Global Forest Science's newsletter, The Leaflet is published three times a year. Stay up to date on the latest news about our forest research, children's education programs and what's new at the Global Forest Science headquarters.

Conservation biology is the applied science of maintaining all forms of life (biological diversity) on our planet. The number of species on Earth is unknown. Crude estimates fluctuate between 3.6 and 111.7 million species. Many of these species, genes, ecosystems and other biological entities are at risk from human destruction. Medicinal extracts from as yet undiscovered plants will save countless human lives in the future. Global Forest funds scientific research and educational programs that are focused on these underlying principles of conservation biology. Scientists believe that maintaining biological diversity is the major issue of the 21st century.

What do you get when you combine a brilliant young academic whose thirst for knowledge is only exceeded by his passion for rope climbing? In three words: Dr Steve Sillett. He's a professor of Botany at Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA situated in the heart of the majestic Sequoia sempervirens (coastal redwood) forests. Dr Sillett is racing to discover as much as he possibly can about life >250 feet above the ground before further development erodes the remaining 3-4% of old growth redwoods. He has joined forces with some of the most brilliant minds in western North America and enlisted a troop of graduate students to assist in this formidable task. The scientific team consists of professors Michael Camann, entomologist at Humbodlt State University, Todd Dawson, University of California at Berkeley, and George Koch, University of Northern Arizona at Flagstaff, who are tree physiologists and water relations experts, and Robert Van Pelt, a canopy (treetop) ecologist at the University of Washington, Seattle. They use specialized rope climbing techniques to hoist themselves high amongst the canopies where they conduct their field-work. Their studies of canopy structure, microclimates, epiphyte ecology, tree physiology, and arboreal animals are the first scientific investigations of the world's tallest canopies.

There were once more than 300 redwood taxa on Earth. Today there are only 4 remaining: Taxodium of the Everglades in south eastern United States, Metasequoia of China, and Sequoia and Sequoiadendron of northern California. Ancient coastal redwoods have a most unique growth phenomenon; they have the ability to literally grow an entire new forest by resprouting trunks on existing trees hundreds of feet above the ground. These exquisite complex crowned forests have multiple resprouted trunks that are often connected to each other by fused branches. High above the ground deep layers of humus accumulate on branches and in crotches at the bases of these resprouted trunks. Several redwoods with over 100 trunks (hundreds of feet above the ground) have now been thoroughly studied. One redwood supports over 550 pounds of ferns and humus in its sprawling crown >170 feet above the ground. The high water-holding capacity of crown humus enables organisms normally restricted to the ground surface (e.g., shrubs, trees, earthworms, mollusks, crustaceans, and salamanders) to flourish far above the forest floor in these magnificent redwood forests.

Along park boundaries and highways coastal redwoods are dying. Drs Sillett, Dawson, and Koch hypothesize that the cause for this dieback is water related. This autumn they will be examining vertical gradients of water stress and leaf characteristics in redwoods up to 369.8 feet in height. Global Forest is funding Drs Sillett, Dawson, Koch and a host of their graduate students, research assistants and one postdoc in their efforts to record new life and to discover why these gigantic redwoods are dying.

Ants are awesome! They live in every forest type on Earth and they move more soil than earthworms. This process of turning the soil is very important because it circulates vast amounts of nutrients, which are essential for healthy forests worldwide. In turn, the forests provide habitat and food for ant colonies to flourish. When this inseparable bond is broken between ants and the forest the result is catastrophic. One such disturbing example of this can be witnessed in the oak forests of northern Japan. The mighty redwood ants dwell along a strip of shoreline on the Ishikari coast of northern Japan. In the early 1970s when Prof Higashi of Hokkaido University first began studying this supercolony of Japanese redwood ants in the oak forests there were approximately 45,000 nests with connecting tunnels extending nearly 20 kilometres along the shore of the Japan Sea. It was estimated that the colony had 307 million redwood ants, including about 306 million workers and about 1.1 million queens. The colony is thought to be about 1000 years old. Since 1973 the supercolony has been under siege. The construction, development, and infrastructure of a new port on the Ishikari Bay has occurred on top of 30% of the ant megalopolis in the oak forests. This has reduced the number of redwood ants living there by more than half. Global Forest is providing continued funding for Prof Higashi's laboratory to analyze the DNA and genetic structure of the redwood ant supercolony so that they will be able to assist in the conservation of this truly remarkable and ancient ant colony.

Global Forest has created its own press entitled Global Forest Press. Reese Halter's 'Forest Adventures with Bruni the Bear', a children's nature book, will be the first book published and ready for sale in the last week in October. Global Forest Press has entered into a co-publishing agreement with The University of Washington Press to produce Dr Robert Van Pelt's book with magnificent original line drawings on 'The 120 Giant Trees of the Pacific Coast'. Stay tuned for its release in the late spring of 2001 and many other fascinating books will follow soon thereafter.

Fundamental similarities in forest and faunal composition between North America and Eurasia predispose the two continents to unfortunate interchange of their respective herbivores (plant eaters). The evolving global market greatly enhances the probability of transcontinental herbivore exchange.

At least 3 factors make North American forests more suitable for, and hence more vulnerable to, immigrant Eurasian insects than vice versa: 1. their larger number of potential host plants; 2. their higher absolute abundance; and 3. their more even, less fragmented distribution. Moreover, a higher number of insects per plant in Europe, and thus more intense competition in the evolutionary past, seem to have made European insects more adept than their North American counterparts at exploiting plant resources. This may explain why many of the European insects have become the overwhelming dominant herbivore in their invaded North American niches. The European gypsy moth, for example, has become the dominant leaf eating insect in northeastern American mixed oak forests, as have the European larch sawfly and larch casebearer on eastern larch trees.

Forty percent of the major North American insect pests are of exotic origin even though as a group exotic insects constitute just 2% of the insect fauna. Outrageous economic and ecological damage caused by the existing exotic insects and continued entry of new ones call for stringent preventive management and heightened international quarantine efforts.

Global Forest is playing a crucial leadership role by proactively funding Dr Gries's foreign insect research program. This cutting edge work will protect our western North American forests from the devastation of foreign infestations and defoliations.

Kids, Nature and Stanley Park Champlain Heights Elementary, Lord Roberts Elementary, Sir Matthew Begbie Elementary, Bayview Elementary and Carnarvan Community School of the Vancouver School District have been selected from a citywide search to be a part of the URBAN STEWARDS PROGRAM.

This very exciting, innovative program aims to broaden children's knowledge of natural history, foster research skills, enhance an awareness of local conservation issues and enable them to develop and carry out their own Stewardship Action Plan. The program is a result of a long-term partnership between Stanley Park Ecological Society and Global Forest.

Check out our children's website GFAwesome.org Your hosts Maurice the Mountain Goat and Lu Lu the Lynx will guide you through 1000 pages of fun and very interesting ecological educational materials. It also contains our worldwide weather program, which features 14 schools and now more than 1500 school children in Australia, Canada, Israel, United Kingdom and the United States. Do you want to know what the temperatures were last week around the world? Go to the site and you will also be able to see weekly written weather reports from each of the schools. Join the GF Awesome Club for free and start collecting your free stickers!

Sincere thanks are extended to the following people who have helped put together the many different aspects of phase 1 of the children's website GFAwesome.org: Darrell Harder, Alex Regier, Jessica Henry, Aiden Kelly, Stephen Pearce, Peter Corbett, Reese Halter, Sandy Meyer, Adrienne Sloss, Janice Cashin and Brian Herrin.

If you see a plastic six-pack holder lying on the ground or on the beach please pick it up. Cut the six connected rings into small pieces and dispose of them, preferably into a plastic-recycling bin. Intact, those discarded plastic six-pack holders are responsible for strangling thousands of birds and other marine life each and every year.

Global Forest wishes to express our gratitude to Dr Gordon Moore and Mr Steven Moore and the other trustees of the The Moore Family Foundation for their very generous 2 year grant monies for the Westslope Cutthroat Trout project.

Global Forest also wishes to thank Mrs Adrienne Sloss of Belevedere, California for her generous individual financial contribution to the coastal Redwood program.

Congratulations to the following graduates funded by Global Forest:

Shelli Dubay, PhD University of Wyoming, USA

Kelly Banister, PhD Unversity of British Columbia, Canada