About the Author

Robyn Morrison

Londolozi Alumna

Robyn grew up in Johannesburg and every family holiday was spent exploring the Lowveld or camping around Southern Africa. Her love of nature and conservation propelled her to complete her Masters degree at the University of Edinburgh’s school of Geoscience. Although this gave ...

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23 Comments

on The Real Circle Of Life: A Quick Note On Nutrient Cycling

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Thank you for this great repetition on ecology and biochemistry. I agree, detrivores are much cooler! I admired the fungi picture, never knew of that species! Great photos set.

Detritivores are definitely a critical link in our ecosystem! Thanks for the comment, Francesca!

What a wonderful way to look at our world. Thanks Robyn.

Robyn, your article on the real circle of life is fantastic. I learned so much like the word and definition of detritivores and will not look at the earth in quite the same way. It’s blogs like yours that really give us a sense of true recycling and we’ll not look at hyenas, wild dogs, and other predators quite the same way as they are only the first step to true nature recycling. Thank you!

Thanks Denise, it’s always incredible to see hyenas and wild dogs etc. but there is also so much that goes on behind the scenes that we’re not aware of!

Natures systems are certainly the best designed. We just got an indoor countertop composter to turn our kitchen scraps into nutrient rich compost for our garden. We live in a suburban development without the land to be able to compost traditionally, so this gadget lets us add nutrients back to the soil, while reducing our carbon footprint. It’s not as efficient as life in the wild, but it’s something.

I love the idea of a countertop composter! Small changes like this really do make the biggest difference to our environment.

Senior Digital Ranger

Articles such as this to me are the glue between the stories and pictures of leopards, elephants, lions etc… It grounds us and makes us aware, that as animals ourselves, we are a very small picture of a vast landscape that makes up this planet. I really enjoyed this, thank you Robyn!

“We are a very small picture of a vast landscape” – I love how you worded this, Johanna. Thanks so much!

Thanks Robyn for this great article on the circle of life!

That is why Londolozi is so successful, because of their healthy ecosystem and biochemistry. Your explanation on the cycle is outstanding thank you Robin.

Thanks Valmai! We are so fortunate to have the ecosystem that we do.

Well done Robyn!!!

What a great blog Robyn. Every thing has a pecking order in the circle of life. Enjoyed reading it and loved the pics. Thank you for sharing.

Thank you, Leonie!

Robyn, You post is amazing and we so enjoyed they way you took such a complicated subject and translated it in a way that totally made sense!

Thanks, Michael and Terri!

This is one of the best posts ever. We are losing our good soil all over the world because people ignore what you are explaining. It is all about RECIPROCITY, and we have to give as well as take. Thank you for reminding us of this! (And the fungi are indeed crucial and fascinating!)

I fully agree with you, Linda. Everything needs to be reciprocated if we want to sustain a healthy environment.

Wow Robyn, I found your blog so interesting and so informative. We take so much for granted. Thank you 🙏🏻❤️

Thank you Robyn, that’s really interesting.

Great post with some beautiful photographs.

I love what you point to here. It has me suggest that Nature is not survival of the fittest. It is an integrated masterpiece of partnerships. However, our human mind, which, I suggest, is particularly addicted to drama in the form of power and control, winning and losing, right and wrong, good and bad and, finally inequality, concentrates on these things. We are the only animal that doesn’t cooperate with the system. The other animals are not surviving. Rather, they are living the way they are designed to live, and they live that way until they die.
This is why I give some small credence to the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible (even though I’m not a creationist). It describes our mind, the result of eating from the tree of knowledge, to a T. It points to our self-concern, our shame and our willingness to believe we can make a better world than God or The Big Bang gave us. And, though we’ve learned all you’ve talked about, our new god, money, has us continue to replace our lovely system with things that are poisonous and lethal to our lives. It makes me wonder if it was a tree of knowledge or a tree of stupidity. After all, we were made in the image and likeness of God. That’s already pretty spectacular.

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