Forest Rebuilding

Can reach the tallest trees on Earth. Can produce timber, creates jobs, keeps water clean and provides shelter for many species. If we leave them.

On a clean Californian coast trees, shrubs full of sequoia (called here redwood pine), mature oak-toxic, Mike Fay made a misstep, began to slip and felt as if stabbed in his left leg. After hundreds of miles in sandals came through the bushes, was used to such mistreatment of its semicentenarelor feet. But that was the mother of all chips.

She rebounded from a bone was stuck in a tendon and refuse to leave. Finally, the expedition's teammate, Lindsey Holm, grabbed splinter with a pair of pliers and a few sudden jerks, and plucked it. "And the other mountains could be heard yelling - says Fay. It was one of the most painful experiences I have lived.

"And it means something when he says a man who was wounded 16 times the elephants once. He bandaged the wound, took his back pack and, as he did in the last three months went on. After three decades it has helped save African forests, Mike Fay, a biologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society and a member of Explorerin-residence program of the National Geographic Society, has now sequoia blood.

His obsession for this tree, symbol of America, began several years ago, after finishing Megatransect - livingstoniana his expedition to explore the largest jungle is left intact in Africa. One day while I was driving along the north coast of California, found itself on the part of young trees and forests deforested long and thin.

On another occasion, he noticed a piece of 1.8 m from an old sequoia logs exposed to a reserve. On a label near the center reddish wrote: "1492 Columbus". "They put thoughts especially the last 8 inches from the edge - says Fay. There wrote "The Gold Rush, 1849". And I realized that equivalent to 8 inches during the life of that tree, near a forest lichidaseram 2,000 years. "

In the fall of 2007, he decided to see for himself how it was exploited in the past and currently treated as the highest forest in the long Pamant.Parcurgand legendary throughout California from Big Sur to beyond the border Oregon, wanted to know if there is a way to enhance both timber production, and numerous ecological and social benefits provided by forests left standing.

If they could do that in redwood forest - believe it - it could be anywhere on the planet where forests are races for short-term gains.