Can't anyone else see the similarities to Fern Gully??!!

Rating: 7/10 (4 January 2010)

My kudos for the graphics arts spectacularity of this film. I am bewildered however that no one else seems to remember the animated film Fern Gully that heralded the human abuse of trees in the rainforest.
As described online: Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest(1992) - The magical inhabitants of a rainforest called FernGully fight to save their home that is threatened by logging and a polluting force of destruction called Hexxus.
Avatar basically uses the same good vs bad storyline and even has similar graphic symbolizations.
Both have the indigenous beings that live in that location vs one main human rep who starts off against the natives and then learns the customs of the beings and falls in love with the culture and main female being.
There's a large tree that is the soul and goodness of the beings. The female being will be the main healer. The natives pray around the tree to heal the bad the humans have done and little floatie things are the good spirit representatives.
The human faces some opposition to becoming involved with the culture, gets the indigenous population to accept him and then has to admit that he set them up to begin with.
During one TV program they mentioned that the idea of Avatar came to James Cameron around 15 years ago. Well 17 years ago this movie came out. It would seem that there should be a nod to the writers and directors of Fern Gully as being the predecessor of Avatar.