Strapped in a cord with a harness, she swings herself to land upon branches about 200 feet above the ground — in the heart of a dense rain forest. No, it is not adventure sports that this woman is into, but a science adventure. For 32 years now, Dr. Margaret Lowman aka ‘Canopy' Meg has been straddling the tree tops of rain forests in Africa, Australia, Asia and the Amazon basin, to research on wildlife inhabiting tree tops.
Apparently, this region — known as the tree canopy region — supports 40 per cent of all biological species on earth! “The first time I viewed a tree top, I couldn't believe my eyes — there was so much extraordinary biodiversity there. Even now, the canopy region remains a zone that is perhaps even less known than Mars,” says Meg, who was here in the city to launch activities for the (U.N.-declared) International Year of the Forests, at the invitation of Madras Christian College and the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (Atree).
Canopy ecology being an unexplored domain in the Eighties, Meg had started off in amateur fashion — in a kiddo tree-climbing style which was “something she had always been doing as a girl anyway”, besides ladders to reach tree tops. Down the years, Meg fashioned a range of techniques for canopy access such as ropes, hot-air balloons and construction cranes.
But, perhaps, her most dynamic and dashing contribution to canopy ecology is the canopy walkway, which she has helped construct in 25 forest locations across the world — the biggest being a quarter-mile-long, 125-foot tall walkway in the Amazon forests of Peru. A canopy walk is a wooden walkway that straddles treetops, allowing space for a whole group of people to stand, walk on, do research or just take in the splendour of the natural world.
Curiously, Meg's canopy walkways have become economically viable tourist ventures. For instance, in West Samoa, where villagers were losing the last stretches of their forests to timber logging, Meg was invited to help find a solution. The challenge was — how do you churn revenue from forests without chopping them down? A canopy walkway was Meg's prescription. To build it, the villagers borrowed $50,000. The canopy walkway became a tourist destination and paid for itself in two years.
Besides this, Meg is trying to introduce the villagers to the very lucrative orchid cultivation, orchids being aerial plants that grow well in the canopy region — this would create a really valid stake for villagers in the protection of forests. “If carefully monitored, canopy walks offer fantastic scope for sustainable ecotourism. With its still-remaining 20 per cent forest cover, India can do a great deal of ecotourism and canopy research with canopy walks,” she says.
Innovation is Meg's middle name in more ways than one, which is how this single mom of two kids could succeed as mom, field biologist, writer and environmental activist. So, field expeditions became family trips — her kids Edward and James often carried school assignments in their camping bags. “My sons and I have dangled from trees, got muddy, and even discovered species together,” she laughs. These interactions also propelled Meg to get children hooked to ecology and conservation through tree climbing camps and other activities that link Nature to fun.
Now, in between leading a thrilling life as a field biologist, Meg serves as vice-president of The Explorers Club (America), vice-president of the Ecological Society of America, treasurer of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation, executive director of Florida's TREE Foundation; and cluster chair for the Sarasota Economic Development Corporation… Besides all this, of course, she continues to climb trees.
