The Jingū column in the July 8th issue of Jinja Shinpō was about living creatures at Jingū. There are about 2,800 kinds of animals, and about 140 birds, including mammals such as boars, raccoon dogs, and rabbits, birds such as kingfishers and owls, and river creatures such as catfish and frogs. There are also lots of insects and other bugs.
Do you notice anything missing from this list?
That’s right! Trees!
The article does go on to discuss the importance of preserving the forest in order to provide the habitat in which these creatures can live, but the trees, and other plants, are treated as background conditions that make the animals, the interesting things, possible. In one sense, this is just par for the course (the phenomenon is called “plant blindness”).
In another sense, it is curious. Shinto is well known for focusing on the trees themselves, and other accounts of the forests at Jingū do so. It may be that the article was supposed to be specifically about the animals, but the scope of Japanese words in normal usage meant that the only way the author could include all the creatures they wanted to write about was to use terms that also include plants. (Note that “animals” does not appear to include birds.)
In any case, the article explicitly talks about the importance of preserving forest habitats in order to preserve animal species, and us. This is a good example of the environmental consciousness of Shinto. It is genuine, and it can be quite important, but it is almost always locally focused, rather than being concerned with global issues. When a jinja is as large as Jingū, “local” can cover a substantial area, but attention is still restricted to Japan.