The King of the Desert is Dying

[Directed by Delia Ackerman, Peru 2008 with Kathi Huber and Jeroen van der Zalm, camera Juan Duran, ed. Carlos Paz] Thousand year old trees and ancient forests have been turned into charcoal on the south coast of Peru. The guarango tree was once a central part of pre-Hispanic culture: honored for its ability to draw water to the surface from more than 60 meters down, for its nutritious pods, for its hard wood, and for turning saline soils into fertile earth. Its near extinction in the Ica-Nasca region highlights the need for dramatic changes if future generations are to inherit more than an empty desert.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• guarango
• huarango
• algarrobo
• prosopis pallida
• desertification
• Ica
• Nasca
• Nazca
• agua
• water
• mesquite
• desert
• desierto
• Peru
• trees
• forests
• endangered
• extinction
• illegal cutting
• charcoal
• carbon
• climate change
• deforestation
• Delia
• Ackerman

[limakat]

We cannot continue to allow people to undo in a matter of days what has taken millenia to create... This important species serves as an example and a metaphor for the way human kind interacts with the rest of the world. If we do not find a balanced way to coexist and manage our resources, we will indeed destroy the very things that have nourished and sustained us. May this serve as another wake-up call.

[darthvader5300]

if you need fire wood then try practicing pollarding or trimming, this may encourage the huarango tree to create new growth in great spurts, making it bushier and denser, thereby more productive without cutting the entire tree down in the process.

[darthvader5300]

harvest the huarango pods, get their seeds, mix them with peat containing nitrogen-fixing rhizobial innoculants and mycorrhizal fungi innoculants and mix the mixture with rockt dust powder and red clay powder and add water turning them into clay seedballs, then plant them immediately in soil mixed with charcoal powder and rock dust powder to ensure a high level of germination and survival until they have matured in to pods producing trees to produce more seeds and food stuffs from the pods.

[marcorutili]

fantastico!excelente..el prosopis pallida seria el prosopis alba?es lo mismo?en argentina lo llamamos algarrobo blanco,aunque no se parece al del filmato pero...

[israelmonrroy]

El ser humano es el ser mas barbaro que existe elnel planeta. a acabado con todo! arasa con todo! asta las piedras. Hasi es el hambre. hijos de puta. siembra tres, hayi esta la idea. pero nadie siembra... barbaros! siembren cojudos!

[claudivision]

Exelente registro! Los felicito!