God’s Own Pharmacies
Posted on 28. Jun, 2010 by Paul Sochaczewski in Articles, Environment
Asia’s sacred groves survive because they provide spiritual and practical benefits; with thanks to a flying monkey god KERALA, India Who has the answers to conservation conundrums? Goverments with their laws, or local people with their traditions? As a conservationist I have spent years encouraging governments to establish protected areas through legislation. Unfortunately, many modern […]
Read MoreWatch What You Say in Burma’s Sacred Forests
Posted on 13. Jul, 2011 by Paul Sochaczewski in Articles, Environment
What’s a more powerful conservation incentive – a government jail or a spiritual punishment? ZEE O THIT HLA, Myanmar Myint Naing has one of the easier jobs in the Myanmar forestry department. Since 1999 his task has been to protect the Zee-O Thit-Hla sacred forest, which has been a government forest reserve since 1988. No […]
Read MoreReligions on the Wing
Posted on 28. Jun, 2010 by Paul Sochaczewski in Articles, Environment
Everyone in Irian Jaya wants a piece of Zakarias’s soul MINYAMBOU, Irian Jaya. When the fundamentalist Baptist missionaries in this isolated valley in Irian Jaya now West Papua] asked for contributions to build a new church, Zakarias chipped in with the most valuable thing he could find — a bird of paradise. The irony of […]
Read MoreBorneo Native Group Scores Land Claim Victory
Posted on 28. Jun, 2010 by Paul Sochaczewski in Articles, Environment
How a poor Iban longhouse took on Big Timber and won; sort of RUMAH NOR, Sarawak, Malaysia “There is no greater sadness on earth than the loss of one’s native land.” Euripedes We park the car along the side of a rutted dirt road in the middle of an acacia tree plantation five times […]
Read MoreRevelation on Shiva’s Beach
Posted on 08. Jan, 2026 by Paul Sochaczewski in Articles, Environment
A milky sunrise on a deserted beach, watching a miracle.
I walk, alone, along the beach on the windward side of this small island, closer to Australia than the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, blown sand gritting my contact lenses, looking for the tractor-like tracks that indicate an adult meter-long turtle has visited the low dunes to lay her eggs.
* * *
As the sun rises, a bunch of just-hatched turtles, each shorter than my thumb, scamper like reptilian puppies to the sea. After they all reach the ocean safely, swim in their turtle-infused water to wash off the sand. I want to speak with my travel companion, Alfred Russel Wallace. Alfred, I half expect to see you straggling out of the scraggly forest, in need of a bath and English-speaking company.
Read MoreTo Cut That Tree, Cut Through Me
Posted on 28. Jun, 2010 by Paul Sochaczewski in Articles, Environment
Chipko women’s movement keeps on huggin’ RENI, Uttaranchal, India Any new-age nature-lover can hug a tree, and many do. But it takes a special kind of person to embrace a tree which is about to be chopped down, and challenge the woodsman “if you want to cut the tree you’ll have to cut through me.” […]
Read MorePrayer Flags Over Rio
Posted on 28. Jun, 2010 by Paul Sochaczewski in Articles, Environment
Should we trust the eco-bureaucrats or the farmer in Bhutan for eco-solutions? JANGTSIKHA, Bhutan I was cleaning up my office and stubbed my toe against the printed version of Agenda 21, some 700 pages, 2,079 recommendations, guidelines and treaties resulting from the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio — the largest eco–bureaucratic gathering ever held. I […]
Read More