The Vanishing Rainforest

We hear a lot about habitat-loss in books about rainforests, but it’s usually animal habitat that’s considered first. This semi-documentary story shows the effect that rainforest logging can have on the forest’s indigenous human communities. As the loggers approach Remaema’s village, the villagers are divided as to whether to help or oppose them. Disaster appears to threaten, but a blonde conservation-botanist, her wise words reinforced by the disappearance of many medicinal plants, and a freedom-fighter turned government official persuade the villagers to become a living heritage centre. This brings harmony back to the village and the peccaries back to the forest. So all ends happily – except for the peccaries which were everyone’s favourite food.

Platt has done far better stuff than this – his narrative reads like a limp translation and van Wyk’s pictures are muddy scratchings. The result is, as John Rowe Townsend once said of the Swallows and Amazons ‘boringly right-minded’. Nobody likes muddy scratchings – even if they’re peccary-rind and the appeal of this book is about as slight.