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Although most of the land in Madagascar is owned by the government, in practice the villages control how the land is used. "If an outsider wants to use the forest, the only way to get permission is to marry into the clan," he says. Interviews and inventories of these clan-owned parcels of land revealed that deforestation was primarily occurring in areas with insecure property rights. They also realized by incorporating sacred or taboo forests into conservation policies, governments can prove a cheap way of ensuring the forest's future. Taboo forests are protected by unspoken rules, which even defend them from people wishing to gather medicinal plants. "If someone violates these rules, they have to pay one cow, which is very expensive for an ordinary Malagasy," says Elmqvist, noting that in the area that his team studied there were hundreds of taboo forests.3.273 This is a wonderful example of how by thinking about "it," and following through on the thoughts, mankind has the opportunity to keep endangered species from becoming extinct.
In a similar way, God, the common Father of all mankind, did the original thinking about "it," then organized Planet Earth, creating the beasts of the earth "
after his kind
,"
cattle "
after their kind
," and everything that creepeth upon the earth "
after his kind
."
And "
God saw that it was good
." It is up to each of us to find the source of all of the life we interact with, and to recognize how wonderful God's creations are, including: plankton; algae; grasses; flowers; shrubs; trees; giant mushrooms; paleontological bugs; insects; spiders; amphibians; reptiles; birds; mammals; and especially mankind with our ears and our eyeballs and our hearts and our thumbs and our brains; each type of life with species created "
after its own kind
."
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paradoxes