How I climb trees to save forests | Meg Lowman | TEDxNCSSM

Meg Lowman followed her childhood passion and became an "arbornaut," studying the diversity of life found in the treetop canopy.

Lowman has been called "the real-life Lorax" by National Geographic and "Einstein of the treetops" by the Wall Street Journal for her pioneering work in canopy ecology research. For more than 30 years, she has designed hot-air balloons and walkways for treetop exploration to solve mysteries in the world's forests, particularly insect pests and ecosystem health. Working tirelessly on initiatives at home and abroad, "Canopy Meg" was a Fulbright Senior Specialist Scholar to India and a National Geographic awardee to conserve church forests in Ethiopia. Lowman has authored more than 100 scientific publications and her first book, Life in the Treetops, was reviewed in The New York Times Sunday Book Review.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx.

Thank you so much.

So raise your hand
if you've ever climbed a tree.

Oh! Oh my gosh.

See, everyone's still a kid
in this audience.

Anyway, that's great news.

Scientists who study outer space
are actually called astronomers,

and if some of you who climb trees,
like I did as a kid,

became a forest biologist
studying the treetops,

you would be called an arbornaut,

so technically, I'm actually
the world's first arbornaut.

I'm pretty old also,

and by some quirk of fate,

I took my little childhood love
and turned it into a profession.

So, probably, I really still am a kid.

I want to share three take-home messages.

I'll give you those first

in case you want to sleep
for the rest of the talk.

I'd like to talk a little bit

about how important it's been to me
to follow my passion,

and for all of you students,

I think if you can really
and truly pursue what you love,

it might lead to a more rewarding life.

I'd like to explain a little bit

about how I think, for me,
a turning point in my career

was thinking outside of the box
and developing some really new ideas,

and, obviously, turning points
that occur throughout my research

are seeking solutions to global problems.

So this passion thing was kind of crazy,

but this is my briefcase
that I take to work:

a rope, a harness.

This is my work clothing
that I wore to give this talk today.

So, in a sense, it means that my career
is kind of nonconventional.

As my kid said, "It's really weird, Mom."

But anyway, over the years,

I look back and realize that I was
actually one of these very nerdy kids,

as they called it in my day.

I didn't go to a wonderful
school like this.

In fact, my school was very rough.

It was a very embarrassing thing
to get an A in a science class

because that was not cool,

and this was even more embarrassing:

to win second prize
in the New York State Science Fair

with 499 boys who all had volcano
experiments bursting out of their trays.

I was so shy;

I didn't even dare say thank you
when I got this little plastic statue.

But there I am

with my wildflower collection
that I had put in telephone books.

They used to be paper,
these telephone book things,

and they made a great way
to have a mini collection of dried plants

if you're a kid in very rural
upstate New York.

The turning point for me,
when I guess I recognized my passion,

was about age five,

which is equally nerdy, I think.

I made these little tree forts
with my best friend, Betsy.

We used to escape in the backyard,

and we would rescue baby birds
if they fell out of the nest.

Even more embarrassing,

we would follow the local lawn mowers,

and when the dads were mowing their lawns
and the earthworms got cut in half,

we rescued them and
band-aided them back together

and put them in our tree fort
in little cardboard boxes - our hospital.

Of course, none of them survived.

But I think the turning point for me was -

in this small town,
where there wasn't much to do,

and there was a toxic-waste dump
and a big prison reformatory,

not a lot of attributes
for a budding young student -

I had this love of trees
and this love of forest.

The neat thing is my best friend, Betsy,
went into the health profession.

She loved trying to fix these animals;

I loved the trees.

Maybe the real fun part of this story is

her brother was even nerdier than I was:

he loved sewing.

And you can imagine, as a young boy
that was not the cool thing

in our very small, hokey town.

His name was Tommy Hilfiger,

and he was so weird

that we never could get him
to come outside and play with us

because he was always
stealing his mom's sewing machine

when she was at work.

But as I look back on this,

and we all marvel -

there we are at a fundraiser
for pancreatic cancer last year.

I think, you know what?

We all followed our passion,

and Betsy became a nurse,

and Tommy became a clothing designer,

and I became the nerdy forest biologist.

But do look at the person
sitting next to you, right now,

especially if you're a student,

because you might secretly think
they are quite weird,

but they could become a billionaire.

They could follow their passion
and have this amazing career,

and if you're lucky, like me,

they might even help fund
your research once in a while.

I'm still waiting

for the khaki clothing line
for Tommy to design,

but in any case,

it's just really amazing to me to think
that at our little ages of five and six,

we had already kind of been imprinted
about what we really love in life.

So that led me to this amazing career
that wasn't preordained,

and I can't say that I was strategic
or incredibly brilliant,

but I just happened to be in a place

where I asked some questions
about how long leaves lived on trees,

and lo and behold,

was the first person to rig a tree
with a rope and climb up it,

and when I got to the top -

this was 1979 in Australia -

oh my gosh, millions of things
were up there.

They were eating each other;
they were chewing the leaves.

It was like this huge hotspot
for biodiversity,

and I was very privileged,

and also scared,

to be the first person to see
this extraordinary amount of diversity.

For the last 200 years,

foresters had only mostly looked
at the forest floor

or cut a tree down
to figure out what was at the top.

But everything, of course, flies away
when you cut the tree down.

Lo and behold, here's the one
I'm going to be studying this summer.

Does anybody know what it is?

Yeah, tardigrade water bear,

the most extreme organism on the planet.

This is the last, maybe next to last
one that we've never really studied,

but there are probably
millions in the canopy,

and I'm hoping to find that out.

Is anybody a vegetarian?

Oop. Sorry. You're really not.

Hundreds of these live
on every piece of lettuce that you eat,

and it's protein, so love it.

(Laughter)

And we're studying that too,

because maybe it's an important piece
of nutrition in your diet.

So, with this passion

for studying these weird and wonderful
creatures in forest canopies,

my second kind of take-home message
that I always tell my students

is for me, in this really strange career

where nobody else had done something
that was so local and backyardy in a way,

it forced myself
and a few of my colleagues

to say, "Holy cow!

There's a whole world up there,
100 or 200 feet above us.

How are we going to study it?
and is it important?

and what does this mean
to the health of the planet?"

So, through at least half of my career,

I've been devoting a lot of my time
to designing methods,

and this surprised me as a scientist.

I didn't expect to be
kind of a pseudo-engineer,

but over the last 30 years
of the history of canopy research

we've designed inflatables,

like this very cool raft,
to go over the top,

the uppermost part of the canopy.

We've designed hot-air balloons

and of course, the first
and foremost design

were those fantastic ropes and harnesses

that even a poor
graduate student can afford.

So over time, it's these little tools
that we developed

that helped us answer the questions
that we were asking

in different forests
in different parts of the world.

And because that forest canopy

is the interface, actually,
between the air and the earth,

it has now become an increasingly
important area for study

because of issues like climate change
and extreme storms

and other important global phenomena.

So, here's our raft
that allows us to live in the canopy.

My dream come true - ultimate tree-house.

And here are the ropes and harnesses

that we can use to climb
almost any tree in the world

that has a branch that's safe enough
to hold your weight.

Here is something that I designed
in Australia, initially,

because with a rope, you can only climb
one person at a time -

it's a little lonely up there.

With a canopy walkway,

you can actually take
a whole group of students.

You can stay overnight,

you can work in the rain

and do things that you can't do
with a rope or a hot-air balloon.

So suddenly, we've amassed
this kind of briefcase, or tool kit,

of interesting techniques

that young and old
and even mobility-limited students,

whom I'm working with this summer
on those water bears,

can get access to the treetops.

Anyone is welcome
and everyone really is welcome

because we still don't have
very much research going on

as we need to in these habitats.

If you have a million dollars
in your budget,

our kind of Cadillac tool
is the canopy construction crane.

You probably wonder
what happens in the states

when those things
get rusty and broken down.

Well, they give them
to tropical biologists,

and we take them to the rain forest,

and they offer unprecedented
access to leaves

within a certain hectare
of the arm of the crane.

So now we have some passion,
and we have a toolkit,

and so the important thing with forest

has suddenly become very different
from what astronomers are doing.

You know, outer space
is growing and expanding.

Forests have disappeared.

Probably 50% of forests
have disappeared in my lifetime alone,

and this means that I
really can't afford to sleep,

and I'm hoping to recruit some of you
to be future canopy scientists.

So, the opportunity and the challenge
to make really quick solutions

is something that keeps me awake at night,

so I thought I'd run
through a few of those

to give you a little mini field trip

into the tropics in some
of our challenging forests of the world

to see what's going on.

Australia in the mid-'80s
was an amazing place

because they had already cut down
95% of their tropical rain forests.

They had dry forests called eucalyptus,

and all of a sudden,
all millions of trees died

within the period
of a two-year span of time.

I happened to be there

doing my research
in rain forest at that time

and essentially got a green card
from the government

as the only qualified
tree climber in the country

to stay and tackle this problem.

The amazing thing is we were able
to identify, through canopy tools,

that one insect had gone
entirely out of whack

and was attacking all of the trees

because of the human impact
on the landscapes.

Farmers had cut down enough trees
and reduced the bird populations

and added fertilizer to the soils

and done everything that really enhanced
the survival of this insect pest.

The solution is equally important
to finding out the problem,

and in this case,

it was a simple matter
of getting native seeds.

Every valley has a different eucalyptus
in Australia - some 555 species.

So we had to find local groups -

kids, adults, farmers -

to plant trees, to grow natives,

not to grow pines,

which is what the government
initially tried to hand out,

and for all of the countries
where I've studied severe forest diebacks,

the idea of planting the natives
as a restoration technique

is obviously healthier and better
for the long-term solution

than bringing in these invasive trees,

like eucalyptus
or, in Australia's case, pines.

On a personal note,

we all have to make solutions
to our own lives.

My personal issue as a scientist
was that I was a single mom.

I had two young boys,

and I had this challenge
of keeping my job,

and my job took me
to a lot of remote places.

I thought I'd include this
as one of my solution kind-of scenarios

just because I think
a lot of you, in any career,

might face this issue
of juggling family and career.

And it doesn't matter
if you're male or female;

it can happen at any point in time.

But hopefully for you,

it won't happen this year
if you're in this high school.

(Laughter)

Anyway, in this case
for me, my colleagues -

most of whom were male
and still are, I might add -

they always would tease me and say,

"Will you leave your babies

at the bottom of the tree
with the poisonous snakes

or will take them in the canopy?"

So here they are at age four and five,

getting their little harnesses from mom

and joining me in my research.

And in a funny way,

that actually helped me, I think,
answer questions better,

think harder about the message
in the solutions

that I had to take on globally,

and they were my great research assistants
throughout most of our career.

So, I feel very grateful that my kids
were a part of my science,

and hopefully, you might have a career
where that happens for you as well.

And you can also read my book about it.

It's really the misadventures
of life in the tree tops,

trying to work through
these different problems.

At a global scale,

I've been very interested
in working in developing countries

because they have fewer scientists

and fewer abilities to solve
some of the urgent forestry problems.

India is particularly critical.

They have 20% left of native forest,

and right now,

one of the really wonderful things
that I've been helping with

is taking a lot of the women -
that's 51% of the world's population -

and helping them transfer from being,
in this case in India,

women who provide the food,
never get educated

and are basically subservient
in their cultural practices

and training them to be
my next generation of canopy scientists.

Here's one of my women-in-training

in India.

They are so eager,
enthusiastic and bright.

I think in many of these countries,

empowering women in science
is a really important mission

for those of us fortunate enough
to have an education here in the U.S.

Similarly, Ethiopia has extreme issues
with forest degradation.

They now have less
than 5% of their forests left

in the northern half of the country.

This is how it looks on Saturday
if you're going shopping in Ethiopia.

You walk 15 miles without any shade,

mostly without shoes,

and you hope you'll find
a freshwater spring,

but they're almost always located
in forest patches,

and here, of course,
is the landscape of Ethiopia.

You can barely see those little green dots

which are the remaining
forest patches in this country.

Extremely urgent situation,

and in this case, fortunately,

the forest themselves
are under the stewardship of the church.

So that little round thing
in the middle is the Coptic church,

and my project there now

is a partnership
with religion and science -

an unheard of combination
except in the last few years,

where we suddenly look at each other
and realize we have the same mission

of looking after all of God's creatures

or, in my case, conserving biodiversity.

So I've had all sorts
of amazing experiences

educating the Coptic priests
about technology,

Google Earth images,

helping them understand the principles
of losing their genetic library

and also why all the freshwater springs
are in these remaining forest patches.

The other solution to this problem,
in addition to educating the priests,

has been educating the next generation
of forest stewards.

In this country, almost all
of the pollinators of their crop plants

spend some lifestyle portion
in these forest areas,

so I've been fortunate to recruit
biologists from around the world

who will donate their time

and come in and help me
understand the biodiversity of a country

where there is no literature on any group
of insects, birds, animals, etcetera.

It's just a void in the literature
of conservation biology

simply because it's been
a little rough to work there.

So in this case, does it matter?

Well, there's a tree there
that they use to treat prostate cancer.

There are all sorts of amazing species
that we're still just discovering,

and so it could be important.

But perhaps more important

is that these forest patches
actually contain species,

contain fresh water

and contain all sorts of spiritual value

that really keeps these people
alive and healthy.

One of the simpler solutions
that we've innovated

is simply building walls.

It's a win, win, win -
as we say in conservation.

Take the stones out of the fields,

raises the crop yield,

build the walls,

keeps the cattle out of the forests
and saves the seedlings,

creates a social structure

and pays the people
for their building time.

And because the kids
don't have libraries or pencils,

we're now distributing t-shirts,

in Amharic,

with all of the insect pollinators

because they don't own a t-shirt,
and they don't have a place to put a book,

and so hopefully we're coming up
with these innovative solutions

about how we can solve their issues.

In summary,

all of this is because a little bit
of my American technology,

a teensy bit of our time and energy

can absolutely change the lives
of millions of people

in a country like Ethiopia.

Using online opportunities
to disseminate this project

has resulted in extraordinary solutions.

I just sold the name
of this new beetle for $10,000.

That was enough to fence
two whole forests in Ethiopia,

so a lot of amazing things can happen

just with a tiny bit
of our creative solutions.

So, in closing,

we have great opportunities here

for those of you who are students
at this fabulous school.

This is your museum
that I am fortunate enough to direct,

in Raleigh.

We hope that science
will be a part of everyone's life.

I hope you will follow your passion.

I hope you'll have a chance

to develop tools and solutions
to whatever problem you pick.

And my closing message is simply
the last two sentences of my book.

This is really from my heart
as a mom, not as a scientist,

but this is the most important thing
I've learned from my work, and that is

that one of the most meaningful insights
I have acquired along my life's journey

is that it takes the same amount of energy

to complain as it does to exclaim,

but the results are incredibly different.

Learning to exclaim instead of to complain
has been my most valuable lesson.

Thank you.

(Applause)