Night Walking in the Cooper Creek in the Daintree Rain Forest

The Daintree rain forest is more than 100 million years old and though only a million acres of it still exists on the eastern border of Australia from Cairns to Cook Town, it is one of the most ecological vibrant and intact rain forests. Nevertheless, like the Great Barrier Reef it borders, it is a fragile irreplaceable jewel whose fate is in human hands.
At 8 PM we’re taking the famed night-walk through the Cooper Creek Rain Forest (http://www.ccwild.com) with Neil Hewitt the naturalist who was quite at home in his backyard forest in the pitch black of night. With his headlamp on like a miner he scanned the paths, each limb and branch, and with a discerning eye was able to see a world we were blind to: lizards wrapped around tiny stalks, frogs the size of a thumbnail resting on a green leaf, poisonous spiders nearly invisible on a tree, venomous brown snakes slithering near our feet, fruits poisonous to humans but benign to animals, the half dozen species of bats who eat their weight in insects each night and this is only the tip of the activities at night. In a hectare there are hundreds of species of insects, birds, animals, and plants. Though we were busily looking for creatures and unusual patterns, we were clueless, until Neil pointed it out. Though I have a good sense of the woods back in my Vermont home, I do wonder how much we all miss in our understanding and value of the earth. I felt like an innocent child newly introduced to the world.
The miracle of the web of life never ceases to amaze me. Standing by one mahogany tree some 50 meters tall, this tree supports an entire ecosystem by itself and it is integral in holding the forest canopy up. In turn it is totally dependent on its surrounding area. The mightiest tree to the most venomous snake or the most poisonous plant exists in a symbiotic relationship. The relationship is dynamic as temperature changes, cyclones roll across the land, a new strain of disease or one of a hundred variables occur, but this quest and imperative for balance is on-going. The mahogany could not exist without the forest, though the forest may adjust for the loss of mahogany, it has lost part of its integral fabric.
With the flashlights turned off the moon light dimly peeks through the dense tree top canopy. Flying bats dart above our heads, leaves stir in the trickle of a breeze, and the crickets, frogs and hundreds of other creatures all have their own song. The large venomous spider in her web is humming her own song, “Come closer. Come closer visit my web,” or at least that is what I thought she said. In the dark, unable to see another person a few steps away, without the sounds of civilization and motors, the forest animated only by the sounds of insects and creatures of the night, and in the nakedness of the pitch blackness I stepped back in time to the dawn of Mankind. Did early primates huddle in fear or was the night a familiar world? I felt alone and vulnerable, the oppressively hot humidity weighing down on us.
We turn the flashlights on again and return to present time. A bird not more than 10 centimeters long sleeps on a palm frond. The night forest is alive with sights, sounds, and creatures of all kind and as busy as a street in Manhattan: Conversations, chattering, arguments, shouting, a few planning murders, others thinking about procreation, others secretly making love, some are dying, and some are being born. The conversation and activity is omnipresent, though we can only hear a tiny part of it, spoken in pheromones, scents, chemical markers, and the most subtle of instincts. A blind snake that senses its prey by the presence of heat is as refined as our best instruments. Though our world of technology is impressive it pales in comparison to the elegant symbiotic diversity of the rainforest.
The rain forest, despite all its power and majesty, is a fragile world that took eons to create. The soil is particularly fragile and once the protective covering of trees is lost, the soil loses its vitality. Invasions of foreign species from introduced plants to the wild boar continue to undermine the ecosystem. However, hands down, the greatest threat is humans. The decimation of the rain forest leads to an increased carbon dioxide level and prevents heat from escaping into space and thus warming the Earth's atmosphere. As the earth gradually warms the polar ice melts and sea levels rise. At the present rate of destruction, the rain forests will be decimated in the next fifty to seventy-five years. We are at a pivotal moment in history. There is the story of the frog placed in boiling water and jumps right out, but if you place him in a cool pot and gradually bring it to a boil he will perish. We are slowly simmering and coming to a rapid boil.
Cooper Creek in the Daintree is a tiny window to an immense world that few of us can fully appreciate or value. The lesson, for me, is not all the names of each creature or plant, but the awareness and appreciation of the miracle of this vibrant ecosystem. How do we live in harmony and cherish the miracle of our natural resources, not only in the preservation of the rain forests and global ecosystems, but how are we equally and ardently protective of our home environments? Each one of us needs to wisely reflect on our impact on the earth and its resources, and find ways to mitigate it. The rain-forests are one of the most important treasures of the planet and the future of Mankind is dependent on how we care for them.