by Jane Goodall
Warriors Fighting for the Forests
I remember hearing, in the early 1970s, about a group of women in India who were desperate to save the forest, on which they depended for their livelihood, from being cut down. So they went and joined hands around some of the trees. I was inspired by the story, and though I didn’t know much about it, I talked about these women during some of the lectures I was giving while teaching at Stanford University.
Since then I’ve learned more about this—including the fact that there are many different versions of how it began! However, it seems that one of the leaders of the movement suggested that when their local forest was due to be felled by the forestry department, the villagers should hug the trees. One woman, Bachni Devi, heeded his advice and she persuaded about twenty others, mostly women, to join hands around the tree trunks. The plan worked, the foresters gave up, and the trees were saved. News of that first protest spread throughout the region, and soon there were hundreds of decentralized and locally autonomous initiatives, led mostly by village women, embracing trees in defiance of the foresters.
Thus was the Chipko movement founded. Chipko is a Hindi word meaning “hug or embrace,” and its philosophy is rooted in satyagraha, the form of nonviolent protest policy practiced by M. K. Gandhi during his successful campaign to force the British to leave India.
One of the key figures in the fight to save the forests was Sunderlal Bahuguna, for it was his personal appeal to Mrs. Indira Gandhi, then prime minister, that led to a major victory—the 1980 green-felling ban. This prohibited all cutting down of trees for fifteen years throughout the Kumaon Himalayas in Uttar Pradesh. And then, to ensure that this ban would be well understood, he undertook an extraordinary five-thousand-kilometer (over three thousand miles) walk across the Himalayas, spreading the message to all the villages he passed through. Eventually the Chipko movement spread throughout India and led to a ban on clear-cutting also in the Western Ghats and the Vindhyas. What a triumph.
There is something about ancient trees that rouses deep passions in those who care. And this is fortunate, because some of these people then dedicate their lives to protecting the forests and the humans and other animals who live in them. They are many, but some stand out because of their passion, their courage—and their persistence.
Richard St. Barbe Baker (1889–1982) was, without doubt, one of the greatest advocates for the protection and restoration of forests ever. His love for trees began when he was a small child growing up near a pine-and-beech forest in Hampshire—I described the special childhood relationship he developed with a beech tree in chapter 3. After serving in World War I he became a forester, and for the rest of his life worked to help protect forests around the globe, starting in Kenya and then working in Tanzania and Ghana. He also helped reforestation efforts in all the countries bordering the Sahara. And he extended his efforts to parts of the Middle East, Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand. It is estimated that during his lifetime at least twenty-six trillion trees were planted by organizations he started or advised and assisted. He himself planted his last tree—in Canada—when he was ninety-two years old, just days before his death. The NGO he started, the International Tree Foundation, has programs in many countries around the world. An amazing man with an amazing life.
John Seed, a real warrior of the forest, fights in a different way. He became one of the first Westerners to take direct action against the timber industry, starting in his native Australia but subsequently initiating and assisting campaigns in many other parts of the world. He is one of the more inspirational and successful people on the forest-conservation scene—as a result of his interventions, hundreds of thousands of square miles of rain forest have been protected around the world. In June 2011, I was lucky enough to spend a few hours with this amazing man. We walked along the tamed beach of a Sydney marina, then climbed just up off the path and sat on the grass under a tree overlooking the water. And talked. I could have listened to his stories for days. Tales of his hippie youth, when he first began his tireless efforts to save the rain forests of the world, tales of the many extraordinary experiences that have enriched his life—and ours—since.
His hair is gray now, but he radiates peaceful vitality and quiet strength. During his years working for the trees he has clearly absorbed something of their stoic endurance.
John began life as a sculptor in metal, taking steel from metal stamping machines and transforming it into a “spiritual cornucopia of organic shapes.” In his old hippie days he moved into a commune, thinking he would organize meditation retreats and grow organic food. Then one day a timber company moved in and started logging the rain forest next door. The chainsaws were so loud, he told me, that he couldn’t meditate anymore—and that spurred him to take action.
Forest warrior John Seed is one of the first Westerners to take direct action against the timber industry. He has saved huge areas of rain forest in many parts of the world. (CREDIT: TRISH ROBERTSON)
In 1979 John joined one of the first groups of idealistic Westerners determined to actually do something to try to prevent the destruction of a forest. They followed Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence, putting themselves in the path of bulldozers that were approaching to fell trees, or actually climbing into the trees themselves. Tactics very familiar today—though at that time nothing like this had ever been done to protect a forest.
The loggers still managed to cut down some trees, but were nonetheless hindered in many ways, and police were sent in to arrest the protesters. First they had to get them out of the trees. TV crews followed both sides, and there was growing sympathy for the activists among the general public. When the Australian premier finally called for a suspension of logging, it was a pivotal moment for the environmental movement in both Australia and the world. Known as the Terania Creek Campaign, it achieved international prominence.
For the next two years there were further successful direct actions on behalf of the subtropical rain forests of New South Wales. Then John turned his attention to the temperate rain forests of Tasmania—it was easy to get the attention of the media at that time, and newspapers ran photos of people chaining themselves to bulldozers or climbing up the trees that were in their path. But gradually the public lost interest in these images—or, as John puts it, “society developed antibodies” against such actions. Which meant that when the protesters were delaying the building of a road in the far north of Queensland that would give loggers access to the pristine tropical forests at Cape Tribulation, the media was no longer interested. John remembers “calling a newspaper and being told ‘ring us back when there’s some blood.’ ”
Still, they managed to stop the road building until the rainy season prevented further work. And then, in John’s words:
“The following year, while waiting for the road builders to arrive, we found a place where there was only a narrow space between the mountainside and the ocean, and here we dug holes in the ground and when the bulldozers arrived, people buried themselves up to the neck in the path of the machinery so that they had either to be dug up or crushed, there was no way to get around them.
“At first the police used shovels to try and dig people out but eventually called in a backhoe. Pictures of these huge metal buckets digging inches from protestors’ faces, when they could not even protect their heads from flying rocks, gave us the image that we needed—a nonviolent equivalent of ‘blood’—and it was these images at the top of the news around the country that finally put the issue into the national spotlight and led to the protection of hundreds of thousands of hectares of tropical rain forests as World Heritage national parks.”
Thanks to John’s tireless efforts, large areas of forest have been protected also in Papua New Guinea, Ecuador, and India. When he started the Rainforest Information Centre in Australia in 1981, it was the first organization in the world to declare rain forest protection as its primary mission. The US Rainforest Action Network was the second such organization, and he ha
s started many similar organizations in different parts of the world since. He has worked to provide sustainable development projects for indigenous forest dwellers tied to the protection of their forests.
Knowing how desperately important it is to reach the minds and hearts of as many people as possible, John began to take his “road show” from country to country, showing the films he has worked on, making CDs of his songs, and giving talks. He is now deeply involved in helping people to understand the importance of climate change. In my mind he is one of the greatest heroes alive today. His efforts have saved hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest.
At about the same time as John began his work in Australia, another defender of trees was tackling the shocking deforestation in Kenya. Professor Wangari Muta Maathai—what an extraordinary woman: dynamic, inspirational, and enormously courageous. She was born in a small village in Kenya, got a scholarship to study in the United States, and was the first woman from East Africa to get a PhD. She became involved with environmental and women’s issues on her return to Kenya, and in the mid-1970s, which is when I first met her in Kenya, she planted her first tree nursery. This led to her famous Green Belt Movement to combat deforestation, the water crisis, desertification, and rural hunger.
She began traveling around the country and encouraging rural women to plant indigenous trees from seeds they collected in the forest. She gave workshops on the importance of protecting and restoring watersheds and riverbanks. She found funds to give the women a very tiny stipend for each seedling that was planted out, and even managed to give a little money to husbands or sons who could read and keep accurate accounts. In effect she was using tree planting as a means for improving livelihoods and self-determination for women, one of her main issues.
In 1998 the government tried to take over an area of public forestland, which they planned to give to their supporters to develop. Wangari was outraged. She organized a group of supporters to go there and plant trees. When she arrived with a few members of parliament and some media, she found the area closely guarded by a group of men, who attacked them. Wangari, several dignitaries, and members of the media were injured. Fortunately Wangari’s supporters filmed the event, and the TV coverage triggered international outrage. Eventually the international investors, mostly from the United Kingdom and the United States, pulled out, leaving Wangari and her supporters the victors.
Wangari Muta Maathai (1940–2011), founder of the famous Green Belt Movement. Despite being beaten and arrested for her efforts to combat deforestation in Kenya, she never gave up. Eventually her movement led to the planting of hundreds of thousands of trees around urban areas in many parts of Africa. (CREDIT: JEFF HOROWITZ)
Wangari’s programs became ever more successful, and eventually, with funding from UNEP (the United Nations Environment Programme), she was able to establish the Green Belt Movement throughout Africa. People came to Nairobi from fifteen different countries to find out how they could start similar initiatives. Thus was the Pan African Green Belt Network born.
Wangari never gave up—not when the government closed down some of her programs, nor when, at least twice, she was beaten and arrested. It only made her more determined. For her work she received countless invitations to speak at international conferences, where she and I often met. And she was given many prizes and awards, culminating in the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. During her lifetime thirty to forty million trees were planted in Kenya alone. The forests lost a true defender in 2011 when she died from cancer.
Just recently I met another outstanding defender of the forest, Chief Almir of the Surui people, who dared to stand up to illegal loggers in Brazil. As a result there is a price on his head. He is back in Brazil now, but for a while he left the country and had to carry on his fight from outside, speaking movingly and eloquently at international conferences.
It is the same in India—the renowned environmental activist Vandana Shiva wrote, “Every forest area has become a war zone. Every tribal is defined a ‘Maoist’ by a militarised corporate state appropriating the land and natural resources of the tribals. And every defender of the rights of the forest and forest dwellers is being treated as a criminal.”
Mike Fay, like Sunderlal Bahuguna in India, decided to raise awareness by walking. As a result of his walk across Congo and Gabon, which I mentioned in chapter 4, some wonderful forests have received protection. He and Nick Nichols met with President Omar Bongo of Gabon and talked to him about the magic of the forest world in his country. They showed him film and slides taken by Nick, and Mike told me that President Bongo had been moved to tears—and, more importantly, was moved to create thirteen new national parks in the rich, unlogged forests of his country. He even withdrew some concessions already committed to logging companies.
And after my visit to the pristine forests of the Goualougo Triangle, Mike and I were able to meet with President Denis Sassou-Nguesso of the Republic of the Congo to seek protection for the “Last Eden.” Our mission was successful, and as a result those trees that so inspired me have a chance to remain standing, perhaps for hundreds of years to come.
Of course, much money is needed to create an infrastructure that will enable these parks to be properly protected. And there is always the danger that another president might overturn the legislation. It is the same everywhere: even when forests are protected by law, economic interests often take precedence over conservation interests—in many of America’s great national parks, for example, mining and petroleum companies have been permitted to carry out their destructive operations.
My friend and National Geographic explorer Mike Fay has raised awareness and helped protect forests by undertaking marathon treks through the world’s most precious and endangered forests. Here Mike is crossing the Goualougo swamps with Pygmy guides in 1999. The photographer, Michael (Nick) Nichols, told me that Mike confiscated the shotgun days before from a poaching camp but the men in the team were so proud of the weapon that they refused to destroy it until they finally grew tired of carrying it. (CREDIT: COURTESY MICHAEL NICHOLS, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY)
Fortunately, there are a growing number of people in governments and NGOs around the globe working on introducing new legislation to better protect our forests and the indigenous people living in them. On several occasions I have lobbied on Capitol Hill and written letters in support of Save America’s Forests.
Best Forestry Practices
There is no doubt that it is desperately important to fight for the protection of old-growth forests. And it would be wonderful if we could save them all. But as, in the short term, this will not happen, it is necessary that we also push hard for the best forestry practices within the timber companies themselves. Many foresters I have met care deeply about sustainable logging and are as shocked by clear-cutting as we are. Sometimes this is only to ensure the continuation of their own industry, but a great many have a true respect for the forest itself. Unfortunately the extraction of timber today involves huge sums of money and there are many opportunities for corrupt politicians to make tidy sums on the side.
About fifteen years ago I organized a private meeting with the heads of several of the biggest European timber companies to discuss, among other things, their “code of conduct.” This specifies that a given section of forest can be logged only every twenty or thirty years, and then only trees of a certain size may be felled, with a strict limit on how many can be removed from a given area. They told me of one problem they were facing: government officials in Zaire (now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo) would not allow the loggers to follow the code—they demanded that smaller trees be felled, and closer together, so that there would be more timber and more money. (One good outcome of that meeting was that these big companies agreed to add rules relating to the protection of endangered species to their “code.”)
Sustainable logging is one thing—but is it possible both to protect the soul of a forest and also to extract timber? One forest in British Columbia has be
en logged for some forty years and still retains much of the essence of a wild forest. Aptly named “Wildwood,” it was managed by an inspirational forester, Merve Wilkinson, until his death in 2011. As a young man he had borrowed money to buy the land in order to save it from developers. He had refused to construct paved roads, and felled trees were often dragged out by horses to the little mill that he had constructed on his land.
I was thrilled to meet Merve when I was visiting British Columbia about ten years ago. We walked through the forest on the dirt trails, and he explained that he knew all the bigger trees individually and never felled one until it was just past its prime. He used only natural methods to control tree diseases, he told me. “And,” he said, “there are more species of mammals and birds today than there were when I first started.”
He had never felled the ancient trees in his forest, and they still stood, reaching way up into the sky, the guardians. That was why, I believe, Wildwood, although it had been logged for years, retained that sense of timelessness that is, for me, one of the most important attributes of a forest.
Merve’s modest logging operations made quite enough money for his unassuming way of life, and for years he provided many people with jobs. And he passed his knowledge on—forestry students came from all over the world to learn about his successful and sustainable methods. Except students from the nearby university, for whom Wildwood was forbidden territory—the university received a good deal of funding from the timber industry and forbade their students to attend Merve’s workshops.