Leaving nature to itself for healing

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Have you heard the story of Chernobyl? The place that had a deadly nuclear leak out killing many and making the region inhabitable? Have you read about its amazing recovery? https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/how-chernobyl-has-become-unexpected-haven-wildlife

I am currently traveling in Cambodia, and I visited Angkor Wat early this week and it was mesmerizing. The Angkor Wat is the world's largest temple, the fascinating part is, the complex was meticulously built, abandoned, forgotten, and found. During the time when it was abandoned, nature took over the entire complex, and thick forests grew within, over, and around the place. Thus, we have an amazing confluence of man-made wonder and nature's replenished beauty.

Left to itself, nature has amazing healing capacities. In ecology, we have a concept - Climax Community. It is used to denote an ecosystem or community of plants, animals, and other living organisms that has achieved equilibrium or become stable.

With the massive destruction of pristine ecosystems, that's happening all over the world, I was just wondering what the world would be like if we deserted these places for nature to heal itself.
 
Mindhoverer said:
Have you heard the story of Chernobyl? The place that had a deadly nuclear leak out killing many and making the region inhabitable? Have you read about its amazing recovery? https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/how-chernobyl-has-become-unexpected-haven-wildlife

I am currently traveling in Cambodia, and I visited Angkor Wat early this week and it was mesmerizing. The Angkor Wat is the world's largest temple, the fascinating part is, the complex was meticulously built, abandoned, forgotten, and found. During the time when it was abandoned, nature took over the entire complex, and thick forests grew within, over, and around the place. Thus, we have an amazing confluence of man-made wonder and nature's replenished beauty.

Left to itself, nature has amazing healing capacities. In ecology, we have a concept - Climax Community. It is used to denote an ecosystem or community of plants, animals, and other living organisms that has achieved equilibrium or become stable.

With the massive destruction of pristine ecosystems, that's happening all over the world, I was just wondering what the world would be like if we deserted these places for nature to heal itself.
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It will be very cool. But I think rather than desertion, what we really need is to strike the balance. There's this whole movement of turning to biology in architecture too, as in to use living trees not just as a decorative component of the building but as the essence of the building itself. I'm sure you saw the iconic tree from Tomb Raider that engulfed portions of the temple; the architecture is sort of like that but intentional and controlled. This way, species can cling to buildings and at a large scale, we could modify urban ecology and even turn cities into safe havens for more species than the human. Also another fascinating fact about Angkor is that it isn't really a solitary temple. A study used Lidar once and found that there are villages surrounding it that it in a way fed upon----farming villages to supply food to the temple. The more irregular your land plot is, the farther from the center of the temple you are and likely less connected to the royalty. Amazing right? Here's the NY Times article for the Angkor thing but there are actually more formal publications about the irrigation systems and everything else. Sorry I couldn't find it.
 
mintoots said:
Also another fascinating fact about Angkor is that it isn't really a solitary temple. A study used Lidar once and found that there are villages surrounding it that it in a way fed upon----farming villages to supply food to the temple. The more irregular your land plot is, the farther from the center of the temple you are and likely less connected to the royalty. Amazing right? Here's the NY Times article for the Angkor thing but there are actually more formal publications about the irrigation systems and everything else. Sorry I couldn't find it.
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True that. Angkor was a huge Khmer civilization with magnificent temples, palaces, farms, and irrigation systems spread across and around more than 100kms.
 
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a prion disease that affects deer, elk, reindeer, sika deer and moose. It has been found in some areas of North America, including Canada and the United States, Norway and South Korea.

Over-population of many of nature's tenants could cause much death. Some islands have limited food sources for deer and such, stunting their growth and making them easy prey to disease.

What we see in Climax Community could possibly be what has not died earlier. Had we seen it a long time ago, it may be horrible. Green leaves, old vines, wildlife, birds, frogs, bats, monkeys, flowers, and such always can look marvelous at the time.
Man has had to build nests above houses for migrating birds' use to nest and raise their young. What we call "nature" wraps itself through my spirit and heart. Humanity used to be part of nature. Now, we can be its worst enemy. We are not to exist, but to coexist. Houses built over wetlands cause the beaver and geese to become nuisances to most people. The beaver are killed or moved away from their homes and families. Clear-cutting causes many wildlife deaths and accidents on roads and highways.
I feel we are consuming too much of nature, and we or our children will pay for it. I will pray for it; do my part in conservation hunts to help and for food, and stick to the limits. While out there, it is almost like being part of it. I feel better in a tree or swamp than in a bar. Nature and my spirit are as one.

Picture borrowed from share.america.gov

sumatran-tiger-shutterstock_51145033.jpg
 
just me said:
Over-population of many of nature's tenants could cause much death. Some islands have limited food sources for deer and such, stunting their growth and making them easy prey to disease.
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Over population like this is usually a result of nature being out of balance and that imbalance is often caused by humans. For example, the decimation of predators (caused by humans) causes overpopulation of the prey. Overpopulation of the prey causes whatever plants they eat to suffer, which can then cause problems with erosion.

For example, predators like wolves were hunted out of New York State. This caused the population of deer to grow. When driving through certain areas Upstate and in the North Country, there are too many deer to count. I've counted over fifty within ten miles of farmland before giving up. This gross overpopulation causes diseases like wasting disease to spread. The problem is, now the wasting disease has spread to states without deer overpopulation issues, likely due to irresponsible (and illegal) importation of deer and deer parts from other states. In the state I live in, there has been discussion about placing larger hunting restrictions on deer because the deer population is so low and the deer are so small – only a few pounds above the legal limit. Yet, we now have wasting disease here.

The wild turkey was almost non-existent in New England due to over-hunting and loss of habitat in the 1700s and 1800s. Importation of turkeys from New York along with hunting restrictions allowed the population to grow and now they're everywhere again. Turkeys are a staple prey for coyotes. In recent years the coyote population has increased, too. Coyotes do kill deer, but it is a higher risk so they'll go for turkeys more often.



Yellowstone has a good video about the benefits of reintroducing wolves. It's been around for years, so maybe you've seen it.




This is also an interesting article on wolf hunting behavior in Yellowstone. It explains how often they kill bison. Predators will hunt the lowest-risk prey they can.
 
How many here feel we are part of nature? How so?
 
just me said:
How many here feel we are part of nature? How so?
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I do not think I am part of nature because to be a-part of something suggests the possibility of being separate. or ability to be regarded independently of the larger context.

I am not independent, and my thinking so is either ignorant or a willful delusion.
I am not, and cannot be separated. Were I to be, I would instantly perish and die.

No, I am not part of nature. I am nature.

I am the sun that rises in the east, and I am the tree which gives shade. I am the crow in the tree, cawing.

Nature is integral so as to be uni-verse.

The “web of life” is a convenient shorthand, but it is based on an untruth.

When you look upon a pelican, I hope you understand as it lives and dies, you live and die, and as you go, so goes the pelican.

You and the pelican are not parts. You and the pelican are manifestations that arise from unity, and we call that Nature.

Blesséd Be,
Ian
 
Some thoughts to play around with.

We get into all kinds of dualistic trouble thinking that people are not part of nature. It was nature that produced us and so we are a natural product of evolution. The fact that we are having a huge impact on our environment and on the earth's ecosystems is itself a natural phenomenon, therefore. Seen by aliens from another world, what we are, and the impact we are having, would seem to them a natural state of our world's ecology. Other evolutionary processes have also created life that has impacted in enormous ways on the earth and it's state. Perhaps the most spectacular is the great Oxygen Catastrophe which happened over 2 Billion years ago. That was the time that nature invented photosynthesis in single celled creatures who then bred like mad and very successfully. At that time there was no oxygen in our atmosphere and so they completely changed it utterly, absorbing carbon dioxide and releasing the amount of oxygen we take as normal today. That probably killed off most of the forms of life that preceded them because oxygen is a powerful poison and eventually it resulted in a reverse greenhouse effect which caused the earth to freeze over almost completely for millions and tens of millions of years. That laid the foundations for the world we know today. Under the ice, multi-celled organisms evolved and when the ice melted, they took off with incredible evolutionary speed, eventually leading to ourselves. We wouldn't be here now if those first photosynthesising cells hadn't led to such a huge environmental catastrophe two billion years ago.

So we are part of nature - as @aeon says, we are embedded in it and we are nature regardless of our impact on the environment. We think of the environmental impact we have caused as a bad thing, and maybe it is for us and the other living things around us, but even if we trash the earth like these little creatures did long ago, that's part of nature too and it has happened before - and who knows what marvels nature would evolve out of our catastrophe in millions of years to come? Maybe something as far ahead of us as we are ahead of the dinosaurs.

From all I’ve seen, nature is an exquisite designer of new life. When people abandon the things we make, nature moves in and replaces us with wonders. It happens after the great catastrophes and it happens in little ways too. Angkor Wat and Chernobyl aren’t the only places. Britain is littered with the relics of human structures that have been colonised by plants and wild creatures and have a magic about them beyond the wild countryside.
 
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