Member Review

I really would love to have this book in real physical copy with glossy pages like magazines/coffee-table-books.

Sara Oldfield must be having her name reflected in her works, "Oldfield'. She is an OBE and have year’s long experience in conservation and protection of wild tree species worldwide. She also co-chair the IUCN/SSC Global Tree Specialist Group. Her CV is enough to tell a lot about her. I remember having read one of her articles last year on the importance of trees. As I can recollect in her words, 'Trees are of exceptional ecological importance, playing a major functional role in the world's ecosystems, while also supporting many other plants, animals and fungi.' From her that article, I had learned that it is not just 'Urban Development' but even 'Wood Harvesting' & 'Livestock Farming' also affecting the environment to a very big extent. However, latter one is atleast beneficial for livelihood of living species, but the former one is completely for luxuries or utilities which can conveniently be avoided and to which an alternative could be found.

Visiting this book, yes, 'visiting', because it is more like roaming the places mentioned rather than just reading it because pictures were so good. So, visiting this book was an amazing experience and worth travelling metaphorically. I got to know many such trees to which I were completely unknown till now. As a fact, what mentioned was very horrifying for me. Over 17.5K trees are threatened with extinction, which is a way ahead or almost double of total number of mammals, birds, reptiles & amphibians combined and over 2.7K trees are listed under critical endangered category (IUCN red list). Like Bornean Ironwood, which is also mentioned in the book’s synopsis/extract, which I have seen for real also, having fruit like giant groundnut. Such a giant trees from South-East Asian region gives shelter to many more in the forests.
Dryobalanops aromatic, as mentioned, used in India from more than last two millennia for the purpose of cleaning environment from the insects, and was attached with the practices of worshipping to let people stayed with it by the way to save the habitats affecting from diseases, evolution of which is from various insects out there. Here in India, we call forest ‘Abhyaranyas (अभयारण्य)’, means ‘Sanctuaries’ (a holy or sacred place). This is the mindset, we established way before people actually understand its value over the world then. This, in itself, a conservation technique, for those who are not educated but were completely aware of the real value of nature. Medicinal plants Conservation Areas (MPACs) were also developed over period of time. And, Not to mention for crediting, but world knew that ‘Ayurveda’ was the first ever way to treat people based on completely herbs and shrubs; nevertheless to say then, that we always were in culture of saving nature as we knew importance of her since very long, way before societies became civilized to actually know it. This is the reason why people who were not able to get education formally were very much aware by means of stories and cultural traits to save nature, mostly by worshipping different trees on many/varied religious offerings in Hinduism. Many trees’ cultivation techniques were taken from India to Europe. India was and is the only country in world to have made real and in limited way, the extracts from nature, which helped the world grow in time.

What I believe, is that, for the conservation of the nature, one must be serious and not just have to play a fame-game to get their image build in media. Last day, I was reading a picture book on Vanessa Nakate (Reviews: https://www.netgalley.com/book/282174/review/441867 & https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5446086475?book_show_action=false) reading which I realized yet again that the whole problem is the pattern of saving the planet. She and activists like her & Great Thunberg and many more were just making their fame out of these screaming on saving the earth. They use papers as placards which can be easily made limitations to, to save the trees. They travel in luxury vehicles sponsored by institutions, which are paying for them to make money themselves, which eventually affecting climate more than they are actually saving it on ground. Just to metaphorically speaking and hypothetically giving lecture will not help in any manner to save our habitats. We've to work on ground. We need to set an example rather than telling people that you should do this and that & for that matter, I would just sit and enjoy luxury and that too without proper literacy.

This book leads to know where one should work and how the impacts on nature affecting our living state for real. We need to learn and educate others too, to cut down on our usages of products that help in direct proportionality to exploit nature more.

I really liked this work and would love to share knowledge I learned from here, to make people educate or atleast make them aware to work on foundation rather than blabbering to society or to the whole world for nothing impactful on real façade.