One project aims to spread awareness of the sheer size of Taiwan’s highland trees.
The News Lens
Date: 2018/01/03
By: Dinah Gardner
If you, like me, are scared of heights, this article may make you a bit dizzy – we are going
Courtesy of The Tree Projects
to the very tops of some of Taiwan’s tallest trees.
Often called the lungs of our planet, trees and tree ecosystems are high on any conservationist’s list. A Tasmanian couple, canopy ecologist Jen Sanger and adventure photographer Steven Pearce, started The Tree Projects to give an extra push to forest protection by doing something few before had done: photographing and videoing the very tops of tall trees. Last year, it was Taiwan’s turn.
“We chose Taiwan because not many people outside of Taiwan know that such wonderful and impressive trees grow there,” Sanger told The News Lens. The trees she’s talking about are Taiwania cryptomerioides, a type of Cyprus. The Taiwania are like giant Christmas trees, huge bushy conifers that grow in central Taiwan and a few other places in Southeast Asia and China. According to the IUCN, they are also called a coffin tree or Taiwan cedar. They are very long-lived but has a “vulnerable” status because of logging for timber.
“We chose this tree as it is one of the tallest tree species in Taiwan. It is quite special as there are not many places in the world where you see a tree this size growing at a high elevation,” said Sanger. [FULL STORY]
