After the Eden to Addo Mega-Hike, the participants were asked to reflect on the concept of “corridors”, as Eden to Addo is a conservation corridor initiative. Here is my effort…
If Earth is a self-regulating organism – Gaia to some – then ecosystems represent the fabric of its nervous system. Ecosystems contain relationship pathways, energy flows, the accumulated wisdom of ages – memory. Healthy ecosystems with integrity, by offering and exploiting alternatives and options enable Earth’s inherent resilience – its ability to evolve to new states of equilibrium and to heal itself.
Ian McCallum, in his poem named after Nature’s first-born, Wilderness, repeatedly and plaintively asks: “Have we forgotten . . . ?”. Have we forgotten our place in, our dependence on, Nature? Yes – we are forgetting. We are visiting our Alzheimers on the organism. We are severing ancient pathways, projecting our species’ forgetting-disease onto Gaia.
We cut Nature’s wiring by fencing, by dominating, coercing, brutalising, subjugating, raping, by engineering, by slicing and dicing, soiling, atrophying, transforming. We do all this because we are forgetting.
Corridors are a start to reconnecting Nature’s pathways like tentative tendrils reaching out to form a snyapse. With luck and persistence perhaps the synapses will fire and reconnect, and the ecosystem will relearn, repair, re-adapt, re-evolve.
Corridors are metaphors for rediscovering our links with Nature. By remembering we help to allow the organism to relearn and so we help Nature to repair herself.
First published on the Eden to Addo Corridor Initiative website.
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