Portraits of the Rainforest <BR>Adrian Forsyth

Portraits of the Rainforest

Interview by Vicky Busch

One can easily become engrossed in the spectacular tropical photography of Patricia and Micheal Fogden in their latest book Portraits of the Rainforest. Larger-than-life colour portraits of wrestling frogs or a split-second shot of a golden viper in attack offers rare glimpses of the natural world. But Portraits of the Rainforest is more than just a pretty picture book. It is also a collection of entertaining and educational essays by biologist and award-winning author Adrian Forsyth.

For Adrian Forsyth, the complexity of the natural world has a beauty and symmetry akin to the artistic creation in a symphony or a cathedral. And just as people need some background in order to appreciate opera or certain art forms, they also need to know something about the world of nature in order to appreciate it. "When you walk out of one culture into another, it doesn't mean much because it's so foreign. The natural world is like that," Forsyth explains. "People need to learn how to appreciate it."

Although Adrian Forsyth has spent 20 years working in the rainforest and has observed the ravaging effects of agricultural, economic, and environmental policies on this eco-system, he does not write to convince readers to adopt a tree or to lament the devastation. His popular books and his regular column in Equinox magazine tell stories of life in the rainforest, in an anecdotal style which reflects his preference for natural history over science.

His anecdotes provide great stories for science teachers to get the attention of their students. They are stories, too, that students will remember to retell at the dinner table. The story "Jerry's Maggot" explains how a scientist befriends a maggot which has imbedded itself in his skull. Since this parasite is not harmful, costing him only a few milligrams of flesh and minor discomfort, he allows it to grow to the size of a goose egg. He comes to appreciate his situation as an opportunity to experience firsthand the ecological relationship between himself and another species. The equally gruesome story of Adrian's toe fleas (see end of article) is retold not only for its power to make skin crawl, but to illustrate in a non-clinical way the life cycle of one of the world's most maligned, yet necessary, organisms - parasites.

What is happening to the world's rainforests and to other ecosystems is not news, but it generates little action in relation to the scope of the problem as described by biologists and other experts. The problem generates little action because it does not affect the daily lives of politicians or the people who vote for them. And it does not affect people's daily lives because the effects of the changes are not immediately felt. Even changes evident in as short a span as ten years, less than a droplet in the ocean of historical time, do not register on the brains of humans, who seem programmed to respond only to immediate threat.

While environmental changes may not be daily visible to most Canadians, change is occurring at an alarming rate, both in the tropics and in Canada. But it is in the tropics where the change is occurring most quickly and where the chance for irretrievable losses is greater. Approximately 12,220 square kilometres of Canadian forest are cleared each year. In the Amazon almost three times that amount is cleared or burned. An estimated 55 per cent of Canadian forests are regenerated to a productive new forest within five years of logging. In contrast, virtually none of the Brazilian Amazon regenerates to a productive new forest after logging. Compared to the 27,000 estimated species found in Canada's Boreal forests, the Amazon has between one and two million species. Because of this great diversity, the speed of rainforest destruction, and the limitations of time and money, Forsyth believes that in an either/or situation, efforts should be directed first to preserving rainforests.

Aurora: Why should Canadians be concerned about what is happening in rainforests thousands of miles away?

Forsyth: There are both direct and indirect reasons. For example, of direct concern to Canadians is the fact that over 100 species of Canadian birds are really tropical birds that come north to breed during the long Canadian summer when there's a lot of daylight and insect activity. Another direct concern is that a lot of our weather is going to be generated in tropical areas. We're going to experience climatic alterations as a result of deforestation.

As well, many natural resources we use, such as the cotton in our clothing, coffee, orange juice, sugar, tea, and chocolate, are all from tropical plants. Most of the 300 species of domesticated plants that we use come from the tropics. More than 70 per cent of the plants known to produce compounds with anticancerous properties are tropical. Of long-term benefit are the unknown uses of tropical plants. These are some direct practical benefits, but it's really the long-term genetic resource that has the highest dollar value.

Many people think that scientists have already discovered most things in the world, and in fact they haven't. Only about ten per cent of plants have been surveyed for useful compounds, and that in an extremely crude way. In fact, we are still deriving much of our knowledge from centuries-old folk pharmaceutical information accumulated over thousands of years. Of the most common plant-derived drugs in use today, 74 per cent were predicted by their original folk use, so we haven't really done a lot of modern exploration of these things.

Aurora: You are referring to ethnobotany. What does that mean?

Forsyth: Ethnobotany is the study of people's relation to plants. It is primarily studied in less developed societies where some people still derive most of their medicinal and material needs from plant communities rather than buying them in the drug store. An Amazonal tribe may use 1,600 different pharmaceutical plants. For example, it's very easy to get skin infections in the tropics. To prevent small cuts from becoming infected, I've used fig sap from a fig stem or a leaf. When it is broken open, a white latex oozes out, full of proteolytic enzymes that digest proteins and essentially destroy the infection. When the sap dries, it seals the wound. It's certainly as good as antibiotic creams. That's an example of a common traditional remedy that is probably more effective than the substitute manufactured products.

This kind of knowledge is being lost very quickly as each culture becomes exposed to western antibiotics, which are effective but only if they can be delivered in a sensible and consistent manner. Much of this knowledge is considered old fashioned. Missionaries in particular have played a role in convincing people to forgo their native medicinal practices. In the process they've thrown the baby out with the bath water. There is a lot of stuff in native medicine that's not effective except psychologically. But there is also a lot that is tremendously pragmatic and useful, and ethnobotany tries to document that.

Aurora: The diversity of rainforests is one of the major reasons given for preserving them. But some people may be unimpressed by the fact that a small section of the Amazon has 43 species of ants - more than all the British Isles. What is so inherently good about diversity?

Forsyth: Diversity is extremely fundamental. I think that the human brain is designed to like, and indeed to require, diversity. We get bored if we don't have stimulation, and our diet reflects that.

Originally, when we were a hunter-gather society, we ate hundreds of different species in our annual cycle. In a modern civilized diet, where we eat relatively few species, we go to great lengths to add all sorts of spices and sauces and combinations simply to relieve the monotony. Our tongues crave stimulation. This may be adaptive in that diversity of diet is correlated with getting essential vitamins and minerals. It makes sense that we would want to have diversity in our diet just to get the full range of trace elements.

So we depend on diversity in a real physiological sense, but we also depend on it psychologically. It is possible to function in a world where algae is grown for food in concrete tanks which produce oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide in a nice, well-regulated, well-managed loop. But it would be an extremely boring world. Diversity is not important because it has a high dollar value but because it makes life worth living. A diverse world is simply a more beautiful, more attractive place to live in.

Aurora: What is a sustainable land-use policy for countries that have large portions of land in forest and growing numbers of people wanting to use the land for plantations or industry?

Forsyth: A sustainable land-use policy in tropical forests depends on low density population. There are certain situations where people can live reasonably well in a rough ecological balance but only at a low density. Traditionally, people have used a mixed approach where they convert some forest into garden and save the rest of the forest for other things, like hunting. That works very well when people live in low densities.

But there's not much respect for that traditional lifestyle because some people feel that the land is underutilized if it's not occupied at high densities. The people who live a traditional lifestyle have no rights to the land they use. They don't get a land title unless they fence something off, and fencing simply doesn't work that well in a lot of tropical soils.

The land-use systems that, people have traditionally used are often the best systems. To change them otherwise depends on massive fossil fuel subsidies in the form of fertilizers. If farmers can't afford fertilizers or if they aren't always going to be available, it's a mistake to convert to that form of land use. The question is whether converting forest to plantations or grazing land, has a long-term future. Some argue that if this produces higher levels of income, it's necessary to go ahead and convert them. But most of these schemes have not proven to be sustainable in the long term.

The problem reflects a lack of understanding about land-use capabilities. Many agricultural models proposed for the tropics are based on European models where the soil and climate are very different. But the tropics simply will not function like a temperate zone.

The situation is similar in the Canadian North. I was very upset when the ban on seal furs occurred in Europe because I would like to see indigenous communities be able to make a living in the North and have a stake in maintaining ecological systems.

Aurora: What other similarities do you see between what is happening in the tropics and what is happening in Canada?

Forsyth: Generally, land-use decisions are made in a closed loop between government agents and corporate interests without any public participation. If you're involved in salmon farming or tourism, or if you want to grow seaweed or harvest crabs, you have no legal voice in the system about whether a watershed gets logged or not. Even a member of the public who enjoys hiking or bird watching has no input into the decision-making process.

Canadians are competing with Malaysians to sell wood cheaply to the Japanese, and we're undervaluing the resource. If there was a wood-producers cartel in the same way there's an oil-producers cartel that set a price and a limit to the output, we'd all be better off. If you calculate the true costs of logging in terms of loss of soil and damage to other resources, such as tourism, wood should be quite expensive. Where and how much gets logged should be a careful decision, and right now the whole decision-making process is far too closed to be very effective. The price of wood is undervalued, and therefore we have poor logging practices in Malaysia competing with poor logging practices in Canada to produce the greatest volume at the lowest price.

Aurora: You've popularized the study of nature through your columns in Equinox and your books for the general public and for children. How are you received by more academic biologists?

Forsyth: I think that academics are still in an ivory tower and are forced to remain there by the whole reward system that occurs in universities. They still award tenure based on the number of refereed publications that come out in journals, not for being a good teacher or for community service.

Universities have a narrow view of scholarship and haven't chosen to participate very fully in the real world as far as involvement with local community things. There's still this idea that science is a pure, objective activity, and everything else is not very intellectually stimulating or rewarding. So there's something about the way universities operate that just means most academics aren't really that relevant when you have real problems to solve. At least in the environmental area, universities are pretty irrelevant.

Aurora: What issues need to appear on the environmental agenda in the near future?

Forsyth: I am concerned about the priorities environmental efforts are taking. In Canada, we have relatively few species that could become extinct through the process of environmental degradation. But the extinction of species is possible on a much larger scale in the tropics. That's why we have to focus our efforts on the tropics.

In Canada, we are devoting billions of dollars over the next generation to reduce the impact of acid rain, but all that investment will not prevent a single species from going extinct. It will make trees and lakes more healthy in the East, but it won't affect extinction rates. I'd like to see that same money commitment in places where extinction is an ongoing process. We would get a lot more bang for our buck by saving a patch of rainforest, than we are worrying about pollutants. That's not to say that pollutants aren't important. It's just that with a limited amount of money, we should be investing more in trying to hold off extinction because there's nothing we can do about that once it occurs.

I think there will be more attention on Boreal forest issues, particularly since there's such massive plans to deforest the Soviet Union. Alberta and Canada have to get together with other countries and agree not to sell off our natural resources as quickly and cheaply as possible. It would be stupid for both Canadians and the Soviets to flood the world with pulp and paper, thus driving existing forest communities out of existence. There needs to be more international co-operation about trade and natural resources. Perhaps that's a different approach rather than seeing it as a battle between the forest industry and environmentalists.

There's reason for both optimism and pessimism. Certainly there's a lot more public awareness and concern about environmental issues, and that is encouraging.

On the other hand, the U.S. now has a new national energy strategy in which conservation doesn't figure at all. People haven't begun to take conservation and resources seriously enough because there's no political incentive for doing it. Politicians have relatively little to gain by forcing people to conserve. So there are certain aspects of human nature that are very difficult to change except when things get a lot worse. Things may have to get worse before they get better.

Adrian's Toe Fleas

A couple of years ago, I went hiking in Costa Rica wearing rubber boots that were oversized and leaky besides. It was raining, and the trail was a mixture of muck and rock. Eventually, the ends of my smaller toes became blistered from the slogging. After a few days had passed, the blisters toughened, a protective callus formed and I forgot all about them. Some weeks later, I was back in Ontario and noticed that all my toes had reverted to their normal state save the smallest one on my right foot. This little pinkie was still callused on the end and had a dull, hollow feel to it. I left it alone for a time, but when the condition persisted, I thought it wise to investigate. For my studies, I had in hand a sharp, clean pair of forceps but no particular expectations. I jabbed experimentally at the callused mass, and it erupted. A mass of creamy, pinkish yellow eggs, like fish roe, burst out of the skin and hung there inelegantly on the end of my toe. After a few shocked seconds of puzzlement and contemplation, a light went on in my head. "A toe flea," I exclaimed with a mixture of horror and satisfaction.

From Portraits of a Rainforest, published by Camden House Publishing.

Books by Adrian Forsyth

Tropical Nature: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1984.

The Nature of Birds: Camden House, 1988.

The Architecture of Animals: Camden House, 1989.

Portraits of the Rainforest: Camden House, 1990.

An Aurora Update

Dr. Forsyth is currently president of the Amazon Conservation Association. He lives in Washington, D.C. and can be located at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.