Forest Habitat

This little forest is in Thailand's Northeast region just a short walk from our home. The Chi River flows nearby on its way south and east through the Khorat plateau, eventually to join with the great Mekong.  These trees remain standing because the land was dedicated to the local Buddhist temple for the use of the monks.  More recently, this forest has become part of the campus of a small university.

It wasn't many decades ago, perhaps when some of these trees were  only seedlings, that the whole region was covered in broad-leaf forests teeming with life.  

The diverse plant species provided rich habitat for Asian elephants,

Asian elephant, Thailand

deer and wild cattle, tigers and leopards and bears.  Monkeys and pythons shared the forest canopy with a multitude of birds. Water buffalo wallowed and crocodiles lurked in marshy places.

"Forest" is our ordinary designation for habitat characterized by dense growth of trees and other plants, but forest habitat is comprised of a great deal more than that. Forest habitat supports an immensely diverse community of species living together. Any species able to survive and reproduce in a given habitat does so because the habitat provides conditions favorable for that species. Although many conditions are due to local climate and geology, we should understand that many conditions necessary for species survival are provided by other species. The Symbiology of forest habitat or of any other habitat is extremely complex and not currently well understood.

The more we learn, though, the better we understand the importance of symbiotic cooperation among species and that harmonious symbiotic relationships depend on robust biodiversity.

The "forest" depicted at the top of this page is not an example of an original, undisturbed, wild forest.  People have cleared the understory, disced the soil and seeded with grass to make it more "human friendly". By modifying it in this way, they have significantly reduced biodiversity.

In the paddy, rice and only rice

On adjacent land which has been cleared entirely for rice production, biodiversity is more severely limited. That's the whole purpose of rice paddy; to reduce plantlife to a single species; rice.
In fact, it's nearly always the case that "improvements" people make to land result in reduction of species diversity.

As construction of paved roads, parking lots and city buildings continues to encroach on the natural landscape, biodiversity is being drastically reduced in our area.

Only one species welcome here

One of the basic characteristics of the way of life we call "civilization" is alienation from the natural world; a distinct preference for artificial "built environment" over the perceived discomfort, and danger of the wild.

As civilization expands and progresses, succeeding generations of people become ever more habituated to and dependent on technology to keep them alive.  The natural world is thus valued only as source of raw materials for the further development of our artificial life-support apparatus.

Human efforts to control and dominate the earth for the purposes of civilization, whether clearing forested land to plant field crops, construction of buildings, or covering soil with pavement, invariably  result in altered habitat, severely reduced biodiversity and breakdown of symbiotic interactions between species. In the next post, I will take a closer look at the complexities and vital importance of  symbiosis.

We should realize that these symbiotic relationships are the foundation of life on this planet. To obstinately and ignorantly persist in destroying them would be destructive to our own well-being and hazardous to our very survival.  It would not be wise.

Unfortunately that is exactly what "Homo sapiens sapiens" (man the very wise) is choosing to do, day by day, year after year.