Environment Education

Not so dead woodBittu SahgalIn the next few months I will be interacting with hundreds of teachers throughout India and through them with over 1,000,000 children across the country. This is under the aegis of the Kids for Tigers, the nature education programme that is helping to transform teachers and students into India‚s most effective Green Army.In our mission we have the support of Pradeep Poddar, CEO of Heinz India Ltd, makers of Complan, our sponsors. With his entire team, he shares our belief that in this day and age no child‚s education can be considered complete unless she is provided a real sense of what it takes to protect her natural heritage.Of course, clued-up contemporary teachers constantly remind their students how important trees are. Which is just as well, because they are among the least appreciated of nature‚s masterpieces. Indeed it‚s difficult to imagine a more useful ‚Ëœinvention‚. We need oxygen, which trees give us. And we put out carbon dioxide ‚ tonnes of it ‚ as our ‚Ëœwaste product‚, which trees transform into all manner of resources including food and fuel. No man-made machine could perform this vital service for us half as well. Indeed, almost everyone interested in environment and the great outdoors loves trees. Trees have beauty and grace that few other life forms can match. But when a tree falls, it is at best regarded a dead asset. This, I always take pains to explain to teachers, is a mistake. I suggest to them instead, that their wards are introduced to the miracles that allow even a dead tree to provide shelter and life to uncounted other life forms.In the course of its life (and this varies greatly from species to species) a tree works as a collector, retainer and converter ‚ all rolled into one. Water, solar energy, soil and minerals are all absorbed and retained by trees to be converted into leaves, wood, sap, flowers and fruit.Nutrients are thus blocked in a living tree and admirably protected by the tree‚s natural defences. The outer bark, for instance, prevents all types of invading organisms from attacking and destroying inner wood tissues.But once a tree dies, the dry, strong, hardy bark that used to function as a protective layer, begins to weaken. Why? Possibly because of fire, moisture in the atmosphere, or perhaps wind erosion. To a greater or lesser degree all these contribute to the inner tissues ‚ xylem and phloem ‚ losing their firmness. And this, ironically, is the trigger for new life forms to manifest themselves in the logs of a dead tree.Though you could find plenty of fungi on the stem of a tree even before it has fallen, it is only when the tree is well and truly dead that the fungi and mosses actually flourish. This is when the ‚Ëœinvasion‚ really begins. Organisms that enter new habitats (in this case the fallen log) are loosely termed invaders. The ecological term for this sequence of colonisation is ‚Ëœsuccession‚.Look in your…