Maya Bay, the Thai beach that was made famous by the Leonardo DiCaprio movie The Beach, has been temporarily closed. It almost always seems to happen that when people find out that a movie has been shot in a favored location that they will flock to it. The only problem with this is that eventually the area gets worn out from all the foot traffic and the local environment starts to feel the pinch as more and more people continue to come and do the kind of damage they don’t seem to realize they’re capable of. Normally many Thai parks are closed from mid-May to mid-October, but Maya Bay has been left open year-round to accommodate the demand for tourism that’s been ongoing since the movie was released.
That’s unfortunate however since thousands of people per day have been coming to the islands to enjoy the beauty and the wonder that it offers. The only trouble there is that people are not a careful lot when it come to enjoying the beauty of a place. They tend to trounce over it, have fun in ways that are not conducive to the health of the environment, and basically just wreck the place. The result is that the local wildlife, marine life, and coral reef that the site has to offer have all been damaged. It isn’t believe that they’ve been damaged so badly that they can’t come back, but for now the park is going to be closed for four month out of the year as part of the rehabilitation process that will be undertaken to try and bring the park back to what it was before the popularity it gained from The Beach.
It’s frustrating in a way that things have to get this bad before people start to realize just what it is that we do to the natural environment. Enjoying it and observing it is something that is all well and fine, but interacting with it is something that needs to be given a great deal of thought before someone goes traipsing about and begins to do some serious harm. Nature might be tough and it might be resilient but it’s also fragile in many ways as well and will not respond well to being trampled by the only animal on this planet that doesn’t seem to watch where they’re going or what they’re doing at all times, which is of course mankind. Too often people take things for granted and will flock in great numbers to areas that are stunning in their beauty only to leave such places as worn-out husks when all is said and done. There might be a good chance to save this park, and hopefully that’s the case, but until then it’s going to need a definite absence of human life in order to recoup and recover.
Humanity is not evil in the way that we continue to expand and overtake the surrounding landscape. But we could use a few lessons in listening to and watching over the world we seek to dominate so often.
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