Arbornauts of the Eighth Continent
January 8, 2022 2:55 AM Subscribe
Dr Meg “Canopy-Meg” Lowman is used to being the lone woman in a man’s world. She is currently working with a committee Ethiopian priests to protect “church forests” from grazing by cattle and encroaching cultivation by neighbouring teff [MetaPrev] farmers; in collaboration with Alemayehu Wassie Eshete.
That’s a coup. In another life she invented [but failed to patent] and pioneered walkways high in the forest canopy so that biological diversity could be safely studied by citizen scientists recruited through Earthwatch. Up until then she’d had to haul herself up to the canopy using a hands-free harness of her invention developed in consultation with spelunkers.
She’s taken her two young sons into the field [7.5m audio] despite then being posed with a dilemma of whether it was safer to leave them on the ground with the snakes or 100 ft up in the air with the spiders. She has gone out of her way to mentor young women in science [20m TEDx talk] from Abyssinia to Assam [and that's just the As!] because she herself had zero [to the nearest whole number] female role-models for science in school and college.
My current audiobook is her 2021 memoir The Arbornaut [review] eee, it's great.
More recent on the geopolitics of teff [10m Rare Earth yt]
That’s a coup. In another life she invented [but failed to patent] and pioneered walkways high in the forest canopy so that biological diversity could be safely studied by citizen scientists recruited through Earthwatch. Up until then she’d had to haul herself up to the canopy using a hands-free harness of her invention developed in consultation with spelunkers.
She’s taken her two young sons into the field [7.5m audio] despite then being posed with a dilemma of whether it was safer to leave them on the ground with the snakes or 100 ft up in the air with the spiders. She has gone out of her way to mentor young women in science [20m TEDx talk] from Abyssinia to Assam [and that's just the As!] because she herself had zero [to the nearest whole number] female role-models for science in school and college.
My current audiobook is her 2021 memoir The Arbornaut [review] eee, it's great.
More recent on the geopolitics of teff [10m Rare Earth yt]
No one expects the committee of Ethiopian priests.
posted by fairmettle at 7:52 AM on January 8, 2022
posted by fairmettle at 7:52 AM on January 8, 2022
This is awesome! Looking forward to getting her memoir and reading some of these links.
posted by stellaluna at 10:03 AM on January 8, 2022
posted by stellaluna at 10:03 AM on January 8, 2022
Thank you for sharing the beautiful story of the Ethiopian church forests and how seemingly simple efforts can make a big difference in their conservation. I’m looking forward to listening to Dr. Lowman’s memoir while basking in the solitude of a redwood forest cathedral nearby.
posted by endoftheparty at 10:40 AM on January 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by endoftheparty at 10:40 AM on January 8, 2022 [1 favorite]
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posted by Bella Donna at 5:54 AM on January 8, 2022