Preserve: Science Fiction

Whipspring is an amazing wood, and demand for it far outstrips supply. We have tried sending it elsewhere to grow, you see, but it never spreads. What we've planted stays, and that is it. The gentle lemurites live in the whipspring stands, and we've signed a pact that they will always have adequate habitat for their numbers. The range and breeding rate means that there is very, very little whipspring that can be spared. It does usually grow back the next season, but then a new tribe of lemurites moves in, too, making it not fair game for our woodcutters. Only a handful of people grumble about this on-world. We charge ridiculous sums of money for what we do harvest--and get it--and gullible tourists are happy to shell out large cash for "genuine" whipspring wood mementos. The real stuff is only sold through the official trade stand, certified and numbered, but offworlders assume that nobody could live with a resource restriction like that. They think that there must be bribes and exceptions.


Inspiration: "bamboo" -> "bamboo lemurs"
Story Potential: Medium-high
Notes: Y'know, ecology done right. Kinda want to show people actually preserving the full extent of a habitat by choice, and it working out reallyreally well for them, even if they don't understand the role of the lemur(ite) in the spread of the valuable tree just yet, or whether the lemurites are sentient or maybe the trees are...something is.