Washington State, is the world's only
temperate rain forest in that peninsula SW of Seattle.

The description of the conversion of mangrove to rain forest is very
much a simplification. In fact, it goes through four or five stages and
requires a total animal-vegetable symbiosis. The best place to see this,
IMHO, is the northern coast of Borneo, in E. Malaysia or parts of Brunei
(mangroves are not just one species, but umpteen which have developed in
parallel, so that the mangroves in S. Florida are different from those
in S. America, different again in Africa and again in SE Asia). The
reason for this is that here, the transition from estuarine coast to
jungle takes place, in some regions, over 2 or 3 kilometres,
representing centuries of development. This is why there is such a
unique flora and fauna there and the key transitional plant is the nipa
palm. The important point is that there is not just one rain forest, but
several. The true, primary rain forest, with the huge trees and the
triple canopy, with no undergrowth, is an eerie, dark world almost
devoid of visible life at ground level: it is almost like a cathedral
where trees form the pillars but the organ music is replaced by the
sounds of nature high above your head. If this is devastated, whether
for timber, minerals (such as tin), or "slash and burn" agriculture, it
is condemned to a permanent death because it has taken literally many
millennia to reach its stable form and its fragile, 100-150 mm thick
layer of relatively humus-rich soil. Secondary rain forest, consisting
of smaller trees and thick undergrowth, is the final stage of the
development from mangrove swamps and will eventually replace destroyed
primary forest: this is the "jungle" of popular imagination, requiring a
machete to penetrate through it. The key difference is that light
reaches the ground, so that photosynthesis does occur.

I strongly urge everyone to visit one or more tropical rain forests, if
they haven't already done so, just to see how fragile this biotope is.
If they wish to see nature at its best, then Sarawak is a good example.
The mangroves are fantastic, the primary jungle also, if you take a
river trip inland, but you can also see the result of man's interference
in the 100 km radius round the capital, Kuching, mainly for agricultural
reasons. The animal life is also fantastic: proboscis monkeys, several
macaque species, gibbons, orang-outans, estuarine crocs, hornbills,
bats, snakes. mudskippers (land fish in the swamps), hermit crabs and so
on are the key ones but the most frightening one I came across was a
head-to-head encounter with a bearded pig, a large wild boar, about a
full metre high (I'm not sure which of us was the more scared!). What is
really interesting though is how different ethnic species of man have
interacted with nature, starting with the urban, mercantile Chinese and
Malays, the Iban (Sea Dayaks) who are the main suburban and agricultural
people, the Bidayuh (Land Dayaks) who are more at ease with nature,
right up to various tribes of forest nomads, such as the Penan, who
still hunt with blowpipes, if the Malaysian government would only let
them be with sufficient forest to allow them to be sustainable and to
live in harmony with nature. OTOH, if you wish to see how man can really
destroy the jungle, several regions of Indonesia are best for wholesale
forest destruction for timber or the region between KL and Ipoh in W.
Malaysia for the results of tin mining. Amazonian destruction is more
difficult, because the vast distances make communications hard.

Just some thoughts, Joe, from someone who calls himself an amateur
environmentalist who likes to keep his feet on the ground and who really
struggles to practice what he preaches in a hostile world. He does not
call himself an ecologist because this word has, unfortunately,
developed activist pseudo-political connotations.

Best regards,

Brian


[log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> Hello to all,
>
> Some of you may have already seen this but for those who have not, the
> article at the address below is an interesting one.
>
> I don't agree with all of the authors thoughts and comments and
> visiting a rain forest does not automatically make one an
> environmentalist but it has some good things to think about.
>
> Best to all,
> Joe
>
> http://www.globalfutures.org/bills-speech.htm