Benoît Aquin

I heard of an altercation between man and animal over the radio the other day. This man, acting on his impulses to be at one with nature, built his house in the mountains. To protect himself from the wildlife that inevitably pay him a visit in search of food, he installed traps around his property. Strong and instinctive as they are, animals are no match for the well-developed brain of man, nor do they possess technology that rival ours. As are the endings of other similar incidences, the animal kingdom loses yet again to our rapid encroaching on their territory. What happens to them? Do we take our natural resources for granted? Does nature heal itself?

“Deserts now cover 18% of China, and a quarter of them were caused by ecologically damaging human activities. Overexploitation of arable land, overgrazing and increasingly deep drilling for water are at the root of what has become the Chinese dust bowl - a phenomenon the likeness of which has not been seen since the 1930’s, when the American Midwest and Canadian Prairies suffered from a devastating drought. China’s situation is quickly becoming the world’s most massive and rapid conversion of arable land into barren sand dunes. The resulting dust is picked up by the wind and transported, in the form of giant sandstorms, all over China and into Japan and Korea - even all the way to North America. In an effort to reverse the situation, the Chinese government has initiated the largest environmental restoration initiative the world has ever seen, and has begun a mass exodus of “environmental refugees,” displaced by the advancing sand.”

Perhaps nature can heal itself. And perhaps it does so with a vengeance…

Please go to Benoît Aquin’s site to view more of his work.