Canopy Walkway Project:

ICTE and the Global Canopy Programme are collaborating to develop a World Class Centre for Lemur Conservation. This will be a national flagship project to draw attention internationally to Madagascar's magnificent wildlife by constructing the country's first forest canopy walkway facility for research, education, and conservation. The facility will be built in Ranomafana National Park and will form part of UNESCO's bid to create a world heritage cluster in the region. Revenues from the facility will help support Madagascar's National Park's system, local communities, a forest restoration project, and, in collaboration with the Centre ValBio, pioneering research on rare and endangered endemic lemur species. It will also provide much-needed sustainable jobs and revenue for the local community. The walkway will make this centre the only place in the world where it will be possible to come face to face with lemurs in the forest canopy.

PRESS RELEASE 7th March 2005

UN provides backing for developing a global network of ‘Whole Forest Observatories’ to investigate canopy biodiversity and the impact of climate change.

Ambitious plans will be announced today for a global network to monitor biodiversity loss and the impact of climate change on the world’s richest and most threatened habitat – the forest canopy. The United Nations Environment Programme, with financial support from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) for proposal development, has given its backing to a plan developed by the Global Canopy Programme to establish a series of ‘whole forest observatories’ across the tropics. These will be linked to others already in existence in temperate forests around the world, and new ones, including one planned for Britain. The aim of the network is to investigate how climate change might alter the way forests function and what risks this poses to humans and the huge diversity of life such forests sustain.

The forest canopy is the richest, least known and most threatened habitat on the surface of the earth. 40% of all terrestrial biodiversity is believed to exist there, mostly in tropical rainforests. The canopy is the primary interface between life and the atmosphere across 45 million hectares of land. There is growing concern that climate change, through forest canopies, could impact 90% of the world’s living material or biomass and possibly alter the pace or effects of global warming.

If the $17 million network is fully funded, the first five Observatories will be set up in Brazil, Ghana, Madagascar, India and Malaysia. The Governments of all five countries have given their backing to the plan. A harmonised research programme will be set up across the sites using novel means of forest access. A ‘canopy crane’ will be installed at each site to provide mobility within the whole forest from treetops to soil. Instruments on towers will monitor fluxes of water, oxygen and carbon dioxide between the canopy and the atmosphere. Satellites, balloons and even airships may be used to access the canopy from above. The project will also investigate the potential for canopy based ecotourism and canopy horticulture to provide sustainable benefits for communities dependent on forests. Each Observatory will act as a monitoring and early warning system for the signs of climate change and will deliver critical information to a network of stakeholders, including governments and communities.

An announcement about UN Backing for the proposed network will be made today at 6.30pm at the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) in London. Global Canopy Programme Director, Andrew Mitchell said: “Climate change has the potential to impact one of the world’s most powerful biotic regulators on earth – the forest canopy. Whilst we know quite a lot about how fluxes of gasses such as CO2 can be controlled by forests, we know very little about how these gasses might impact the immense biodiversity they contain and alter the way it regulates our atmosphere. Rising CO2 may cause drought, disease and increased flooding and this will affect all the world’s forests, from Britain to Borneo.”

“If we are to significantly reduce biodiversity loss by 2010, in line with commitments made at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, then we will need innovative investigations like the Global Canopy Programme,” said Klaus Topfer, Executive Director of The United Nations Environment Programme. “We need to not only tackle the science but also to better understand how biodiversity can provide benefits to local communities and help poverty alleviation.”

CONTACT:

Andrew Mitchell
Katherine Secoy
www.globalcanopy.org

Global Canopy Programme,
John Krebs Field Station, Wytham,
Oxford OX2 8QJ,
United Kingdom.
Tel: +44 (0) 1865 724222, Fax: +44 (0) 1865 724555

The GCP is supported by the Global Canopy Foundation.
Registered UK Charity (No. 1089110), Incorporated as a Company Limited by Guarantee (No. 4293417).
The GCP was founded with the generous support of The Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation