Our history is full of trees. Used as building materials, as a food supply for humans and livestock, to tan leather of to make quicklime, the stories are ample.
Sea urchins have a bad reputation, but they are essential to a healthy marine environment including reefs. The Variegated sea urchin is one of several species of sea urchin.
The active fight of plants against natural attacks, such as predation by insects and other animals, fungi that want to invade and fauna that use parts of the plants, has resulted in a variety of defence mechanisms. Some of these are highly beneficial to human kind.
The so beloved Flamboyant, one of the most beloved trees on our islands, does not originally come from Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao or even from the Caribbean.
If you want a forest, you need trees. Trees are special organisms that are more complex than we often think. The ease with which trees are cut down would be a lot less if we realized how much a tree has had to go through to become as big and wide as we see it.