More than meets the eye

Yesterday, my blog featured a little bit of poetry about the loss of tropical rainforests around the world, from the point of view of all the beautiful birds which would lose their homes.

Many people responded to the pictures, to the plight of the adorable birds. And, from the way I had written my blog post, that's what they saw.

Of course, there's much, much more to it than that.
Cutting down the rainforests means more than loss of habitat for cute and not-so-cute critters. It means losing billions of plants and trees which take in carbon dioxide and emit oxygen. That means air to breathe. For me and thee.

Loss of forests, whether evergreen forest on the Canadian coast, or jungles in Madagascar, means, ultimately, loss of oxygen.

And then, we all die.

Simple, isn't it? But I didn't choose to look at the fate of the world when Hannah gave us the topic "tropical rainforest" to write about. I chose the prettiest pictures I could find online, and wrote a "fluff piece" that went against the principles of hardline journalism.

That's probably why I was never a hardline journalist. I couldn't or wouldn't see the ultimate outcome as it would affect the world's total population. I couldn't see the forest for the birds.

And, hey, it's not as if I've never seen a tropical rainforest. I have, in Mexico, in Ecuador, and in Costa Rica. The photos here were taken by my husband in Costa Rica, many of them in the rain.

That's why they're called rainforests, and all of these camera critters are creatures whose plight is up to people to decide. Live or die? Ask the people who cut down the trees.

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hosted by Misty Dawn.
Thanks, Misty!

Photos by Richard Schear, 2007