Animals Spieces

Rainforests are the dynamic engine of the Earth’s biosphere; they fix carbon from the atmosphere, and the aspiration of plants in the rain forests produce nearly 10% of the oxygen we need to live (over 70% of the oxygen is generated by algae and plankton on the world’s oceans). They act as filters, pulling pollutants out of the air and fixing minerals into the soil, and help stem the tide of soil erosion; they are dynamic, and vividly alive, and critical to the life expectancy of our planet.

The biological diversity of tropical rain forests is staggering. Of the roughly 1.9 million named land species native to planet earth, over two thirds of them are found in tropical rain forests, ranging from Asia to South America to Africa, and places in between. 95% of the beneficial plants and plant compounds used for medicine, cosmetics and more are found in tropical rain forests, and this diversity is one of the great treasures of the world.

And it’s being lost, and lost rapidly, due to development and encroachment by urban areas. 30 years ago, rain forests covered 14% of the land area of the earth. It’s now under 6% and shrinking rapidly. At the current rate of deforestation, the last rain forest could be cut down by the 2040s.

There are several layers of impact to the loss of rainforest terrain and biomes. The first is simply conservation – when the last member of an animal species dies, that species has gone extinct. There is a strong emotional appeal to preserving wildlife, preserving wild lands, is very important to people. The second is climactic. Developing rain forest into cattle lands or crop lands leads to desertification, because of the shift in rainfall patterns and the fact that rainforest ecosystems keep most of the nutrients in plants, rather than the soil. The last impact is economic and medical; the rainforests are reservoirs of ecological diversity, and potentially domesticable plants and animals. Major research goes into finding plants and plant compounds that are tied to medical advances and present in plants and animals in the rainforest.

Rainforest deforestation impacts the planet, local and global economies. We’re going to focus on the local changes, and work from there, up the chain of events and causality. The typical cycle is that rain forest lands get clear cut and used for crop lands, then cattle grazing lands when the crops fail, then abandoned (or used for housing if conveniently located), when even grazing lands fail. This is part of a vicious cycle – most of the nutrients in a rain forest biome are tied in the living organisms, not the soil itself. When they’re clear cut, and burned, most of the resulting land is poor for agricultural use, low in phosphorus and nitrates, with soil that will blow away when the first wind storm hits. Soil exhaustion and salinization from over irrigation makes things even worse. This is, in many ways, analogous to strip-mining the soil, much as one would strip mine for copper or iron ore.

In an active and thriving rain forest, minerals and nutrients cycle quickly. When the rain forest is chopped down, those nutrients aren’t there any more. They’re shipped off as building materials or simply burned to clear the land. When grasses are seeded for cattle ranching, the soil is already starting depleted, and gets more so quickly. Eventually, the grass gets overgrazed, winds and rains come down and wash the soil into estuaries, and the process cycles even faster.

Erosion from deforestation is an attendant problem. The cover provided by the rain forest canopy keeps the tropical sunlight from baking the moisture out of the soils, and the aspiration of the plants helps capture rain clouds and seed clouds for rain. After the forest has been cleared, rainfall drops considerably. The tropical rain forest is a perfect example of a system where the combination of elements creates a whole greater than the sum of the parts.

There are several programs in place to try to preserve rain forests; the problems come from the fact that, in terms of local economics, it’s hard to convince a farmer that clearing more land to raise more crops and make more money is a losing proposition compared to leaving the rain forest in place as a refuge for vermin and predators. Trying to preserve islands of rainforest land hasn’t worked; the minimum area for viable rainforest biomes is around one hundred square miles, and most of the island experiments have been a tenth of that or less. Now, larger non governmental organizations are trying to buy up large tracts of rainforest land to keep as nature preserves, or to use as a basis for ecological tourism as a revenue stream to offset land use taxes, and the economic incentives for clear cutting.

Some efforts are being put in place to teach local farmers to work with the rain forest ecosystem rather than competing with it, using clearings in the rain forest for garden plots, and attempting to harvest the bounty of the rainforest directly. These have met a great deal of resistance because of the difficulties in balancing immediate short term profit with long term sustainability.

Here on the West Coast, the salt of circumspect washes steadily against the sea of verdure.  Greening and etheric expansion prevail, the sprouting, moiling flora thrives and reproduces, roots itself into a constant crescendo.  Here, none can turn away, because all directions are exposed.  And none can hold in check the wheeling force that rises, anymore than the tidal range of the ocean can cease its endless respiration.

 

Ashore, as the eye and heart grow sated on outward effulgence, and turn within to look across the forest of soulhood, the seeker encounters a buffeting wind, ceaselessly  wailing in sonic silence, blowing against all branching forces, delivering wind-in-bough-songs to a wild and vigilant audience.

 

In this coastal dominion we find a range of dwellers-in-habitat, from the diminutive wren, mouse-bird, in its fern-frond forest, up to old growth tree giants, who, in this ocean-edge environ, have evolved powerful rooting forces to withstand the great winds that prevail from across the waters.

In the morning light, the sea compels me to open my wings over the tide-flat of vision.  By day, I will sing you a tree.  I will dance you a stream.  And when evening falls, I will orate for you a sunset, warmth and color twining into distant measures.

 

            A small melodic bird spreads its wings by the seaweed leavings of the tidal bore.  Song sparrow serenade, dulcet phrasing in the salt air, rises as a green-leafing melody beneath usnea whiskers, wildly bearded lichens draped on the lower reaches of conifer boughs. 

 

And I walk slowly, with deliberation, through the sea-edge forest, where the mouse-wren flits furtive, barely sensed, in an under-story of fern and salal, through a storyline, compelling and intricate. 

 

Here, Grandmother nature unfolds her genesis masterwork by the edge of the riffling, over the surface of the sea of allocation.  Grandmother nature, in a spirit of prosperity and layers weaving, serves up an authorship penned in ink of confluence and deeply rooting provision. 

And late in the night, by the same rapturous sea, but further down-coast, well beyond sunset’s quiet portal into animal dreamtime, the howling of wolves pierces the veils of primordia arranged to keep human knowing at bay. 

 

For nine years they waited, spanning puppy-hood to elder, down through countless alpha moons.  And then, as the calendar of inspiration came to wheel in full circle, now through the rain of night, the creative, wolf-born force holds no longer in abeyance.

 

Now the howling sings into the stirring of sleepers, into the spaces of wakening.  Across the sea of freedom and imagination the wolf pack hurls its healing resonance, sound forming into a vessel that sails over the tumult heaving upon the surface of the feral and shore-less pond.

 

           

The moon stimulates the waking of our animal nature.  This is why, so often at the time of full moon, insomnia is induced in those sensitive to environmental influence.  Within the psyche, the moon enhances those qualities peculiar to this coastal landscape  – rooting, sprawling, raining, seeping, dripping, climbing wave on wave, rolling across the soul’s beachhead. . . .

 

I am driven (by self) to be functional and/or creative.  However, at this time I am more in need of centering myself.  That is, of asking my deeper core for direction.  What am I wanting to engage in, at this moment, from my center?

 

            Seeing myself, then, attuning to the pulse of heart at every turn, going by the Inner Voice, is the same as aspiring to fulfill my incarnation  – or, put another way, knighting myself in service to Lady Soul.

 

Meanwhile, down by the base of a giant old-growth fir, where mindful patience lends passage through a subterranean portal, rooting takes place, a biting into the earthen counterpart of human will forces.  Feeding into the soul’s need for holding firm in the face of expanse, the grand-parental tree hums its steadfast tone, never giving way to common worldly dissolution.

 

In this setting, the milding of temperament proceeds at an even pace.

Here is the true West. 

 

And in this westernmost place, earthen land (physicality) meets the vast arena of spirit’s metaphor (water).

 

            Because of this, The West presides as a Threshold.

 

Interior eyes gaze, here, out over the end of incarnation’s journey.  After arriving here, at this metaphysical meeting-ground of sea and shore, one can turn and explore either a Northern, or Southern path. Or one can turn fully round, Eastward, and wend a way backward, regress to a former time and circumstance.

 

            Or, more often, as spirit tends to have its way, one can linger here, centered Westerly  – for a duration that can even last beyond a thousand heartbeats.

 

            What span can bracket a boundless destiny?

To view the whole article visit Earth Vision at www.evsite.net

Vancouver Island British Columbia Rainforest Tours

When you take a rainforest tour on Vancouver Island, it’s hard to take your eyes off the giant mossy trees glowing like stained glass in nature’s cathedral. Some of the tallest stretch over 90 meters, while others measure as much as 20 meters in circumference. At more than 1000 years old, the oldest are impressive to be sure. But don’t get a kink in your neck by focussing only on the trees. You might miss the amazing diversity of plants and animals the old growth pacific temperate rainforest has to offer.

Even with your eyes closed there is a humid, fragrant coolness that enables the mosses and lichens clinging to the tree branches to grow so well. Multiple canopy layers, forest openings with berries and other pioneer species, dead standing trees with holes for owls, bats, squirrels, and nut hatches are just a few of the highlights.

For wildflowers, April and May are great times to see what’s flourishing in the ancient rainforest. Coral root and Calypso orchids, trilliums, wild cherry, elderberry and salmon berry are some of the flowers that you can find in the spring. Starting in June and lasting into September, you also can taste the wonderful parade of berries that result from this profusion of flowers. (Be sure to take along a field guide or an expert to avoid any poisonous plants.) There are some very tasty and nutritious plants like stinging nettle (cooked) and many medicinal ones as well.

If you slow down and look down…way down under the slabs of bark in the summer you will see a menagerie of colourful critters. The black and yellow millipede gives off a cherry smell when handled. While the faint whiff of cyanide is harmless to humans, it would prove deadly to others its size that chose to mess with it. Then there are the giant hermaphroditic banana slugs, which get to be 25cm long. Their slime has a natural anaesthetic if you happen to get a toothache while lost in the forest. The delicate and secretive red backed salamanders live their entire lives in rotten logs. In fact there are over 92 species of animals, insects, and birds using dead trees in the forest.

In April the forests fill with spring bird song, especially in the early morning and you can watch many species that prefer older forests such as varied thrushes, brown creepers and pileated woodpeckers. If you’re lucky and around at dawn or dusk you may hear or see a western screech owl, northern saw-whet owl or northern-pygmy owl. Bird watching in rain forests with trees that stretch higher than 20 stories presents its challenges. It is helpful to have a scope with an angled eyepiece or lie on your back with binoculars to save your neck. Many species can also be called down to more visible levels with their own call or a ‘psss’ sound. There are some excellent recordings of bird calls of Vancouver Island by John Neville which greatly assist in identifying these phantoms that flit about high in the tree canopy.

The mild climate on Vancouver Island means that you can experience the rainforest wonders all year. The wet season begins gradually sparking a techni-colour explosion of mushrooms in September and October. November brings the torrential rains that produce such fantastic growth and bring out the many shades of vibrant green in the mosses reconstituting from a dry summer. Mist, fog and rain bring a whole new atmosphere and photographic opportunities.