Rainforest Corridor Restoration: Students Evaluate Cheaper Options
Name: Dr. Rohan Wilson
Position: Lecturer in Forest Management
Program: Tropical Rainforest Studies, Australia
Restoring rainforest on cleared land of the Wet Tropics is an important but very expensive undertaking in the Atherton Tablelands. As this is the busy season for planting new rainforests, students have been involved in several large plantings that will act as corridors linking fragments of remnant rainforest.
Students also recently took part in a large experiment to try to determine more cost-efficient methods for rainforest restoration.
On a former cattle farm, students monitored several hundred seedlings that had been planting using different methods to see whether new faster and cheaper methods will still produce a healthy sapling.
SFS has been involved with this large experiment since its early days, which is providing much-needed research on better ways to recreate rainforests on a large scale.
Several students have used it as their field site for Directed Research projects, from assessing carbon sequestration to determining factors that lead to natural recruitment of rainforest seedlings.
It’s really great that students get to be involved with rainforest restoration at several levels, from research and design principles to physically planting out thousands of trees to designing and implementing ongoing monitoring and maintenance regimes.
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