Interconnectedness

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” (John Muir)

Every action has an opposite and equal reaction

Like dropping a bead of liquid into a puddle of water, it moves to be in harmony of the puddle, but its influence is not only as big as itself – it causes ripples in the water and spreads itself within it; entropy is inevitable.

We like to think that we understand our environment, the flora, the fauna, the intricacies of physics, science, biology and matter. But the implication when wanting to control and master some of these elements, in a close net ecosystem is at best amateur. You can't treat the disease without seeing the vessel in its entirety; sickness is when balance is lost (Chinese medicine). However we approach it, by adopting a holistic approach for instance; such as Dirk Gently did (Douglas Adams book), nature has spectrum's that are more complex than we would like them to be. The mapping of the world, the universe and everything is fine in a system of function, but not when used to work out how all these elements collide into one sphere. For instance, we have quantum mechanics, Einstein's relativity, and Newtonian physics, which all independently work well as models to predict how objects move through space and time. However, we don't have a working theory of all of these combined; as they are by their very nature different systems. In one universe to operate, where all the matter is composited of the same 'stuff', should there not be one model to cover it all. Well this is something that has been on the to-do-list of every theoretical physicist today, and we have models (string theory, M-theory etc..) which sort of do this, but don't do this to any level to determine proof of it – multiple dimensions are still theoretical. Even nature on our planet operates in ways we can't even begin to comprehend; the mapping of it all is virtually too expansive to quantify. Thus, humans have made a great deal of mistakes and problems in the world, mistakes which have not gone unnoticed.

I recently picked up an old New scientist, in an article it talks about mushrooms – perhaps saviours in our mycophobic (mushroom fearing) western stance (as opposed to Asia's mycophillic stance). To our sensibilities, the mushroom represents stagnation of decomposition and death, whereas in Asia it's often associated with regeneration or rebirth. Despite this, there's still a large misrepresentation of the mushroom. Personally, I've never much favoured the fungus, (regardless of how often it is invited to parties) pushing them to the edges of my plate in a heap of discarded death. Going over to Asia, you find a much larger array of the fungus, and its uses are encompassed in a variety of dishes. Before Asia, I admit, I had a lot of prejudice about mushrooms; stating - 'I don't have much room left for them', even if I did. Always room for pudding though. Though I learnt to mould myself a bit by its influences, and actually, much to my surprise I was won over by Beoseot Jeongol (mushroom hot pot). They're beginning to grow on me...

Mushrooms (mycelium) have many remarkable attributes – in immunology to fight against disease and viruses (a protection we bypassed when we begun deforestation), to detoxify animals and insects such as bees (improving life span and helps increase the colony survival capacity), to break down toxins and to rehabilitate habitats from traumatic pollution or deforestation. They are the grand recyclers of nature; restoring soil by decomposition, a trick which in turn gives rise to biodiversity.

“Mycelia constantly learn form their environment. They can help remediate oil spills and break down pesticides and herbicides. I am convinced that there is not yet a single carbon-based toxin that we could not train mycelial networks to break down” Paul Stamets (Mycologist, Washington)

Mushrooms until recently have been largely overlooked as providing anything more than an addition to the plate, however, it is clear that they offer a lot more than that. This is exactly my point; that through the course of our narrow-mindedness, and general disregard of nature, we tend to overlook some of their more imprtant aspects.

Life:

We are only discovering now that even plant life is far more complicated and intelligent than we at first thought. It is clear that many plants have 'sense' abilities; overlooked because of our narrow-minded understanding because it doesn't match our own types. https://www.newscientist.com/round-up/plant-senses/

How can nature be intelligent? “...it gave you the very brain that gave you the ability to conceive this concept” Says Paul Stamets. It is often the very arrogance of man which drives the climate and nature towards oblivion. What we don't realise, is that we are tethered to the same origin, and to the same life line too.

“Woven into our lives is the very fire from the stars and genes from the sea creatures, and everyone, utterly everyone, is kin in the radiant tapestry of being.” ― Elizabeth A. Johnson

To survive, a creature needs energy, and this energy has to come from somewhere. So introducing even one thing has a toll on the ecosystem of that area. If this creature manages to survive to fertility, and reproduce and further its grip of a place, its easy to see it changing the big creatures, it's less easy to see its impact on the small. Though, nothing comes for free – you can't make something from nothing, and that goes for the mass of the creature at-hand. Regardless of whether that energy comes from the animals, the plants, the insects or the ground, the impact is there – that's why it's virtually impossible to predict the outcomes of systems you are wanting to impact/evolve/develop/change. Us humans have dislodged the balance of nature, and have at various times in our history tried to reinstate the balance. Often, it in turn has had various off-set consequences which lead to other problems down-the-road. We need to understand, that any change we make to an ecosystem will affect more than a singular animal or plant, but will in all likelihood have profound influences throughout the environment.

Examples:

'Trophic Cascade': An ecological process that starts at the top of the food chain and tumbles all the way down to the bottom.

> The good thing about small islands, is that impact from introducing an alien species is generally made obvious from early stages of the introduction. The ecosystem is much smaller and has a close-quartered food cycle, so when a change happens it ripples through the ecosystem within single genrations. An extensive reoccurring pest problem plagued the island of Macquarie (located about halfway between Australia and Antartica). In the 1800s, cats were introduced to the island, later, rabbits were introduce 60 years after that. The grazing habits of the rabbits began to have destructive effects on the native vegetation, so in the 1960s they were controlled using the Myxomatosis virus. The vegetation recovered, but this meant the cats had fewer rabbits to eat, so they began eating the native seabirds instead. To protect the seabirds, the cats were then eradicated, and that was when the rabbit population exploded once more. After major pest eradication projects, the island was finally declared pest-free only in 2014, but the sorry tale is used as a lesson for conservation agencies, reminding them that risk assessments should be comprehensive. Though it also tells us that even the smallest changes have affects which shake the foundations of any ecosystem.

> Rabbits changed the landscape of Australia; being considered as the cause to desertification in various districts in the country. In 1859, Thomas Austin from The Victorian Acclimatisation Society, had the idea to release 24 wild rabbits in Victoria (Australia) to hunt for sport and to make settlers "feel more at home". In less than 70 years, the rabbit population had reached something in the region of 10 billion! In their wake as they spread they caused soil erosion, lead to local extinction of various trees, had an effect on other native wildlife numbers and the loss of billions of dollars to the agricultural industry. Although biological methods such as the Myxomatosis virus have drastically reduced rabbit numbers, there is still an estimated 200 million rabbits in Australia, and they are here for the foreseeable future.

> The red fire ant (Solenopsis invicta) from South America, has had wide spread impact in the south-eastern region of the U.S. and is expected to widen its range. These ants out-compete other ants and impact crops and humans. Scientists are investigating the interaction of the phorid fly with fire ants as a possible means of control. The fire ants also have a nasty precociousness to be alerted to distress amongst its members. You may think that that's only a beneficial attribute to have for any species wanting to thrive, but not when it comes to electrical equipment. Millions of dollars a year are spent in repairs when fire ants get trapped in electrical equipment and call for back-up – the distress signal alerts other fire ants, leading to electrical surges across the grid.

> Brown Tree Snakes somehow made their way to island of Guam in the 1940s; where they took less than half a century for them to extirpate all but two of the island’s dozen native bird species. As the birds slipped down the gullets of the insatiable nocturnal predators, spider populations proliferated. You now have an island which is glazed in spider web, a balance of nature which was there for thousands of years is now in a mess.

> Lionfish, a species native to the Indo-Pacific Ocean, are suspected to have been released into the Atlantic in the mid-1980s by hobbyists who dumped their aquariums into the ocean. They have since spread throughout the entire Caribbean and western Atlantic, voraciously feeding on other species that have no natural defences against the foreign fish. They may look pretty, but they are anything but to the native species who succumb to their veracity, and in turn, coral reefs which were bountiful with a diverse range of aquatic sea life are reduced to small numbers of few species, and coral reef ecosystems are destroyed. Governments across the Caribbean region are developing lionfish management plans, hoping to bring lionfish populations back to a level where they no longer impact other fisheries.

Unforeseeable impacts:

In 1995, wolves were introduced into Yellowstone national park, the purpose of which was to reduce the grazing population which had been having a severe impact on the flora since the eradication of the wolf at Yellowstone in the 1920's. Since then, their re-emergence into their native environment has had huge implications on the park, things scientists and zoologists were really not expecting. It was predicted that as a natural predator, wolves would decrease the deer population. What has thrilled scientists and ecologists is to find they have brought life to so many other populations and ecosystems. Their impact has, in fact, changed the course of the river! Yes, they have reduced the deer population, but just their presence pushes the deer away from exposed river banks and stops their grazing along exposed banks. Meaning the banks incur less erosion, which means that the rivers direction follows the flow of itself in relation to the more supportive banks in toe. Other species have come back in great numbers too and the diversity of the entire park has expanded. To think that an animal is ultimately 'good' for the reason that it is a herbivore, is just bad thinking. The environment produced the mixture of animals we see today, each has its place.

Today:

Today, a species goes extinct every 15 minutes, and to think that it took thousands if not millions of years for that species to evolve to what it is, for it to be eradicated in a very short space of time shows something in the way we use the world and how our lifestyles impact on nature. Microorganisms clean water, plants produce oxygen, animals affect climate and maintain the complex diversity of flora, fauna and microorganisms; all which play their part in the tapestry of life. If you are making a quilt, all stitches are important. To miss a stitch, or to have a thread severed at a point, the quilt becomes more susceptible to its demise. The more stitches missed, or thread severed, the more fragile and easy the entire thing is to unravel.

“Pull a thread here and you’ll find it’s attached to the rest of the world.”

Nadeem Aslm

I started with the idea of simply talking about some examples where our simple introduction of a species has had side-effects in ecosystems that we weren't expecting. But it became more of a critique of humans in general. Our impact is undeniable, and so its up to us to do something about it. With the diversity of nature, its hard to see how our footprint of extinction will impact us in the future; but owing to the fact that we are a product of nature, it will indeed have an impact. We use nature in medicine, food, ointment and for the air we breath. We have been given a world which is in direct alignment with ourselves; and it is woeful that we so freely spoil it without using the properties which we are made of (mind and senses) to rationalise and realise the outright ridiculousness of doing so.