A cause that we should all surely support and promote is that of bio-diversity. In the land around where I live there is a great deal of bio-diversity and I do the best I can to preserve and encourage and foster it. There are many, many species of butterflies, for instance: there are black and white ones, there are orange ones with black spots, there are metallic blue ones, there are chestnut brown ones, there are hundreds of white ones and many, many others. Sometimes they fly up in a cloud around you. So, I plant buddleia bushes and other species that they like, that promote the life of butterflies.
There is much other diversity of species around here. There are many kinds of birds: we have redstarts, we have hoopoes, there are many owls and so on. So, I try to preserve and promote bio-diversity in the woodlands and in the fields. In the meadows, many flowers, many rare orchids.
But its not an easy struggle, because the attitude of the society is not attuned that way. The farmers around here think that they have done a really good job when they have ripped out all the hedgerows and killed all the insects, so that they can produce a good crop of food from a monoculture field.
When they kill the insects, they also kill the food of many of the birds. The number of insects, the number of birds, has all diminished, even over the time that I have been here.
I can remember, when I was a child, if we went on a car journey for a long distance, the window screens and the car lights were all covered with little bodies of the insects that had been crushed as we drove along. That doesn’t happen now. I can drive all the way to Netherlands and my window screen and my head lights are still clean. Why is this? Because we have killed off all the insects. The insects are all gone, all destroyed.
Of course, insects can be a bit of a pest… when you’re trying to have diner and there are wasps flying around… one feels “Oh, they’re a nuisance, we must get rid of them.” But wasps are a vital part of the eco-system of the world around us.
So, here I am trying to preserve a little oasis, a little island of bio-diversity in the midst of what is, from that point of view, really a desert. And, you know, a few days ago the electricity board Électricité de France suddenly appeared with a large machine and destroyed a great swathe of vegetation right across the middle of my land. They cut out everything and reduced it to the ground. This, of course, is to preserve the power lines which run across. So, 50 meters either side of the power lines there is devastation. I’m not sure that this degree of devastation was really necessary, but I have no doubt that they think that they’ve done a good job; and it probably never crossed their minds that in theses bushes and trees that they have destroyed, there were nesting birds at this time of year, the maximum season for the birds to reproduce and multiply. I’m sure they never thought about it. Its not that they are wicked or bad. It just is not in the consciousness of this society to preserve and promote bio-diversity.
We all go to the supermarket and we want perfect apples, perfect tomatoes and so on. That perfection is achieved by destroying the insects who live in the area where these things are growing. We’re all part of it and some shift of attitude is going to be necessary. Otherwise, when bio-diversity diminishes and species disappear, one of the species that will disappear is homo sapiens.
Namo Amida Bu
Thank you very much
Dharmavidya
David
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This, I can totally relate to it... Oh, I have so many stories about this kind...hahaha. Namo Amida Bu.
(Eleusis 2020)