The disappearing forest

I try to make my field adventures into funny stories, but there are a lot of things about my life that are not so funny.  As I am studying proboscis monkeys’ responses to changes in their environment, I need to work in a place that is experiencing those changes.  This means that on a daily basis, I am experiencing and recording the destruction of the habitat of the proboscis monkeys. It is extremely frustrating that I am collecting all this data, and realizing that the data will not do anything to save this endangered species or the ecosystem that it lives in. Therefore, I am going to share with you what I am seeing .  First, I hear a constant choir of chainsaws.  The sound of chainsaws has become as much a part of the choir of the forest as the song of the gibbons, the chirp of the cicadas, and the honk of the hornbills.  Although I hear the chainsaws everyday and see the piles of wood lined up along the river, the extent of the logging didn’t really hit me until the loggers cut down some of the trees I monitor.  They cut down and damaged 20% of the trees in one of my botanical plots.  Just to collect my monthly data now I need to climb over the fallen trees, and try to figure out what tree stump goes with what tree tag.   The area where the loggers cut down the trees is in a small corridor that was initially damaged by giant forest fires in 1997 and 2002.  This area, after the loggers came through, no longer contains any large trees- which for the primates mean that food sources have been reduced, travel paths have been reduced, and places to sleep have been reduced.   To add insult to injury, a mining company has started initial operations in my backyard.  When I brush my teeth on the back deck, I hear the bull dozer building roads and plowing down a stand of trees to prepare the area for the soon extraction of minerals from the soil.  Although the mining company has the potential to bring jobs to the area, I believe the negative consequences will far outweigh the small paychecks and unsafe working conditions for the local people (much like the palm oil plantations- but that is a topic for another blog).  A large mining operation will have an effect on the local population of both people and primates.  The people are connected to this forest as much as the primates, they gather leaves to build their roofs, wood to build their houses and cook their food, they bath in the river, and they fish in the river.   The mining will damage their environment as much as the primates.  Finally, in the past couple of months, hunting has started.  I now hear gunshots as I am walking transect, have found way to many traps (and am afraid that I will end up in one of the traps), and have seen dead animals being rowed downriver.  I am not against hunting; however, the rates that the animals are coming out of the forest are not sustainable.  Although logging, destruction of habitat, and hunting are some of the proximity causes extinctions of animals- they are not the ultimate causes.  I am always challenged with what we can do to curb these proximate causes; however, to really make a difference we need to deal with  the ultimate causes… the poverty, corruption, and globalization (to name a few)…some reason I think knowing what the monkeys are eating isn’t really going to help.