| reGrowing the RainForests |
[Jan. 18th, 2006|01:34 pm] |
meet my bud Ranil. He proves that nothing is impossible!
I've been meaning to write about this for some time now... and today i guess is the day... because everyone needs some good news now and then... So sit back and enjoy. And if you only take one thing from this tale, please know that nothing is finite. People will try to make you feel bad and helpless, and say stuff like "once the Rainforest has been cut down it can never grow back!" And the point is, that is just plain not true. Over the past two decade, Ranil, um, Dr. Ranil Senenayake has been re-growing rainforests. He, and his army of forest gardeners have been proving just how resilient our planet is. And the positivity is infectious!
Ok the ¿HOW? first:
What they do (Analog Forest gardeners) is go to a place where a rainforest once was (and of course cleared for burgers, car paneling, or guitars...). They find out from the signs there (pollen...) what the trees were that were living there before the devastation. And they get baby trees, the same as were there, or analogous to those, and replant those trees in the groupings as before. Of course the baby trees, in a real rainforest have a shady setting in which to grow, so what the forest gardeners do is plant shade producing crops around the trees (like tomatoes, yerba, yucca, and other things to eat). And i tell you, it's magic! Within a few years they can no longer grow the vegetables because the trees are already tall and even producing things (cinnamon, nuts, avocados...). At this point the forest gardeners have ample produce to gather and actually earn a decent wage. Beyond that what the trees bring, somehow, is the rest of the forest; I don't know how, but they bring back the flowers, medicinal herbs, clingy vines, birds... i swear you look at a 15-20 year old analog forest and you will be shocked that it was once a clearcut!
Additional !Wow! Factor:
So, here's Ranil's story: When he was growing up in Sri Lanka, Ranil got a job as a lizard-catcher. Obviously, with some time to enjoy and appreciate nature, he started to tinker on his analog systems where the tea plantations had abandoned lands they previously sucked the life out of with Monoculture and NPK. He got really excited when he saw the results and tried to alert the authorities that there was a way to bring the Rainforests back to life. But no one in the government would believe a lizard catcher. so Ranil, see he's cool enough not to be deterred, ended up getting accepted to UC Berkeley, and in the late 60's at the Haight of radicalism, Ranil received his PhD in Systems Ecology. He returned to Sri Lanka where all of the sudden everyone wanted to know how they could revive their rainforests.
Now, a few decades later, Dr. S has spread his system to Brazil, Costa Rica, the Philliipines, Canada, and many other places around the globe. you can join in the fun! In Sri Lanka you can stay at a hotel in the middle of a revived analog Rainforst, you can take take courses in the North to then implement elsewhere, and you can support companies that not only work spreading the good news of Dr S, but also sell products from the Forest Gardeners.. Learn more about it from this awesome primer Ranil helped write, and of course, if Sri Lanka is too far, you can always check out the new forests in costa rica! |
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