Gas terminal ecosystem

The creation of this gas terminal in the middle of a virgin rain forest is pretty controversial and had to undergo many investigations before the approval was given, it did create much tree destruction but was built on a gravel sand bar on the river Urubamba. It in itself has now become an ecosystem. I have seen tarantulas living on the inside of the cooling fan system where they must be eating the living moths and butterflies that are caught in the screens, there are the numerous toads that have tunnelled under all the concrete paths and come out to eat all the flying snacks that swarm to the lights that illuminate the running plant during the nights. During the day there are small birds that I haven’t identified yet that run amongst the plant hopping about and running head down like roadrunner picking off the small moths that are sitting on the floor and dropping from the roofs and lights, and there is a gaggle of hawks that circle on the thermals during the sunny days and observe the large beetles and moths and will swoop to pick them up and eat them while still flying with the item skewered on the talons of these birds, I will identify these birds from some online directory. There are little flies that I thought had also been captured on the screens but in fact are just walking about looking for victims to either eat or inject eggs into or both and seem very happy to be sat about doing what they do. The ants which there are so many as to be scary can devour a full moth overnight leaving nothing but an empty carcass which will fall apart when touched they must even eat all the connecting tissues and not just the soft parts. There is nothing that goes to waste. My collecting of the living creatures is part of the overall ecosystem but I am just messing about really, I do it just because I feel sorry for the poor little creatures which is pathetic really, I must rescue less than 1% of the creatures that get caught in the screens and I probably take out 40-50 moths and butterflies and as the dry season goes on the numbers will probably get less. It is quite easy to see the live ones or just caught as within a day the rushing torrents of air strip the wings of the scales very quickly and leave nothing but a silvery skeleton of the wings so a fresh capture is still colourful. If the insects spend more than 3 or 4 hours in the screens it is probably dead but some of the big moths that have a huge body reserve to call on may last day’s even weeks until the wings have been shredded to just stalks. I haven’t seen any birds nesting onsite yet, but there are some small parrots that roost on the banks of the river just behind the canteen which for them is a safe and predator free zone, who cares if the turbines are making a horrible din all night the ocelot, jaguarundi and margay will not be climbing the trees they are in. so life can be good for some animals and distinctly bad for other, it is swings and roundabouts, in 100 years who cares if there was a gas terminal here, nobody will remember and the forest will have reclaimed it all back. Print Article
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