Of dinosaurs, bush fires and development

What? Not bush fires again? Yes, I’m afraid so, although this happens to be the very first piece I wrote on that subject.  It was published exactly twenty four years tomorrow when there was a lot more bush to burn than there is today.

Incredible as it may seem now, a short quarter-century (less one dry season) ago, the southern face of the Northern Range was clothed in bush, in secondary forests of tall trees, from the rain-shadow area of Chaguaramas to Cocorite, Goodwood Park, Diego Martin, Maraval, St Ann’s/Cascade, Morvant, Barataria, San Juan, St Joseph, Tunapuna, Tacarigua, Arouca, Arima and Valencia — with plantations of pine and swamp forest on either side of Long Stretch — that once was a scenic drive.

Today all is brown, blasted, naked — a veritable Mordor, except for a few miserable, spiny, fire-resistant bactris palms and a thin thread of bush marking the surviving watercourses — soon to become roaring torrents of flash flood water when the rains lash down. Here is what I wrote before those hills were burned bare: “What with WASA and TELCO and traffic, the docks and DEWD, litter and unemployment to bedevil us, how many readers have time to worry about the end of the world?

There are some who think Armageddon would be a blessed release by putting an end to our seemingly incurable troubles. Others wonder whether there will be a great earthquake when the trumpets sound, or if the end will steal upon us like a thief in the night. At our present rate of progress, the thief theory seems the most likely. Nor does man appear to be doing much, if anything, to stop it. In fact man himself is tearing down the burglar bars put in place for his protection.

The bars of tall, straight trunks of trees hold up canopies of leaves to trap the sun’s energy and make the oxygen we breathe. The roots hold fast the soil . . . (2003 Oh no!  No way!! The roots don’t prevent erosion — as I learned the week after this was published when Conservator of Forests the late Dr Bal Ramdial explained the shock-absorbing function of leaves), the leaf litter forms a sponge to store the waters of life. By destroying trees man is opening the door to thieves to steal the air we breathe, and the fresh water of life. Dying for lack of water may have happened before. Civilisations have flourished where now there are only deserts. Was the Flood the result of the wholesale destruction of the world’s forests in ages before recorded history?

We know from our own experience that the more we quarry, slash and burn and “develop” our hillsides in the dry season, the worse are the floods when the rains lash down and there are no canopies of protecting trees to check floodwaters. In the December issue of the Trinidad Naturalist Magazine (now, alas, defunct) Mr Frankie Farrell speculated on the mysterious disappearance of the dinosaurs, the huge, plant-eating (2003 well, most of them) monster lizards who were once the lords of creation. “Suppose,” wrote Mr Farrell, “that they experienced a population explosion similar to the one going on today amid the human race.”

Mr Farrell compared the dinosaurs to swarms of locusts. They were so huge they could strip the tallest trees bare of foliage — thereby destroying their own food supply. “The widespread destruction of vegetation would upset the oxygen-carbon dioxide balance in the atmosphere. With less and less oxygen being regenerated by the diminishing vegetation, the balance would swing over to a preponderance of carbon-dioxide. “The result would be what is called “The Greenhouse Effect”. Heat from the sun would easily pass through the atmosphere... temperatures would rise significantly all over the world... one can imagine millions of Saurians,” (dinosaurs and other monster lizards) “too listless to eat and drink” (and gasping for oxygen) “dying all over the world and leaving their bones to bleach in the scorching sun. The coup-de-grace would probably be the melting of the icecaps as a result of increased world temperatures.” (The term “Global Warming” had yet to be well-known in 1979).

This may seem a very far-fetched scenario. Anyway, dinosaurs, we’re told, were stupid lizards with tiny brains, they didn’t know what they were doing. Man does, yet he still goes on doing exactly what the dinosaurs might have done. A recent BBC World Service Farming World programme featured the piecemeal destruction of the vast rain forests of South America, Africa and the Far East. Forests are disappearing before the onslaught of land-hungry peasant farmers, huge transnational timber companies, developers building roads, factories, houses...

Man is stripping away his own defences as more and more forests fall to the bulldozer, the chain saw, the “slash-and-burn” gardeners, the fire raisers (be they children, malicious youths, the feeble minded or men at war . . . 2003 remember Vietnam — and Agent Orange?) Man is burning up oxygen to fire the oil, gas and coal that power his factories, his cars and trucks. The “Greenhouse Effect” is building up and up; the lowest curves on the scientists’ graphs today are as high as the highest peaks on the graphs of 20 years ago.

Driven by the need for living space, farming land and huge industrial building projects which, when complete, will have jobs for only a handful of highly skilled voters, (2003 note - I was referring to Point Lisas) the danger is stealing into our own backyard. Come to think of it, it may be here already. Remember those dinosaurs expiring because they were too listless to get their daily meal, too short of breath to work and too hot to care? Doesn’t that somehow remind you of WASA and TELCO and the docks — and isn’t it typical of DEWD?”