by Jane Goodall
Many people have become separated from their food and from the beingness of plants in our modern, high-speed materialistic society, but it is my belief that as more and more of us turn to growing our own food and harvesting it for our own table, some of the old connectedness with the plant world is returning to our lives.
Indeed, I pray that this is true, for so many of the world’s plants are endangered and desperately needing all the help we can give them. Fortunately there are those who do care, very much, and who are working passionately to save them.
Chapter 17
Saving Forests
Richard St. Barbe Baker (1889–1982) was one of the earliest foresters to realize the terrible harm that was being done to the planet through deforestation. He saved and restored forests all over the world, including in many parts of Africa. It’s estimated that at least 26 trillion trees were planted during his lifetime by organizations he founded or advised. (CREDIT: BARRIE OLDFIELD)
When I arrived at Gombe in 1960, the forests, home to the chimpanzees, stretched for miles to the north, south, and east of the park (the west is bounded by Lake Tanganyika). But by the early 1990s, when I flew over Gombe and the surrounding area in a small plane, I realized with dismay that outside the tiny, thirty-square-mile park virtually all the trees had gone. Only in the really steep-sided ravines, where even the most desperate people could not farm, could I see a few small forest remnants. Chimpanzees and most other animals bigger than a mongoose had gone. Humans were struggling to survive on the overfarmed, eroded soils. It was clear that there were more people settled there than the land could support, people too poor to buy food elsewhere, cutting down the last of the forest in their desperate struggle to grow crops to feed themselves and their families.
The Gombe forest is just one among thousands worldwide that survive as fragments, cut off from other forests or fragments of forests by human activities. Nature’s bounty is depleted as a result of poverty, on the one hand, and, on the other, the unsustainable lifestyle of a growing number of the elite and the middle class. It is the consumer-driven, materialistic lifestyle, exported from the West to the developing nations, that creates the market for products from the forests and that encourages our greedy desire for more and more stuff that only too often we don’t really need. As Gandhi famously said, “Nature can supply human need, but not human greed.”
Huge areas of forest are being destroyed or degraded by the extraction of timber, minerals, and oil; by monoculture tree plantations, ranching, and farming; and by commercial developments. The list is long, and we are shocked when we hear of the number of animals and plants that become locally or totally extinct each week, the spread of the deserts, the shrinking supplies of freshwater. It strikes terror—and anger—into the hearts of all of us who care about the natural world and the future of our children. Even “protected” forests are often at risk.
In fact, it is all so grim that some people who start off fighting to save forests, or a particular piece of forest, simply become too depressed to carry on. While I can well understand the depression, we must not, must not, must not give up. Instead, we have to fight harder and support the efforts of those who are working tirelessly, from various perspectives, to save what is left.
Of course the destruction of our forests is not a new phenomenon. Since the dawn of history, people through the ages have sought wood for building cities and warships, and cut down forests to have access to the fertile forest soils for growing crops.
It is not my intent to delve deeply into these stories of past destruction but simply to point out that the onslaught of “man” against “tree” is as old as the hills. Back in 1875 that remarkable priest Père Armand David recorded what was going on in China. “From one year’s end to another,” he wrote, “one hears the hatchet and the axe cutting the most beautiful trees. The destruction of these primitive forests, of which there are only fragments in all of China, progresses with unfortunate speed. They will never be replaced. With the great trees will disappear a multitude of shrubs which cannot survive except in their shade; also all the animals small and large which need the forest in order to live and perpetuate their species.”
He went on to write, “It is unbelievable that the Creator could have placed so many diverse organisms on the Earth, each one so admirable in its sphere, so perfect in its role, only to permit man, his masterpiece, to destroy them forever.”
About the same time, the redoubtable plant hunter E. H. “Chinese” Wilson, when collecting in Japan, came upon the stump of a huge yakusugi cedar that had been felled in 1586, when it was estimated to be over three thousand years old. It is now known as Wilson’s Stump. The circumference of the stump measures some 45 feet, and it is about 4.5 feet tall. The stump is hollow and the floor space inside is 16.5 square meters (178 square feet)—quite big enough for three or more people to stand inside. It is situated on the Okabuhodo (“big trees”) Trail in Yakushima Island. Many tourists go there to marvel at the huge cedars, and one of them told me that it is very spiritual inside Wilson’s Stump. Someone has erected a little shrine in there, and there is the sound of running water.
When I read about the felled giant, I felt a surge of anger. Was not the tree, quite as much as the Homo sapiens who destroyed it, a “masterpiece of the Creator”?
Another massacre took place in the ancient redwood and Douglas fir forests along the West Coast of the United States. I had firsthand experience of the devastation that was wrought, and that is still continuing today, when Mike Fay invited me to join him and environmental activist Lindsey Holm for two days during their walk through the past range of these forests. It was truly a marathon undertaking—they told me the forests had once covered some two million acres (3,125 square miles) along America’s West Coast. Heavy logging began in 1880 after a gold rush brought countless people to the region who, when gold was not found in great quantities, turned to exploiting the forests for the rapid development of San Francisco and other cities.
Just being in the forest with those giant trees, and with the stumps of so many that had been felled, was humbling. I felt I was in the presence of an ancient wisdom. Sometimes I sensed a sadness, as though the trees were dreaming of times past—when the world was young, before the white man invaded and raped their forest; at other times I sensed an anger because of all the terrible destruction. But most strongly of all I sensed a vast endurance.
Inexorably, century after century, the vandalism of the world’s forests has continued. In 2002 I attended the fiftieth-anniversary meeting of the Association Technique Internationale des Bois Tropicaux in Rome. One speaker, reviewing the history of the organization, described how, after World War II, it was clear that the European forests could not provide enough timber to rebuild the cities and towns destroyed by the years of bombing. And so, he said, the European timber companies got together and planned how they would divide up the forests of Asia, South America, and Africa so that they would all have access to the necessary resources.
I listened with mounting horror to this account of premeditated plunder—it was a terrifying new chapter in the sorry litany of rich nations stealing the natural resources from other parts of the world. An early indication of the dark side of globalization, when giant and ruthless multinational companies would gradually seize ever-greater control over governments, economies, natural resources, small businesses—and lives. Moreover, our human populations are growing everywhere, so that forests are increasingly cut down to provide fertile soil for growing crops and feeding livestock, and for space to live. So while it is true that humans have been exploiting forests for hundreds of years, the situation is now infinitely more challenging. We must strive, on the one hand, to alleviate poverty and help billions of peasants to find environmentally sustainable lifestyles, and, on the other hand, we must encourage the growing well-to-do societies to do well with less, for it is this “consumer society,” with its desire for ever more “stuff,” that gives such power to the big corporations.
And make no mistake, this is the hardest battle—fighting vested business interests, powerful and unscrupulous multinationals, and corruption.
Today, a huge threat for any tropical forest that is not fully protected is China’s voracious appetite for timber for building materials to feed her rapidly growing economy. And because of the migration of rural populations seeking new livelihoods in urban areas—said to be the greatest migration in human history (four hundred new cities need to be built!)—China is buying timber (and mineral) concessions in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Canada, wherever forests have been left standing. Western countries did exactly the same thing—but China is very much larger.
Of course, China is not alone. The Canadian government is allowing the exploitation of the tar sands in Alberta that is leading to the desecration of thousands of square miles of pristine forests. American agribusiness is persuading African governments, with false promises of the wealth it will bring, to lease (or sell) hundreds of square miles of their precious rain forests for the growing of monocrops or biofuel. And on and on.
Let me give just a few examples of the massive scale of some of the operations that are destroying our forests and that must be tackled—and somehow stopped. Or that must be conducted in a much, much more responsible and sustainable way.
The Problem with Tree Plantations for Our Paper and Timber
Countless old-growth forests have been destroyed to make way for industrial plantations, especially for growing pines, firs, acacia, eucalyptus, and teak. Plantation wood is sold for timber. It is also destined to become wood pulp for paper. This book is written on paper, and the better it sells, the more paper it will use—which is why we insisted it be printed on paper that is at least partially made from recycled products. It is a fact that the world uses an enormous amount of paper. How many pause to think where this paper comes from? Most of it started as trees that we cut down and ground into pulp. Incalculable damage to forests around the world is caused by our use of paper.
Most people assume that although using old-growth forests is clearly a bad thing, if trees are specially grown for paper, it should be okay. In some cases this is undoubtedly true, but sadly this is often not the case. A group of NGOs, including WWF and Greenpeace, along with local groups, carried out case studies in seven countries to document the negative environmental impact of industrial tree plantations for pulpwood. They found in many cases that natural forests had been destroyed and replaced with monocultures of fast-growing species that, only too often, needed large amounts of water. This had caused streams and rivers to dry up.
Despite promises by the companies involved, rural poverty had not been alleviated but had actually increased, and far fewer jobs had been created than the villagers had been led to expect. Moreover, the paper mills built to process the wood not only used a great deal of energy, they were also very polluting. (I know, from driving past a paper mill in Maine in the United States, that the smell is truly terrible: I asked a local how he could stand it and he replied, “We tolerate it because it is the smell of money!”)
In all seven countries the investigators found that the introduction of pulpwood plantations had led to protests (sometimes violent ones) from local communities. The Brazilian Landless Workers Movement—the largest land-rights movement in the world—has repeatedly targeted pulpwood plantations.
One company in particular has caused enormous environmental and social damage: Asia Pulp & Paper (APP), part of the giant Sinar Mas Group (a Chinese/Indonesian conglomerate). It has been a focus of environmental and human rights groups for years. As a result of mounting international protest, the company has just announced a very progressive forest policy that, if respected, could be equated to a “zero deforestation” pact.
The Hidden Cost of Oil
Then there are the often rapacious operations of the petrochemical companies. I learned a little bit about the situation during a visit to Ecuador a few years ago. Groups of indigenous people were uniting as they tried desperately to prevent oil companies from operating in their ancestral lands. Unless there was some miracle, I was told, their rain forests would be invaded, and many of the people would be forced to leave.
I met with several tribal leaders of the Achuar and Shuar people, and they told me of past persecution and present fears for their future. I was so upset and moved by their story, I agreed to join them for a press conference, during which we made a passionate plea to protect the forest and its indigenous people. But the hold of the petrochemical companies over the government was strong—and the explorations and destruction began anyway.
Our thirst for oil in the developed world is leading to untold destruction in the developing countries. Everyone knows what this has meant for the Middle East, the US Gulf, and Alaska—these things are always discussed on TV. But few people think about the devastation that is ongoing in Africa—except, perhaps, for Shell’s operations in Nigeria, which have received a great deal of coverage.
In the early 1990s I flew in a small plane over parts of the Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville), Gabon, and Angola. We flew quite low over the rain forest canopy and I was shown some of the concessions made by the governments of those countries to different petroleum companies, including Shell, BP, and Elf. I was horrified by the devastation that had been inflicted on the environment: the straight paths that had been slashed through the green virgin forest for seismic-drilling operations, and in one place a huge treeless clearing that had been hacked out of the forest where the workers of one of the companies were based. It showed a complete lack of respect for the integrity of the forest and its people.
Those of us who know what is going on are deeply concerned that oil deposits have been discovered in the so-far-unspoiled Albertine Rift area of Uganda, where JGI is working to protect chimpanzees and their forests.
Nor should we forget the monstrous threat created by the runaway desire to grow more and more crops for biofuel. Too many people believe biofuel is the answer to our energy needs. I just wish there was more TV coverage of the vast areas of African forest that have been destroyed in order to grow monoculture crops to be transformed into energy so that Ms. X can drive her car to the supermarket every time she forgets a packet of potato crisps rather than walk or take a bus, or every time Mr. Y wants a new, fast gas-guzzling car to impress his new girlfriend.
More and more Africans are protesting, at the local level, as they begin to understand how their land is being stolen for profit—and sometimes demonstrations can pay off. When President Museveni of Uganda approved the clear-cutting of a forest block for conversion to sugarcane for biofuel, he was forced to cancel the deal when the citizens of Kampala took to the streets to protest. It was a protected forest and, they argued, it was protected for the good of the people of Uganda.
Forests and Food
I’ve already talked about the shocking impact of industrial farming on forested areas around the world. Here let me just mention the consequences of the desire of more and more people to eat more and more meat. Millions of acres of forest in many parts of the world are destroyed each year just to provide grazing or to grow corn for feeding cattle or other livestock. More than 60 percent of deforested land in the Brazilian Amazon ends up as cattle pasture.
I have seen this devastation with my own eyes in parts of Africa and Central America. It is just one more example of short-term thinking, illustrating the unscrupulous dealings of those who see the chance of making a quick buck. Not only will undisturbed forests continue to provide medicines and food for generations to come but, as we shall discuss, they also play a vital role in regulating global climate.
Another threat to many forest ecosystems is the commercial hunting of wild animals for food, known as the bushmeat trade. In a number of forests in the Congo Basin this trade has boomed, in part due to the presence of logging companies, since even if the loggers strictly follow the prescribed code of conduct, they nevertheless make roads deep into the heart of the forest.
Hunters follow the roads, often riding on the logging trucks, camp at the end of the road, and shoot everything edible. This slaughter, so different from the subsistence hunting that has been a way of life for forest people for centuries, is unsustainable. Truckloads of smoked meat from elephants, apes, monkeys, antelopes, pigs—and in fact any creature that can be sold in the markets or sent overseas—are being taken out of the forests.
And when the balance of an ecosystem is upset like this, things begin to go wrong. We are just beginning to understand the ways that all life-forms are interdependent. In Africa and Southeast Asia, for example, seeds are primarily dispersed by the great apes as well as by many other mammals and birds. Not long ago it was discovered that there are fewer seedlings growing in forests where there’s a lot of hunting and killing of animals, especially in forests where the number of primates has dropped significantly.
In other words, we must respect and protect the intricate mix of animal and plant species in order to preserve a natural forest’s health and long-term survival. So even if a timber company practices “sustainable” logging—taking out only trees above a certain size and then moving on to a new concession, leaving the area to regenerate over the next twenty or more years—if animals are being slaughtered indiscriminately, the forest will become increasingly unhealthy.
Illegal Logging
Toward the end of the 1990s I spent a few days visiting Birute Galdikas in the forests of Tanjung Puting National Park in Indonesia. We followed a river that wound through the trees, and from our small boat I saw a wild orangutan for the first time, and an old male proboscis monkey looking down at me over that long bulbous nose that makes this species one of the most extraordinary of all the monkeys. It is a wonderful rain forest—an area of great biodiversity. But everywhere I heard stories of the illegal logging that was going on—even within the park. In fact, the river that we followed to reach the orangutan camp was sometimes all but impassable because of the sheer volume of illegally logged tree trunks that were being floated out of the park. And now the forests of Indonesia have also been harmed by raging fires, often lit to clear huge areas for palm oil plantations—which are all too often used for biofuel. Because of all this, the orangutans are being driven to extinction.