The Russian Taiga stripped of cedar cones: systemic loss of functions

Recently, many readers have asked: why the cedar? Why are we, as part of our efforts to help the inhabitants of the Russian Taiga, transporting a huge number of cedar cones to areas of ecological degradation? To places affected by forest fires and large-scale logging? 

The issue became particularly acute after reports from Siberia and the Far East that 'harvesters' had taken all the cedar cones from the taiga 'to the last one.' They literally stripped the forest of a crucially IMPORTANT element, on which the lives of entire species of birds and animals directly depend. On which local biogeocenoses depend! 

To the extent that people began bringing in migrants by bus, who quickly strip the Russian Taiga of its cedar gold. After which all of it is sent by train to China, which in turn ensures an almost complete monopoly on the sale of cedar nuts worldwide. In other words, people are robbing their own Russian Taiga, leaving animals and birds to starve, for the sake of the 'economic rise of the Middle Kingdom.' 

THE WHOLE POINT IS THAT CEDARS CREATE AND SUPPORT THE ECOSYSTEMS OF THE RUSSIAN TAIGA 

If you look at your apartment SYSTEMICALLY, you can see 'key processes or technologies' without which an apartment is not an apartment.

How so?

Yes, more than simply!

Look: key technologies/processes can confidently be called all the engineering structures/communications of your dwelling. They are 'key' because they integrate your home into the processes of matter and energy exchange, making it 'alive,' making it somewhat like a 'living system'!

• heating and heat retention;
• cold water supply;
• The supply of hot water or heating of cold water;
• Sewage and waste removal;
• Electricity supply and lighting. 

Have you ever seen an 'abandoned building,' a skeletal structure of a house with long-broken windows?

This is what an apartment turns into if the 'key elements of the system' are lost!

A skeletal house where the shape of the house is recognizable, but all the useful functions of a dwelling are lost!

And this is exactly the process happening with biological systems!

And while officials tell us how everything is wonderful and splendid, the living biocenoses of the Russian Taiga are turning into 'abandoned buildings,' becoming ruins with their systemic functions lost! 

The most striking example.

The Siberian cedar.

Not just one of the key species, but a system-forming species in the biocenoses of the boreal northern taiga. Where it grows, of course. In colder parts of the ecoregion, such functions may be performed by spruce, fir, or larch. 

I wrote about this: there is a beautiful poetic image when such trees are called 'the mother of all trees.' This image perfectly reflects the essence! The whole secret lies in the nuts. In providing BASIC nutrition to other participants in the system. In storing the energy necessary for survival through the long, long winter.

It's like a battery—just imagine your smartphone or laptop WITHOUT a battery. With an electrical network, you can even sit by the outlet and use the device. 

Such energy preservation for the entire winter is provided by nut-bearing trees.

The main function, but not the only one. There is also the connection with the mycelium and the formation of the forest's mycorrhizal network. And the provision of a local microclimate in the forest. And the provision of the regional climatic regime by the forest as a whole.

And much more! 

The system-forming factor is precisely the accumulation (storage and preservation) of energy for the winter. 

No stock of nuts—birds, mice, and squirrels die of hunger.

Next, the predators, foxes and wolves, also perished.

And in the spring, the animals that had hibernated joined the realm of decaying corpses. 

We see a local biocenosis turned into an uninhabited 'abandoned place' with broken windows: the trees are still there, but the birds' voices are no longer heard! 

I recently looked at photographs of a small abandoned town. We have many such places in our country. Both in the Russian North and in Siberia. 

In the photos taken from afar, it just looks like a city. A group of silhouettes of five- and nine-story panel buildings. The fact that it's not a city, but ruins that were recently a city, is simply not visible.

And then, in a series of photographs taken closer and closer, the true nature of the object becomes more and more apparent.

Ruins...

Just the skeleton of a once-living city... 

And I remembered this city itself. I walked through its streets, and the streets of a dozen similar towns and villages deep in the Russian Taiga. There are really many such places!

You know, when you walk through these overgrown streets and the window openings of the skeletons of houses stare at you, a growing sense of unease arises. A sense of wrongness. There are no voices there... There are no sounds of cars... 

There, the creak of some door swinging in the wind on rusty hinges literally turns your soul inside out with melancholy... 

I talk about this because similar feelings of wrongness arise among some forest areas. No birds... No sounds of life... 

It's all the same – SYSTEMIC LOSS OF FUNCTION BY THE SYSTEM. 

Unfortunately, few people see these processes of loss of functionality, loss of viability!

State accounting and control are fundamentally deceptive. The formal numerical indicators of accounting simply reflect nothing at all! 

...forest area of 100 hectares...

...forest planting density of 50 trees per hectare...

...total number of trees...

...total volume of timber on the stump...

Well, you get it, right?!

Similarly, one could provide statistics on a dead city that is no longer even marked on the map and was closed as an administrative entity thirty years ago!

...twenty streets...

...three hundred houses...

...three schools, seven kindergartens...

...a club, a train station, and an administrative building...

It's enough to simply not mention that people no longer live there, and these are the RUINS of buildings and structures!

In our country (and apparently worldwide!), the situation is such that formal state accounting does not reflect the systemic function of forests at all!

Essentially, the "corpse of a grandmother" is OFFICIALLY equated to a "grandmother"! But that's not the case!

This results in a SYSTEMIC LIE!

The ruins of an uninhabited city are NOT a city!

The corpse of a grandmother is NOT a grandmother!

And the remnants of biocenoses, whose systemic functions are lost, are NOT living biocenoses! 

Moreover, I am again raising a question for which there are simply no terms within the bureaucratic language of the state!

Officials are simply genuinely unable to understand what is being discussed because they don't even know such words! 

And we are now taking a step towards making the mechanical picture of the world more realistic. 

For several years, the Russian Taiga project has been implementing a program to help birds in winter.

In recent years, we have seen massive participation from our allies, massive participation from people in different regions. 

And this is encouraging. It means our project is truly working!

It means that summarizing experiences, creating methodological recommendations, and providing a living example can all lead to change! 

And now we are facing a real catastrophe: the Russian Taiga has been STRIPPED of cedar cones, simply taken and completely removed. This is already leading to a SYSTEMIC LOSS OF FUNCTIONS OF THE RUSSIAN TAIGA. The wild nature will inevitably turn into ruins, and its inhabitants will go extinct one after another. 

I just want to draw your attention once more to an interesting fact: 

WE, HUMANS, ARE A KEY ELEMENT OF ECOSYSTEMS!

NOT JUST THE CEDAR, BUT WE OURSELVES TOO!

WE SHOULD NOT EXCLUDE OURSELVES FROM ECOSYSTEMS – THAT'S A MISTAKE!

WE ARE JUST AS MUCH A PART OF THE RUSSIAN TAIGA!

AND THROUGH OUR ACTIONS, WE CAN CHANGE A LOT! 

© PAVEL PASHKOV