Forest Canopy

If you are in London this week you must witness the ‘Ghost Forest Art Project’ that artist Angela Palmer has bravely installed at Trafalgar Square, bringing ten giant rainforest tree stumps from sustainably logged forest in Africa straight to the heart of London. The intention of the project to raise public awareness of the connections between deforestation and climate change. The idea is “to present a series of rainforest tree stumps as a ‘ghost forest’ – using the negative space created by the missing trunks as a metaphor for climate change, the absence representing the removal of the world’s ‘lungs’ through continued deforestation”. On Sunday the tree stumps will head to Copenhagen.

The 5th International Canopy Conference in Bangalore was a great event. More than 250 scientists got together to present their latest findings and exchange their views on the future of canopy research.

The symposium on canopy tourism went very well. We had a great variety of speakers from different fields and research backgrounds. You can find a short summary and download links to the presentations here. Read the whole article »

The 5th International Canopy Conference has started in Bangalore.

The goals of the conference are to highlight the relevance of canopy research with respect to important global challenges, especially climate change, sustainability and conservation. Hence, the integration of canopy science with natural science, social science and information technology is critical. The conference provides an opportunity to build networks across continents, which will facilitate capacity building and foster collaboration using information from multiple sites, within countries and across continents.

On Friday, October 30th we will hold a symposium on Conservation, community development, rainforest experience: The environmental, social and economic values of forest canopy based ecotourism. The symposium is jointly organized by Siddhartha Krishnan of ATREE and me.

In the symposium we will move from general ecotourism observations to more concrete canopy tourism examples and likewise move from international examples into the Indian context. Therefore I have assembled the speaker list as follows: Read the whole article »

Work in East Africa was intense but it was just as rewarding.
For once I just added a few pictures to my gallery showing some highlights from Uganda, Rwanda and Tansania without further referring to my work. Simply, because they are beautiful. Enjoy!

My research work in Rwanda is over. I spent time in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali and conducted a case study in Nyungwe Forest National Park. In the gallery you will find a number of new pictures which illustrate quite well what I have done there. Read the whole article »

For one week I have now been in Rwanda to conduct research for my Ph.D. - Project. The first days I spent in Kigali where I met with different stakeholders involved in the Destination Nyungwe Project. This gives me a basic understanding of who is involved, at which stage the project is and what the project aims are.
Today I arrived in Nyungwe Forest National Park at park head quarters in Kitabi at the eastern side of the park. The HQ is beautifully located on a ridge, surrounded by tea plantations and facing the park boundary. I will spend the next weeks in different parts of the park and write more about my activities once I have started. I uploaded a few pictures, more will follow.

The last weeks I spent in Uganda, travelling through various national parks to assess where and how a walkway could be built in one of them. Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) sees the need to diversify the activities that visitors can enjoy within the parks and to create new sources of income generation. As part of this strategy UWA employed me to explore the possibilities of developing one or two canopy tourism facilities within the following national parks: Murchison Falls, Kibale Forest, Queen Elisabeth, Bwindi Impenetrable Forest and Mt. Elgon.
In each park it was my task to have a look at the forest (which basically meant a lot of hiking) to map out potential site locations and conduct interviews/discussions with relevant stakeholders. For this work I developed a set of criteria to have comparable parameters and I had my own driver and an UWA employee who assisted me in the field. I cannot present the results of my work here because this is part of the report I will prepare for UWA. But I have summarized what I did in the respective areas. You will find photos for every visited site in the gallery. Read the whole article »

Two exciting upcoming projects have been confirmed. In Rwanda I will conduct a case study for my research in Nyungwe National Park. This study will take about four weeks and will begin in July. In Uganda I have been appointed technical advisor to conduct a feasibility study and provide technical specifications for the development of canopy walkways and/or ziplines in the Uganda national parks. This commitment will take place in June. Read the whole article »

The official invite to the symposium on canopy based ecotourism at the International Canopy Conference in Bangalore has been sent to the participants.

The symposium is entitled: “Conservation, community development, rainforest experience: The environmental, social and economic values of forest canopy based ecotourism”

Goal of symposium: For over 20 years now ecotourism has been understood as an approach to experience a resource like tropical forests sustainably. The aims of the ecotourism concept include benefits to conservation and local communities while avoiding negative ecological and socio-cultural effects. Another central aim of this approach is to raise environmental awareness in ecotourism destinations. And this is where ecotourism and canopy tourism are interconnected. Canopy tourism activities offer a special rainforest experience from a completely new perspective.

Therefore, the aim of the symposium is Read the whole article »

The 5th International Canopy Conference will be organized by ATREE in Bangalore, India, during the 25th to 31st of October 2009.

The theme for this conference is Forest Canopies: Conservation, Climate Change and Sustainable Use. The conference program will include keynote and plenary speakers on critical topics, invited and contributed scientific symposia, methods workshops, a student symposium, poster sessions, field trips, a canopy photo and film festival, and traditional canopy social events.

Please visit www.canopy2009.org for more information.

ATREE invited me to organize and chair a workshop on canopy ecotourism at the conference. More information about this session can be found here shortly…