http://www.cbd.int/2010/partners/
Jane Goodall writes about saving endangered species, and the
restoring of natural habitats that humans have helped to destroy. I like how she doesn’t just mention
environmentalists that have helped on the missions to restore habitats, but
also mentions businessmen that decided to clean up their mess that they
themselves have made. I noted in each of
her examples of miraculous restorations that the destruction of wildlife and plant
life, was mostly due to humans. Some were unintentional, and some cases were due
to more indirect actions. “The extreme environmental degradation of the Loess
Plateau came about because the people sank ever deeper into poverty and hopelessness.”
Here Goodall links poverty to the destruction of the environment. I found this
to interesting because I myself have never linked the two. Usually people link
monopolies and big businesses, which are out to make a profit. She explains
that overpopulation and poverty go hand in hand, and people will tend to care
less about the land when they are struggling to survive. I really like how she saw that overpopulation
was also a part of why destruction to the environment happens, and sought to
show the importance of having small families. How she did this was by focusing
on the importance on increasing education to women. “It has been shown that as a women’s
education improves, family size tends to drop-and after all it was the growth
of populations which led to the grim conditions groups were trying to address.”
Just
like animals that are close to extinction need our help, so do the plant life
that are close to extinction. “For most people, mention of endangered species
brings to mind giant pandas, tigers, mountain gorillas, and other such
charismatic members of the animal kingdom. Seldom do we think of trees and
plants in the same category.” While working to restore habitats she says that “time
and time again we find that it is plants that start the process…Slowly they
build up soil and clean the water, paving the way for other life forms to
follow.” We need plants to survive, and I think that few truly recognize the
importance of that. Yeah we understand that plants give off oxygen, but we don’t
understand the other ways that plants enable life. Jane Goodall gives a good
example of herbivores that eat plants directly, and then carnivores eat those
animals. Without plants, the animals that we eat would go extinct, leaving us
with no food.
Some people will never truly understand the importance or
reasons for preserving ecosystems, but Jane Goodall gives many good reasons beyond
scientific data. One was on the need for nature to nurture our souls. She
describes it as a spiritual experience “It is these experiences that fill my
heart and mind with peace-being, even for a short time, part of the forest,
connected once more with the mystery, feeding my soul.” I understand this experience
all too well, and Its often experiences in nature that help to finding my
purpose in life. In nature you are reminded of the “real” world versus the man-made
structures that surround us daily. Nature gives me hope, it is there that I am
aware of the beauty of life and that there away from the hustle and bustle of
human life, natural life blooms and grows. This brings me to the last quote that
I really enjoyed. “Without hope nothing will change. That is why we feel it is so
desperately important to share our own, irrepressible hope for the animals of
the world.”
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