Shadows Standing at the Critical Line of the Forest: Goshawks and the Japanese Ecosystem at the Crossroads of the Millennium (2000).

Shadows Standing at the Critical Line of the Forest: Goshawks and the Japanese Ecosystem at the Crossroads of the Millennium (2000).

In the year 2000, the goshawk, a bird of prey soaring over Japan, was quietly issuing a warning. The apex predator of satoyama, they were rapidly disappearing from forests all over Japan. The cause is development. The wooded areas on the periphery of cities were being converted into golf courses and residential areas, and their breeding grounds were being cut off. The decline of the goshawk, which is at the top of the food chain, was a sign of the collapse of the entire forest ecosystem.

Starting this year, the Environment Agency embarked on a three-year plan to establish scientific guidelines for protection. It will conduct a nationwide survey of habitat conditions and track flight routes using radio wave transmitters. This is an attempt to numerically clarify "what kind of development is allowed and to what extent," rather than to deny development altogether.

The background of the survey was international movements such as the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity and the Kyoto Protocol. Japan's nature conservation policy, which had been driven by ideals, was shifting to a more concrete, institutional phase. The goshawk was the "shadow" and the "eye" at this turning point.

The boundary where man's blueprints intersect with nature's blueprints - what a bird of prey teaches us is where the future should lead us.