NEWS & VIEWS • SEPTEMBER 2025 31 Anthropomorphic influence on wildlife remnants is not often noticeable unless one has a specific relationship or interest in something in the natural realm. Daily interaction with “She with no name” was making us inherently aware of just how climate change, human habits and encroachment and habitat change influence other species. Humans as apex inhabitants of this planet generally have scant regard for this influence and continue to “develop” to the eventual detriment of all (including themselves). My recent articles have made mention of high-tech developments in Forestry research illustrating the unlimited extent of human intellect. Boundless resourcefulness across infinite disciplines has placed humankind as the apex inhabitant of planet Earth and has contributed to an exponential population growth curve looking all the more like an out-of-control rocket careening towards an inevitable and destructive collision with a distant asteroid. If one supposes that the birthdates of the readership of this newsletter spans the period 1950 through to 2025, it is horrifying to note a population growth from 2.5 billion souls to well over 8.2 billion! In “She without a name’s” lifespan, the world’s population grew exponentially by some 2 billion people. That statistic has to resonate and cause some alarm bells to ring! Estimations are that converse to human growth, the Earth loses circa 66 000 tonnes of atmospheric mass per annum so – simply put – humans are rapidly running out of space! This one sees on a daily basis. Anyone noticed the traffic lately, or cities creeping inexorably into already dense suburbs? As foresters we experience ingress of people, litter, occupants, vehicles into our plantations literally every day. What we as humans don’t see enough of are innovations to try and halt or mitigate resource and habitat loss and to regulate human intersocial behaviour. Education curricula on all levels are also severely lacking in environmental protection and conservation-awareness programmes. One horrifying and little-known statistic that I recently read is that the world’s insect population has decreased by 73% since circa 1980. Rather than taking note of these declines, as apex beings, we choose rather to walk around with thumbs glued to a non-bio degradable mobile keyboard, pouting into a screen, all whilst buying bananas (already protected in a natural and biodegradable skin), packaged in durable plastic wrapper that will ultimately be discarded into the depleted landscape, take nigh on 700 years to degrade into microplastics to further infiltrate and irreversibly disrupt essential life sustaining systems. So, how clever are we actually? OK – so I feel much better after that rant! One of the last sightings we had of “She with no name” was of her frantically flying off to escape the terrifying stimulus of an inbound Hadeda with a plastic bag wrapped around its leg. The sound of the bag flapping in the wind as the carrier approached landing, terrified those foraging on the ground and they all took off sounding alarm calls. The scene was highly amusing but highly poignant at the same time. A Hadeda afflicted with a discarded plastic bag is really something that should not occur in nature in an ideal world, but no doubt is a common occurrence in reality. A few days after this event we discovered “She without name” deceased, below her nest in the Mahogany tree. It was a bittersweet moment. Bitter in the sense that our natural mentor would no longer patrol our lawn but sweet in the fact that she had met her end via natural causes. We had known her for 14 years and who knows how old she was at time of ringing. I would guess that that was not a bad innings for a Hadeda. She had overcome a lot of adversity and had survived. “She without name” saw a lot in her lifetime. We were fortunate to gain inherently from her experiences and contemplate the reasons for the occurrence of such. Thinking back on our interaction, her lifetime was a metaphor of human : environmental interaction. Not always pretty, not always sustainable, but always real. You and I will never be able to change the pace at which humankind is destroying the environment. What we can do is remain curious about that which is going on around us and actively try to understand better the dynamics unfolding. Useful metaphors are to be found everywhere and deep analysis of such makes our life so much more interesting and worthwhile despite the trajectory we are forced to take. What the Hadeda saw can teach us so much if we are receptive to learn!
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgyNjA0