In South Africa, they planted pine Forrest’s to replace the low lying bushes and scrawny native trees and shrubs.
But the streams happened to dry up. Global warming perhaps? But the trees were flourishing and welcomed visitors and tourists!
They planned to plant more trees!
Then a single conservationist surveyed the hillsides and demanded all the foreign trees and cultivars be removed. She was received with cynicism and finally they agreed to return a section of the hillside to its native plants. The result was that streams originating in the repairs mountainside moved again and were fully revived.
The stalwart impressive but foreign trees the State has covered the mountainside with were simply stealing all the water! They essentially killed the entire mountain circle of life.
So the cynics now agreed and the entire area was returned to its native state.
The folk realized that what we think of as “beauty” can mean a collapse of the ecosystem by which nature hangs on to life and thrives.
With return to native plants, complex cycles between air, moisture, rainfall is rebalanced. This in turn permits life all the way down to whether or not toads, lizards, snakes, field mice, butterflies birds and then hawks and eagles can flourish!
It’s not rocket science, Peter!
It’s just Nature!
Asher