Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

To the Editor:

Re “An Amazon Culture Withers as Food Dries Up” (front page, July 25):

The finding in ethnobotanical studies that one-half to three-quarters of tree species in the Amazon have specific cultural uses is an illustration of just how tightly dependent Amazonian tribes are on their environment.

Such tribes use culturally keystone species of trees: those that are the only source for a product needed by that particular culture. For example, the Tembé use one species’ oil to alleviate earaches and the Panare go to only one species for durable leaf thatch that they use to construct roofs of their houses.

As global warming continues to break the traditional links the tribes have with their environment, already threatened cultures in the Amazon, and elsewhere in the world, become as endangered as the plants and animals upon which those peoples depend on for survival.

Brian Boom
New York, July 27, 2009
The writer is director of the Caribbean Biodiversity Program at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, and is former president of the Society for Economic Botany.

Note from KBJ: How many deaths (from cold and starvation) will be prevented by global warming? How much suffering will be prevented? Why do we never hear about the other half of the equation? Why are we bombarded with costs, but never told about benefits? Scientists are supposed to give us the facts, not try to influence policy. Why are we not being given all the facts, so that we can make an informed decision about what (if anything) to do? No wonder people don't trust scientists. Many of them are ideologues disguised as scientists.