Search - Bernie Krause :: Rainstorm in Borneo

This forest looks so formidable but signs of fragility are everywhere. Planes fly overhead taking miners and owners to dig gold upriver. Chainsaws cut away the hardwood that has taken millenia to flourish. Our dugout canoe is tethered to the aerial root of a fig tree along the edge of a mangrove swamp. We are watching a local fisherman try to catch a single once-abundant fish for his family's supper. In the meantime, we are trying to capture what may be the last gasp of this ancient forest voice before the biophony dies, a result of the effects of arsenic and mercury leaching from the mines and the silt from uncontrolled runoffs left by clear cutting. All around us are more fish belly-up than we care to think about--normally these provide food for many birds and reptiles that live along the river'sedge. We have no idea what they will do--what we will do. This work is our gentle living and we, like the fisherman, know nothing else that nourishes us more than this passive act. But when we hear gibbons singing a lyrical duet in the early morning haze, or catch the glimpse of a female orang-utan high in the canopy of the forest playing with her baby, it rejuvenates us, makes us hopeful that others will recognize the beauty of the place and make it as precious as the gold and timber some think they cannot live without.