The loss of forest giants

The heart of In the Bush: explore and discover New Zealand’s native forests is a tall rimu showing that a single large tree is an ecosystem of animals and plants.

It’s distressing to hear in the news that some protected trees have been illegally logged.

But also equally sad to hear people espousing, as I once heard on Country Calendar, the view that a large tree should be ‘extracted’ from the forest before it gets to rot. As if the hollowing and rotting is somehow bad, and not a whole new set of habitats and services to the forest. It was that which inspired the following poem.

The logger

He thinks
he can pluck
a single forest giant
which anyway
would just rot and decay
as if it isn’t all
connected
with a web
we cannot see,
as if the bats
and birds
insects
epiphytes
and ferns
can move
and find another home,
as if the rātā
in the canopy
does not have time
to take the giant
in a root embrace,
as if the hollowing
the slow breakdown
from tall tree
to humus
doesn’t serve
the forest.

From “In the Bush” by Gillian Candler, illustrated by Ned Barraud

I’ve visited some awesome forest giants. Kauri - Tāne Mahuta, Te Matua Ngahere; Northern rātā - Ratanui, Karapoti Rātā; Rimu - Moko. You can read about some of them in this blog.