forests Archives - Ecologise

ALTERNATIVES

How Mr Miyawaki Broke My Heart

4th May 2023

What’s wrong with the popular Miyawaki method of ecological restoration?

A pastoralist looks at Hasdeo’s Parsa East and Kete Basan (PEKB) mine that has lead to severe environmental and social issues. Residents of Hasdeo region fear their land meeting the same fate as its adjacent Korba, a critically polluted area.

Photo by Vaishnavi Suresh/PEP Collective

CLIMATE CRISIS

On International Forests Day: Reality of Forests in India

24th March 2023

21st March is marked as International Forests Day: A brief look at the state of Forests and Forest Rights in India today.

ALTERNATIVES

How Nepal Regenerated its Forests: Communities know their Forests Best

21st February 2023

After relinquishing control of forests to the villages that depend on them, forest cover in Nepal nearly doubled.

Bookshelf

The Songs of Trees: Stories From Nature’s Great Connectors

14th March 2020

From CBC Radio: Wind, rain, wildlife, and how they interact with the different sizes and shapes of leaves and branches all make up what David George Haskell calls the “distinct voices” of trees. His new book closely examines a dozen trees to show how they’re joined to the natural world, and to humanity as well….

Bookshelf

Thus Spoke the Plant: A Remarkable Journey of Groundbreaking Scientific Discoveries

30th August 2019

From The New York Times: Scientist Monica Gagliano’s botanical research, which has broken boundaries in the field of plant behavior, indicate that plants are, to some extent, intelligent. Her experiments suggest that they can learn behaviors and remember them. Her work also suggests that plants can “hear” running water and even produce clicking noises, perhaps to communicate….

Two botanists stumbled across this living kauri stump while on a walk in the woods

Sebastian Leuzinger/The Atlantic

Conserve/Resist

Super-organism, or the mystery of the undead kauri tree

21st August 2019

From The Atlantic: When Leuzinger saw the stump on a walk with fellow botanist Martin Bader, his head turned. He saw that even though it had no leaves, stems, or greenery of any kind, it did still contain living tissue—and when he knocked, it sounded different from deadwood. All appearances to the contrary, it’s still alive. But how?…

ALTERNATIVES

An apology from an environmentalist

13th July 2019

Jack Thomas writes: I have worked for the last 15 years or so as a professional in various parts of the environmental movement. And I’m sorry. All of us who have feasted off the carcass of a dying planet bear some responsibility, but those of us who got paid to know what was happening and…

ALTERNATIVES

Paul Kingsnorth: Confessions of a recovering environmentalist

29th May 2019

Paul Kingsnorth was once an ardent environmentalist. But as it began to focus on ‘sustainability’ rather than the defence of wild places for their own sake and as global conditions worsened, he grew disenchanted with the movement he once embraced. Here is Kingsnorth’s classic essay, full of grief and fury and passionate evocations of nature….

Culture/Cognition

J.C. Bose: Why the great scientist’s legacy remains astonishing a century later

13th November 2018

Stefany Ann Goldberg writes: Famous for his plant-response studies, J.C. Bose was also the first scientist to study inorganic matter the way a biologist examines a muscle or a nerve. Bose performed his plant experiments on rocks and metals, too. Remarkably, he found that the “non-living” responded when subjected to mechanical, thermal, and electrical stimuli….

ECOCIDE/EXTINCTION

Extinction is now outpacing evolution; humans are ‘cutting down the tree of life’, warn scientists

22nd October 2018

From The Guardian: Humanity’s ongoing annihilation of wildlife is cutting down the tree of life, according to a stark new analysis. More than 300 different mammal species have been eradicated by human activities. The new research calculates the total unique evolutionary history that has been lost as a result at a startling 2.5 billion years….

Conflict/Dispossession

There is nowhere left to run

12th July 2018

Ratheesh Pisharody writes: There’s really nowhere to run whether we are mammals, trees, insects or even indigenous tribes. What chances do we see for the planet’s revival? When humans take away both “space” and “time” from our co-passengers on this planet, we’re leaving no “leverage” for the others to “somehow” adjust and make it through….

ALTERNATIVES

Half-Earth: A biologist’s manifesto for preserving life on Earth

4th July 2018

Here is the ambitious (and controversial) proposal by E.O. Wilson —arguably the world’s most lauded living evolutionary biologist— to save life on Earth by setting aside around half the planet in various types of nature reserves. Also included is a research paper exploring the viability of Wilson’s proposal, along with a sharp critique of it….

Culture/Cognition

Western science is finally catching up with Traditional Knowledge

14th April 2018

From The Conversation: Are Indigenous and Western systems of knowledge categorically antithetical? Or do they offer multiple points of entry into knowledge of the world? As ways of knowing, both systems share important and fundamental attributes. There are also many cases where science and history are catching up with what Indigenous peoples have long known….

Bookshelf

The Inner Life of Animals: Surprising Observations of a Hidden World

24th January 2018

Peter Wohlleben, author of the best-selling ‘The Hidden Life of Trees’, explores the emotions and intelligence of animals in his new book. New scientific discoveries in this field have big moral implications, he says. A review and an excerpt, plus the video of an eye-opening talk by animal ethologist Jonathan Balcombe on the inner life of animals….

Conserve/Resist

Will India lose one of its last patches of Jurassic forest?

21st January 2018

From Down to Earth: Kathalekan, in Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka, is a relic forest with Myristica swamp ecosystem. It has remained unchanged for over 100 million years. It’s spread across an area of 25 square kilometres. Today this ancient forest is under severe threat from human interventions in the region, including a proposed highway….

ALTERNATIVES

On the wildness of children

12th January 2018

Carol Black writes: Some of our children, it turns out, are more like pigeons and squirrels, and some are more like bears. Some of them adapt to the institutional walls we put around them, some pace till their paws bleed. The bleeding of these children, if we listen, can tell us many stories about ourselves….

Sarus Cranes in Etah, Uttar Pradesh

Gopi Sundar

Culture/Cognition

Being human, in a more-than-human world

22nd October 2017

David Abram writes: I am dazzled, yes, by the creativity of the human mind, but I’m also struck dumb by the ability of various aspen groves to maintain and replenish themselves, through their common root system, for eighty thousand years and more. Are we humans unique? Sure we are. But then, so is everyone else around here….

ALTERNATIVES

A manifesto for the green mind

31st August 2017

We consume more, we fill the atmosphere with carbon dioxide. We have more stuff, our lives are more convenient, yet we’re not happier. Prof. Jules Pretty sets out a plan to engage people with Nature and create more sustainable and enjoyable living for everyone. The first call to action is: “Every child outdoors every day”….

Paintings by Meenakshi Subramaniam

Culture/Cognition

Suprabha Seshan: The music of everything

15th August 2017

I’m no elephant whisperer, nor do I claim to have complex exchanges with them by moonlight, but the reverse is true: when they come by, I’m whispered out of my den by their calls and cries, by their trumpets, rumbles and whooshing sighs. When elephants arrive in the valley, I scoot out of my sheets….

ALTERNATIVES

Rooted Truth: On India’s only private wildlife sanctuary

7th August 2017

From Infinite Windows/Eartha Mag: 23 years ago, the passionate conservationist couple Pamela and Anil Malhotra bought 55 acres of land in Coorg, which they have since converted into a beautiful forest of over 300 acres. This is the story of how SAI Sanctuary came to host animals like the Bengal Tiger, Sambhar and Asian Elephants….