TAKAHIRO YANAI STAFF PHOTOGRAPHERThis is the first installment of a series of interviews with foreign experts and others on current issues; the interviews will be published every Monday.
The diversity of Japan's forests has been devastated by greed and bureaucratic incompetence, says outspoken environmentalist C.W. Nicol, 64. Fascinated by this nation's natural beauty, he settled in 1980 in the mountains of Nagano Prefecture, where he purchased land to reforest. Nicol, who became a naturalized citizen in 1995, calls on the Japanese to exert every effort to recreate mixed forests, as was done in his homeland, Britain's south Wales.
Q:Recently, we have been hearing about wild animals, particularly bears, wandering into communities. What is happening?
A:Last year, we had a combination of factors. We had weather that was not conducive to growing acorns, a staple for bears. Our local people believe that the bears moved a lot because there were a lot of typhoons and an earthquake in Niigata.
But I haven't noticed that much change in the bears in our woods. There were not too many acorns, but there were a lot of chestnuts. With diversity, you have other possibilities for food.
But so much of Japan's wonderful, diverse woodland was changed to single-species plantations of conifers, such as cedars. And with pollution and global warming, you will need a diversity of life to be able to adapt to such changes. Diversity means possibility.
Also, satoyama (copses), which are close to the villages and a source of food and fire wood for villagers, were left untended. Much of them turned into yabu, or choked bush, so the bears can hide.
And next to the bush, you have people growing the same crops year after year. The bears learn, "That's where I go for food this time of year."
And if the mother bear does not go into the mountains to compete for less foodstuffs, caused by declining forests, the offspring won't know how to gather food in the wild.
So you have an increasing confrontation between humans and bears.
Q:What is happening to Japan's forests?
A:The Japanese forests are very sickly-they're not vigorous anymore. With an untended plantation of conifers, it's very dark and you get very few species underneath the woods, and the trees stop growing.
You get serious erosion because the soil is not sucking up the water, and you get landslides. A whole forest will slide down a mountain.
You know the wild pines are almost gone in Japan because of various factors, pollution and lack of care. Now we have other trees dying off, like the mizunara, a species of oak. They're dying off because they're sickly, more easily infested by insects that previously were farther down south, but with global warming those insects, and the diseases they carry, are moving up north.
Q:When did the devastation of forests start?
A:I've seen Japan's forests since 1962, and I always thought that of all of the developed countries, Japan was doing the best job of preservation.
But in 1980, I saw that the Forestry Agency in particular was cutting the last virgin forests.
The truth is, the Forestry Agency really went on a rampage just after the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, when money became the goal.
The Forestry Agency followed the German example of forestry by replacing natural growth forests with quickly growing, easily milled conifers, such as cedars and larches.
Although more than 60 percent of Japan is covered by trees, the virgin forests account for only 2 percent or less.
One of the main reasons for this was that the Forestry Agency was so centralized and they made decisions in Tokyo.
And instead of forest workers, many of whom had retired or were fired, you had bureaucrats in black shoes and neckties, who don't take any responsibility, and who change every two or three years. That doesn't work.
`The truth is, the Forestry Agency really went on a rampage just after the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, when money became the goal.'
Q:You have called for training rangers to look after the forests.
A:I helped establish a college course to train rangers, which is now going into its 12th year.
But we are discouraged from teaching our students field work. When we set up the college, bureaucrats said: Why are you having your students live in tents? Any essential field work was questioned. They said "just teach them biology." But how do you teach them field biology if you don't go into the field?
I think it is better to have three or four people working on a local forest than it is having 10 people working in an office in Tokyo. You can't manage a forest from Tokyo.
Q:Why have Japanese become detached from nature, and what should be done?
A: What must be done is education, and that means taking people into the woods. You can educate not only about wildlife or botany or biology, you can do math, language, history or art-all kinds of subjects in the woodlands. This is being done very effectively in Wales. For two weeks, schoolchildren are taken to the woods, where rangers serve as teachers.
What this has done in Wales, where I was born, was create a forest in what used to be a mining town. When I was a child, only 5 percent of the area was forest. Now the percentage of woodland has gone up to 60 percent. Now it's green, and people are coming back. They are coming for leisure, they come back for health, they come back to live. So if you improve the forests and the environment, you improve the economy.