Each tree matters

Forests : Beyond The Wood - III

By Dr. Ranil Senanayake-September 6, 2018, 9:38 am 

The diversity of a forest is not restricted to the species that it contains; it is also reflected in the ages of its components. Thus in a forest, all the age classes of its plants are represented from the tiny seedling of the tree, to the tall 100ft adult it becomes. Each tree providing the forest ecosystem its needs at every stage of its growth. The seeds and seedlings providing food for forest floor animals, the young saplings becoming the host for forest vines, the flowers, fruits and seeds of the adult serving insects and animals, finally the decaying trunk becoming the host for fungi, beetles and habitat for nesting birds. This is clear that an even aged plantation can never be classed as a ‘forest’ as it cannot provide the ecological services of a forest. The age diversity of a forest is still not utilized as a defining factor.

The only value given to large trees in the modern economy was for its timber, thus little by little all the large trees disappeared without any notice.

Do you remember what a large tree looked like?

Once they were all around us, not just the forest giants like the Hora or Palu, but the fine old Mango and Jak trees that would have taken at least four or five men to girdle.

The next time you leave the city on any road, look for those big trees and you will find that there are none. The only large trees that remain are the Rain trees planted for the comfort of the road users about a hundred years ago or the Bodhi trees planted for worship even earlier.

The home gardens, plantations and the stream reservations that once boasted the old giant trees have now lost them. This is not to say that there are no Mango trees or Jak trees in these parts. To be sure, there are many: but the largest of the trees commonly seen in Sri Lanka today are about fifty to one hundred years away from becoming a large tree of the size we were so familiar with in our recent past.

If this is so, it will mean that the present generation and the next will not be able to experience a large tree. Further, if we do not arrest this destructive trend during our lifetime we rob the future of their right to the fruits of our forefathers.

In fact, if one examines our roadside Mara trees it’s hard to find any young trees of a decade or so in age. If this was not bad enough, over the last few years, the only action on roadside trees is that they have begun to systematically cut down the large trees that were planted many years ago.

For what reason, we may ask, are these trees being felled and by whom? A major offender seems to be the Ceylon Electricity Board who sees the placement of power lines by roadsides their inalienable right.

Another is the Highways Department, busily expanding the roads for big development machines to move on. Underwriting all this is the fact that old Mara trees give a very valuable timber that is presently substituted for Nedun (Percopsis mooniana) in furniture making.

There is an act termed the Implementation of Order Under felling Trees (Control) Act. which currently stipulates that Permits should be obtained for felling of Jack, Bread Fruit and female Palmyra trees because yield (nuts) of those trees are used as daily food of human being. If used properly, all trees over a certain girth and height should be protected by this act.

Do we have a single person in the decision-making bureaucracy who will act to slow the destruction of our large trees? Will someone begin to catalogue what we have left and where? Or, will they all stand by, pass the buck and say "not my responsibility" and treat us to the dubious pleasure of watching the giants disappear. Disappear they will, just like the huge roadside Ebony tree on the Badulla road, known by everyone in the vicinity, suddenly, in the midst of road building it disappeared roots and all, overnight ! The large trees outside forests should be catalogued, the large trees in the forest protected by strengthening the legal protection for the little forest patches that do remain.

For a real understanding of what we lost, travel from Galle along the road to Hiniduma, the road passes through the Kottawa Forest Reserve and reflect that this was once the height of the forest that covered over 80% of the lowland wet- zone just 150 years ago. The loss of both forest biomass and forest biodiversity from then to now is phenomenal. The much vaunted ‘Sinharaja’ forest is but a final remnant patch of the massive cover of forest that recently covered the south western quarter of the inland.

All the so called ‘forests’ that are planted as a substitute for the native forests are even aged and are felled after 30-40 years for timber, not a single tree is maintained to maturity and the possibility of the future of large trees diminish with each passing year of avoiding the subject. Further these plantations do not exhibit any of the characteristics of the native forest. The ecosystem created by these plantations usually become very desiccated due to the lack of a topsoil and poor water retention capacity. As any traveller in our highlands can attest to, the months of July and August are illuminated by the fires in the Pinus and Eucalyptus plantations. These fires further destroy the soil organisms and bakes an impervious surface creating a hard soil that water cannot leach into, thus rainwater rushes down with erosive forces.

Perhaps one aspect of the problem lies in ourselves. Perhaps we have lost our ability to understand as Carl Jung states, "People who know nothing about nature are of course neurotic for they are not adapted to reality", in one sentence he has encapsulated the major problem with modern, technological society. It represents a collective of decisions that constantly evolve away from nature. Nature is seen as a group of simple variables – rain, wind, temperature, etc., that can be modified, changed or developed through the agency of technology. The managers who make the decisions spend less and less time in natural areas, as their environment becomes more and more ‘controlled’ or urbanized. These people or the societies they try to create become unable to live in or cope with natural surroundings or processes, and have to spend vast amounts of energy and resources to maintain their artificial environments.

At this stage the emergence of a reality other than nature must be perceived. For otherwise the neurosis of the modern planners will be exposed. The reality that they describe can be best described as a ‘machine reality’, where society will require an incredible input of energy and resources for the maintenance of this reality. But there is no question of the cost

The other tragedy in the current definition of forests and the idea that any area covered by a 10-30% canopy cover constitutes a forest.

To be continued…