DEEP in the heart of Jeddah there lies an unconsidered area of virgin pampas and wetland. Set in a valley and largely unnoticed by the car-borne passers-by, it has been gradually spreading and developing an ecosystem all of its own, even quieter than normal during Ramadan. It is also doomed to destruction.
Soon the bulldozers and jackhammers will come, huge snorkels pouring wet concrete on the verdant foliage smashing the virgin grass and reeds to the floor and filling in the still water that brings life to the thousands of animals that depend on it.
As with most things, this is a matter of scale. The valley is but six meters deep and perhaps twenty across, lined with concrete and set between two carriageways of a minor crossroad.
For the last year or so, it has been left alone while planners plot for its demise. They do not see it that way of course for they are not the inhabitants. It is actually an urban improvement and being concreted over and covered with topsoil to form a green pathway through Jeddah where people can be reintroduced to walking. That is a fine idea and probably to be commended.
But for the wildlife, mainly small birds, lizards, rodents and insects, this is not a good idea at all. The plan is set, it will happen and some of the wildlife will perhaps find a new home in the new grass walkway — provided they are not “managed” by pesticides.
The jungle-ditch, because of its untamed fecundity, lush grass and abundant population is a source of some lessons. Supply the basics — nourishment and water and a bit of peace and quiet — and nature does the rest. Rapidly and efficiently, the area becomes populated with crawling, slithering and then flying things. Water seeps from cracks in the concrete floor and seeds germinate. Plants arise, die, rot and form soils for the next generation.
The seeds attract birds who, presumably on there feet or some other way, carry fish eggs, for in the pools are minute wriggling fish a few millimeters long: more food, more birds fertilizing the loam, more plant growth. The sewage ditch in a matter of months turned from barren concrete desert into a rich natural garden into which people immediately hurled rubbish. Even this — and there is a great deal of rubbish — did not stop the forward push of the urban jungle.
Before it disappears under the new contrived greenery of the Jeddah Walkway, parents take your children and show them what nature can do without, and indeed in spite of, our worst machinations. Show them how the cycle of life is almost everywhere, even in hot, arid concrete ditches and let them wonder at the tenacity of simple organisms and plants to populate and regenerate.
Schools, take your classes before it is too late to see this unique laboratory in the heart of Jeddah and wonder at it. Try to identify the wading birds, the green and black dragonflies hovering over the pools, the algae and the scuttling things in the undergrowth.
Right now, this incredible vibrant but minute ecosystem is there, a metaphor of the larger more famous jungle and wetland areas of the world. But not for long.
And as you sit in the air-conditioned bus driving on the concrete highway back to your classrooms, pause to reflect on what is going to be lost when the bulldozers come.
