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You can’t go far wrong in a jungle can you?
Birds of Paradise? The far end of males being daft just because females demand it (see Remarkable Birds).
Jaguars – the Snow Leopards of warm wet places? The Capybara got away just like Ed Balls escaped the dance off in Strictly. How amazing was that? I didn’t even vote for him this week because I was talking to men in Arizona (I like Arizona – fond memories).
Have you ever been to jungles? I have – you obviously need a BBC camera team to get the most out of them. Jungles are the most frustrating places on Earth – stuffed full of biodiversity which is, generally speaking, completely invisible – apart from the trees, I spotted the trees! Still, I’m not selfish, I’m strongly on the side of frustrating jungles and against oil palm plantations.
If I never entered a jungle again it would be OK with me, but if we never chopped one down again that would be great news. It’s quite likely I’ll never jungle again but there is a vanishingly small chance that there will be the same amount of jungle on Earth when you read these words as there was when I wrote them. That’s progress apparently. How many Indrid families have gone in the last decade? Were you listening? Is anyone listening?
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I am being petty here but not sure i agree with this common usage of the word ‘jungle’. I may be completely wrong bit i blame Kipling.
In India it can mean a semi open arid landscape with acacia trees, i.e. thorn scrub or scrub jungle and in India even the rain forests are called forests.
http://www.biologydiscussion.com/forest/5-types-of-forests-found-in-india-explained/6940
Jungle in India (the origin of the word) can even mean an urban area overtaken by scrub.
The Birds of Paradise are a bit Disney but they are amazing. Don’t miss out on the fabulous bird life and the endemics of the Albertine Rift of Central Africa in the Afro-montane Rain forests of the Congo Nile Divide. Nyungwe in Rwanda, Impenetrable and Queen Elizabeth in Uganda and the safe bits of Congo (there are some) offer some of the most diverse forest birding in the World…love it.
I love this series! And the snakes! Just when you think that camera work can’t get any better, and that they have nothing new to show us, they do. I too have found it hard to spot the non-plant wildlife lurking in the rainforest, which makes it more wonderful when you do. But I’ve also seen piles of enormous logs being floated down rivers, and endless red scars weaving through the wonder. Rates of deforestation continue to be heart-breaking, and I can only hope that inspecting and rejecting products on the shelves with palm oil will have some effect. And supporting those organisations who buy or manage forest reserves. But greed and criminality are, at the moment, winning the day.