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Global depopulation — How will nature claim what is hers?
What would life on Earth look like if humans suddenly disappeared from its surface? Potential scenarios have fired the imagination of scientists for years.
Bialowieza Forest is the last place in Europe where we can observe how natural forces manage without the slightest interference from man. 150 thousand hectares stretching on the border between Poland and Belarus is “a remnant of an ancient European lowland forest”. It’s hard to imagine that this is what the land stretching from Ireland to Siberia once looked like. A walk among the 500-year-old oaks makes you realize that most of us have spent our entire lives dealing with nothing more than a poor copy of what nature can create. All we have to do is let it. Bialowieza Forest has ten times more biodiversity than any other forest we know, and it owes its richness to everything that is dead. Almost a quarter of the organic matter above the ground is in various stages of decomposition, and on the surface of each hectare you will find about 95 m3 of decaying trunks and fallen branches. They provide food for thousands of species of fungi, lichens, bark beetles, larvae and microorganisms, which cannot be found on tidy forest areas. This in turn is fed by larger animals such as raccoons, badgers, otters, martens, weasels, foxes, wolves, deer and elk. The food chain in its full glory. No wonder, then…
