Academic News

In the month since our last News from the Field there have been a veritable kaleidoscope of different activities, experiences, places and people. Fresh back from mid-semester break, the second half of the program kicked off with the major field exercise for Socio-economics and Environmental Policy. Students set out to establish the relationship between

Photo by Lauren Helton

the age of reforestation plots and the weight of carbon sequestered above and below ground in reforestations on the Atherton Tablelands. After a lot of measuring and equations, students will be able to answer the question of how much revegetation would be needed to offset the carbon produced by students coming and going to the Center for Rainforest Studies from their homes in the United States.

Students spent a day with Doug Stewart and Syb Bresolin, Aboriginal elders and traditional owners of the surrounding area. They heard about traditional lifestyles, visited special places and examined artifacts from long ago. Wynnie describes the day in her reflection posted below.

A trip to the Daintree is a highlight of any visit to far north Queensland and it proved no exception for this group who were lucky to see a cassowary Dad with his two chicks. Some lucky members of the group also saw another cassowary at Cow Bay beach. These sightings brought home to everyone how special a bird the large, flightless cassowary is, and the range of conservation measures instigated in the Daintree region to protect cassowary populations seemed all the more important. Another highlight of the Daintree trip was the visit to the Daintree Discovery Center where great views of all levels of this spectacular lowland forest can be enjoyed from a canopy tower.

Hard on the heels of the Daintree field trip our intrepid group set off to Townsville to challenge the James Cook University

Tim Farkas, Wynnie Long, Lindsay Philips, and Josie Iacarella. Photo by Emily Silver

students in Ultimate Frisbee. The academic side of the excursion punctuated the journey down the coast with opportunities to view  rope bridges designed to enable arboreal wildlife to cross roads safely and rainforest restoration plantings designed to control rats, pests of sugarcane. Though not victorious on this occasion, all agreed we raised some competitive teams and a good day's Frisbee (and a bit of site-seeing) was had by all.

Interactions with locals were again the name of the game this last weekend as students headed off in pairs and small groups to their homestay hosts. Some got to relax, some got to work on a farm, some stayed in town, others in the back blocks but all got to experience a snapshot of local life. It was a change of scene between final exams and the new challenges of Directed Research projects that begin in earnest this week. Dr. Amanda Freeman, Center Director

Student Reflection

Reflecting on a day spent with Doug Stewart and Syb Bresolin, Aboriginal elders:

The only artifacts they had were a few well-worn stones, evidence of a very simple way of life. Doug and Syb emphasized over and over again that their ancestors only took what they needed for the moment and made sure to leave behind enough resources for future generations. Though many people think of the Aboriginal lifestyle as primitive, I could not help but admire a culture that had no great wars or conflicts and lived in harmony with nature for 40,000 years. I think we have a lot to learn from these people, especially for those of us who call ourselves environmentalists. Wynnie Long, University of Virginia

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