forest economics

this is a paragraph that i found in an old book about gombe national park. i really like it, and its pretty relevant to our re-forestation goals/what we are trying to recreate.

"The economy of the forest is marvelous to contemplate. Its raw material is the same thin soil that supports a meager cassava crop in the crowded valleys beyond the park. Its income is the same sunlight and rainfall. But a forest is an investment, the sun and rain and wind of many seasons stored as roots and trunks and branches. Everything that the forest produces – The leaves and fruit that fall, the rotting branch, the bones of the colobus, the dung of the chimp, the wing of the butterfly – everything is returned to the soil and invested once more in the forest."