| Irreplaceable Forest | See Corner's lament |
| It
is beyond comprehension how anyone should ever attempt to accord a
'natural value' to a man-made (multi-million-dollar) botanic garden
and make it a case for environmental balance atuned to mitigation
(or justification) for the removal of nature areas for economic development.
It would be as good as saying - 'see, how well we put back what we
have cut down with monies that come from economic gains, and hey,...
we are adding to social progress too!' How absurb ! A forest lost,
is lost forever. It is irreplaceable. T.C. Whitmore * said it best - 'But the forest is more than just a collection of trees ...'; and perhaps, nothing less vivid a picture of a forest painted in the life of a single tree so eloquently portrayed by E.J.H. Corner below. Can there be real 'social progress' when 'moral progress' retards in the wake of an ill-conceived precept advocated by this generation and passed on to the next ? Read on and tell me... |
| 'On its canopy birds and butterflies sip nectar. On its branches orchids, aroids and parasitic mistletoes offer flowers to other birds and insects. Among them ferns creep, lichens encrust, and centipedes and scorpions lurk. In the rubble that falls among the epiphytic roots and stems, ants build nests and even earthworms and snails find home. |  |
There
is a minute munching of caterpillars and the silent sucking of plant bugs.
On any of these things, plant or animal, a fungus may be growing. Through
the branches spread spiders' webs. Frogs wait for insects, and a snake
glides. There are nests of birds, bees and wasps. Along a limb pass wary
monkeys, a halting squirrel, or a bear in search of honey; the shadow
of an eagle startles them.
Through dead snags fungus and beetle have attacked the
wood. There are fungus brackets nibbled round the edge and bored by other
beetles. A woodpecker taps. In a hole a hornbill broods. Where the main
branches diverge, a strangling fig finds grip, a bushy epiphyte has temporary
root, and hidden sleeps a leopard. In deeper shade black termites have
built earthy turrets and smothered the tips of a young creeper.
Hanging from the limbs are cables of lianes which have
hoisted themselves through the undergrowth and suspended by their grapnels.
On their swinging stems grow an epiphytic ginger whose red seeds a bird
is pecking. Where rain trickles down the trunk filmy ferns, mosses, and
slender green algae maintain their delicate lives. Round the base are
fragments of bark and coils of old lianes, on which other ferns are growing.
Between the buttress-roots a tortoise is eating toadstools.
An elephant has rubbed the bark and, in its deepened footmarks tadpoles,
mosquito larvae and threadworms swim. Pigs squeal and drum in search of
fallen fruit, seeds and truffles. In the humus and under-soil, insects,
fungi and bacteria and all sorts of 'animalculae' participate with the
tree roots in decomposing everything that dies.'
- Corner, E.J.H. (1964). The Life
of Plants. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London.
*
source: An Introduction to Tropical Rain Forests, Oxford University Press,
1990
Critical
reading recommended:
1) 'Economy
v Environment? No, it's about achieving balance' by Asad Latif in STRAITS
TIMES, 26 Jan 2005.
2) 'Putting a price to nature: too mean a method' by Marcus Ng aka Budak.
See details at - http://budak.blogs.com/the_annotated_budak/2005/01/ggg.html
3) 'Costly comparisons' by N. Sivasothi.
See details at - http://habitatnews.nus.edu.sg//index.php?entry=/articles/20050131-economicvaluation.txt