Displacement...

It remains true that, as the Once-ler concluded, "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing's going to get better. It's not."

I was reminded of this Dr Suess quote by this informative web page examining the plight of Sumatran forests. The webpage includes a link to a new site displaying the loss of Indonesian Rainforest on Google Earth.

What caught my eye though was a link to academic displacement theory. Is this new information and effort going to help prevent deforestation? Is it just one more forest mapping program? I don't know. The website seems well intentioned and up to date, but the thought behind the questioning certainly connects with my thoughts about the failure of some research to result in conservation benefits in New Zealand. Particularly it seems in the marine area which I have been trying to come to grips with recently.

And further on displacement. The article got me flashing back to our time in Indonesia. The abandoned tourist hub of Ketambe, with the orangutans in the jungle, where we went walking through the illegal logging above the village. The stories of the charismatic fauna Sumatran Tigers, Rhinoceros's and others, wandering through this area in increasingly fragmented and dispersed populations. Mr Jally and the hubris of his hippie trail bungalows on the edge of his wilderness. His men trying to etch a living as conservation police.