As far as I can remember, I always felt an enormous urge to be in nature and to learn about the secrets of life, no matter whether human life or wildlife. When I was a young child and teenager, I was very influenced by some great people and their capacity for communication and vision helped me to deepen my concepts about life and how to open horizons. Among the most important influences are Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, David Attenborough, Jacques Cousteau, Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles and Bill Mollison. Ultimately, it was because of these influences that I am now living and working in the Bialowieza Biosphere Reserve. For the ones who don't know what Bialowieza is, here is a short summary:
| • | Bialowieza is a forest complex with several levels of protection where we can find some of the best preserved temperate lowland forests in Europe, some of these parts are defined as being primeval. |
| • | Parts of Bialowieza forest are biosphere reserves since 1977 and a world heritage site since 1979. |
| • | The forest of Bialowieza has the tallest native trees in Europe and has no equal regarding the number and age of monumental trees. |
| • | Bialowieza harbours some of the last functional landscapes and ecosystems in Europe with outstanding biodiversity. It’s a unique place to understand and study uninterrupted cycles of nature (the water cycle, life cycle and decomposition cycle). |
| • | Bialowieza was also the place where the European bison was saved from extinction and where one of the biggest wild European bison populations can be found. |
European bisons in the Bialowieza biosphere reserve. / Picture: Frank Vassen / Licence: Creative Commons.
Understanding the concept of a functional landscape and ecosystem as described above is a challenge for the majority of people I guide through the forest. I presume that a functional ecosystem/landscape is from a purely mechanistic point of view, a system where the natural cycles, evolution of species or ecosystems, and the interaction between individuals and species with the surrounding conditions is kept in balance. No matter what cultural, ideological, religious, political, philosophical, personal or educational perspectives may exist, nature’s mechanics are unchangeable and universal, no matter the continent, the climate, geography or time.
In our present culture, mass media, politicians, NGO's, activists, ideologies and individuals report that nature is in danger. This cannot be further from the truth - it's not nature that is in danger, it's our culture and way of living that is threatened and ultimately the existence of our own species since we are constantly disrupting the natural tendency of nature to be in full balance. Of course, many species face risk of extinction and probably many will be extinct in the near future, but this does not mean that nature is at risk. LIFE is very, very resilient and the planet has eons of time to develop new species that would play their own role in the cycles of nature with or without us.
The study of uninterrupted cycles of nature is only possible in very few european forests. Bialowieza is probably one of the very few places in Europe where all cycles of nature are in dynamic balance. / Picture: Jacek Karczmarz / Licence: Creative Commons
For us to understand nature basic’s functioning, we must know its main principles:
| • | Nature is plastic: it evolves, changes, reshapes, appears and disappears according to its present conditions. |
| • | Nature is in constant evolution: it is a function of all the interactions and influences experienced by all organisms that may evolve or disappear. |
| • | Nature is not linear: nature is in opposition to what is taught in schools or by mainstream information channels. It does not evolve or move from point A to B in all circumstances; it looks more like a complex internet of infinitesimal relations of actions and reactions between all participants. |
| • | All species are important and at the same time limited: humans, for example, are part of nature. Like it or not, we are just one more species of no greater or lesser importance than any other species on this planet. We are shaped and limited by the same overall rules, both influencing and being influenced by the other species and limited by the present conditions. |
| • | Nature always evolves in the direction of homeostasis: meaning that given time, all cycles of nature will be in dynamic balance. |
| • | Nature always evolves in a constant direction to full potential climax: the full potential climax is achieved given time for evolution, availability, diversification and integration according to the local conditions and possibilities. |
| • | Nature does not have morals or ideology: in nature all organisms exist as far as they will be integrated and as far as they will be functional individually and collectively. A species that is not functional and is not integrated sooner or later will change or will become extinct. All species will try to LIVE and succeed independently of our moral, cultural or ideological judgement. |
| • | Nature has limits: in the nature of life there is one major limit - consumption can never be greater than the capacity of production, be it of a single organism, a full species or an ecosystem. |
| • | In nature production and consumption must be in balance and this is achieved by the regulatory principles of predation, parasitism, competition, symbiosis, mutualism and commensalism. |
All of these principles are shaped by the primary influences of nature:
Time, Climate, Astronomical, Geology, Atmosphere, Water, Energy, Life, Death, Nutrients, Toxins, Balance
Bearing these principles in mind, one can ask what are we doing to nature and why are we in such a controversial moment in human evolution? Although this risks oversimplification, I can say that our present fundamental error as a civilization, despite our ideologies and scientific opinions, is a failure to understand the basic principles of nature in an impartial way. Through this blind-spot we are unable to align ourselves with the fundamentals of nature’s mechanics, or to understand sustainability in the true sense of the term.
Allowing logging in parts of the Bialowieza forests that were theoretically included in the Natura 2000 network of protected spaces, man now interferes directly in the major cycles of nature, that remained unaltered for centuries.
Sustainability in nature, in opposition to the present mainstream economic ideology, is in keeping with some basic factors that all of us should have learned in primary school:
| • | Consumption can never exceed the production capacity of a system, for obvious reasons. |
| • | The number of consumers cannot exceed the production capacity. |
| • | The nutrient cycle output must always be returned; otherwise we walk towards impoverishment of the ecosystems and eventual collapse. |
| • | The input of toxins cannot exceed the capacity of their own neutralization. |
| • | The constituents of the planetary system cannot be changed in great measure, be it in the atmosphere or hydrosphere for example. |
| • | The water cycle is of major importance and special care must be provided to not disrupt this cycle, what we consume must be returned in the same quantity to the same place. |
| • | Our food consumption, be it animal, fish or vegetable, cannot disrupt the main cycles and must be integrated within the production capacity of the place. |
So how did Bialowieza influence me into the point where I am now? Bialowieza influenced me since it is one of the few functional ecosystems in Europe and in the world. It gave me a perspective that no book can give, by watching, feeling, and learning about life in a place with minimal human influence in the past and present. The greatest of the lessons arrived and will always be there when I spend time in the forest, since nature is an infinite depository of information on life and an example for us humans individually and collectively. Everything mentioned in this blog, comes from this direct observation of nature's functionality.
A representation of the interactions between functional components in an ecosystem in dynamic balance.
But what is the concept of functionality? It's the same as homeostasis, the term is used in biology regarding the function of an organism, but I also use it to explain the balance of a macro-organism like planet earth. This is analogous to the Gaia hypothesis, and of course one can scale it down or up to a living system of any size. In order for a climax system to maintain functionality, the energy flows within it must have a perfect syntropic balance. This is a crucial point, because it is exactly the one we humans do not respect and ultimately leads to us walking towards Armageddon. Without understanding this term and respecting this principle, we are doomed to dysfunctional systems and ultimately to collapse since we still live in a culturally entropic value system and not in a syntropic one. While the universe may tend towards entropy, nature is pushing towards syntropy, and what is not able to live according to this principle is reorganized or dies and its constituent matter and energy are available for renovation or reorganization.
In a fully functional system minor disturbances will always tend towards a fast reorganization of the system and to a new homeostasis, while major disturbances, human or not, will cause a major disruption in the system that will need more time to adjust, to reorganize and become a major opportunity for evolution and reorganization of the system. One must always bear in mind that nothing is passive in nature, there is always some sort of change, the process of evolution is permanently directed towards a constant complexification of the system. This can be simplified for a moment in time over and over again but all systems tend towards this complexity. I exemplify this while guiding with an image everybody understands – imagine a grass lawn in a park, if there is no no maintenance of this lawn, over time the ecological law of succession will act and the same grass lawn after a few years will become a bushland dominated by bushes and a few trees, give it some more time and it will become a young forest dominated by pioneer tree species, after about 150 years and it will become a mature forest and so on. The issue with this concept is that most humans tend not to know this obvious principle or to be actively opposed to it, thinking that the ideal landscape is stable, according to a certain personal concept, be it a boring lawn, a potato field or grandma's flower garden and they all make a gigantic effort to contradict what is one of the major rules of nature, constant change.
Most of our interventions in the landscapes are in reality an enormous effort we undertake to work against one of the most important rules of Nature: Nature always evolves in a constant direction to full potential climax.
When this concept is fully understood, the idea of invasive species or noxious weeds sounds absurd. I can agree that initially there will be a certain level of disturbance when a novel species establishes itself, but with time everything will tend to balance and this will be particularly fast if the ecosystem has rich possibilities or is already in balance. So why is this concept of invasiveness so advertised? This is a complex net of ideas and interests but to simplify is based on an erroneous concept of life on this planet and cemented with fear and exclusion. Another concept I've learned by living here in Bialowieza is that there is no exclusion in nature, any organism with time will become extinct or become integrated in the system. Specific species might profit and dominate for a certain amount of time (maybe for a short human lifetime), but sooner or later the natural system will balance the species composition. Here I can give another example – imagine an exotic pine plantation in France, for example. With no human maintenance, different species available in the area will start to install themselves in the pine plantation and after 200 or 300 years, it will not be an exclusive pine plantation anymore, maybe some pines will still be there but it will tend to become a complex mosaic of different species in a mixed forest.
In an abandoned Eucalyptus plantation in the Kalakad-Mundanthurai reserve, in the south of India, the number of tree species increased since 2005 and now is similar to the number of tree species in the neighboring primigenial forest. However, these plantations have been mainly colonized by pioneer species for the time being and a long time will be necessary to see the original species make their come back. / Fotografía: Abandoned plantations in forested areas may not recover fully: Study
Most people also do not realise that nature's cycles are extremely long - much greater than a human lifespan. The full development of an ecosystem from the moment of disruption might take about 1000 years to become a full-fledged system, from its present over simplified state (like a lawn) until it becomes a primeval forest with no major signs of human influence.
To finish with a major idea – LIFE goes on and on and is in constant change, no matter our personal views and assumptions. There is nothing else greater than LIFE in its capacity for permanent evolution and complexification.
Author: João Ferro
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ReplyDeleteParabéns pelo artigo, João!. Espero-te bem
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