Buffalo Zoo opening new $16M rain forest exhibit

BUFFALO, N.Y. - The Buffalo Zoo is unveiling its new $16 million South American rain forest exhibit, which features a two-story waterfall, giant anteaters, vampire bats, howler monkeys, an anaconda and other rare animals.

Zoo officials hope the exhibit, opening to the public Wednesday, will boost the zoo's winter attendance.

The exhibit is designed after Venezuela's 3,000-foot-high Angel Falls, which zoo President Donna Fernandes visited in 1982. She suggested replicating the world's tallest waterfall when planning for the new exhibit began four years ago.

Visitors to the rain forest exhibit will traverse indoor walkways that will take them through mist from the waterfall, with viewing from a second-story platform and other overlooks.

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The painting is by Laura Tasheiko

Amazon’s ‘Forest Peoples’ Seek a Role in Striking Global Climate Agreements

By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
Published: April 6, 2008

MANAUS, Brazil — Some wore traditional headdresses, and some traveled by riverboat or canoe. But the dozens of “forest peoples” who descended on this capital of Amazonas State last week had a common goal of becoming bigger players in global climate talks.

A conference here that ended last Friday drew leaders of hundreds of indigenous groups in 11 Latin American countries and observers from Indonesia and Congo, the largest gathering of its kind, organizers said. They came to build a consensus for a plan in which wealthier countries would compensate developing countries for conserving tropical forests like the Amazon.

Such an international carbon-trading plan has been gaining momentum and was a central topic last December at a climate conference in Bali, Indonesia. Scientists generally agree that tropical deforestation accounts for 20 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

“There is a real sense that this potentially represents a huge opportunity for forest peoples to influence climate change negotiations and create larger-scale incentives to stop deforestation and improve their living conditions,” said Stephan Schwartzman of the Environmental Defense Fund in New York, who attended the discussions here.

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How to save a rain forest

Starting with a pickle jar of cash from school children, Saltspring Island raised $1-million to save a 19-hectare plot from development

HADANI DITMARS

Special to The Globe and Mail

April 5, 2008

Saltspring Island's Creekside Rainforest is cool, moist, lush and much greener than the surrounding area. The sound of island songbirds and the gurgling of a creek that supports two kinds of wild salmon greet the visitor. For species at risk - like the red-legged frog - this is a rare haven - one of the very few rain forests on the Gulf Islands.

But this place a 10-minute drive south from Ganges is also unique in a province that has seen its fair share of animosity between environmentalists and developers, from Clayoquot Sound confrontations in the 1990s to the ongoing battle for West Vancouver's Eagleridge bluffs.

On March 31, a deal was officially sealed between a local numbered company that had planned to develop and log the 19-hectare rain forest and its new owners, a group of concerned citizens of Saltspring working in partnership with the Land Conservancy of B.C.

The community coalition and the Land Conservancy of B.C. did not hold protests or appeal to government to preserve the rain forest. They engaged in a form of collective capitalism in which everyone from local schoolchildren to senior citizens pooled their resources to buy the land from the developer.

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Sweet Rain - poem by Sylvia Chidi

Sweet Rain

O! sweet rain! O! sweet rain!

Pitter-patter-pane
Here we go once again
With the sound of rain
On my window pane

First it bulges out with a drizzle
I frizzle in bed waiting for the rain to fizzle
The raindrops fight as they sizzle
Why the sizzle is relaxing remains to me a puzzle

Whilst it pours down heavy
Imposing on the roads a levy
Thunder, chaos and lighting
Is the rattling usual sighting

I hear the people complain
About the sound of sweet rain
But we need you to maintain
The forests, the green and the mountain plains

O! sweet rain! O! sweet rain!
Pitter-patter-pane
Let us do it once again
Just don't delay my speeding train


Sylvia Chidi

Rain Forest

The rainforest contains more than half of Earth's plant and animal species, even though rain forests cover only about 6% of the earth's surface. The average humidity in the rainforest is high, ranging from 77% to 88%. The average temperature is at least 75 to 86 degrees.

Many of the plants and foods in your home originated in the rainforests. Common house plants, such as bromeliads, African violets, periwinkle and the Christmas cactus, began in the rain forest.

About one-fourth of all the medicines we use come from rainforest plants. Curare, from a tropical vine, is used as an anesthetic and to relax muscles for surgery. Quinine, from the cinchona tree, is used to treat malaria. The rosy periwinkle contains an anti-leukemia drug; a person with lymphocytic leukemia has a 99% chance that the disease will go into remission because of the rosy periwinkle. More than 1,400 varieties of tropical plants are thought to be potential cures for cancer.

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