Ghost Forest finale to inspire future generations
10 February 2011
‘I Touched the Rainforest’ is the title of a new climate change initiative being launched this Saturday for all 101,000 Oxfordshire schoolchildren at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers Museum.
At 12 noon, on the lawns of the Museums, Oxford University’s Chancellor, Lord Patten, will invite pupils to visit the site over the next six months to touch, smell and be inspired by the ten tropical tree stumps of the famous Ghost Forest on display outside the museum.
At least four local schools will attend the launch. The new project will encourage schools to use the exhibition as a base for a range of written, arts and music projects.
Other plans include a Grand Banquet of Rainforest Insects on 27 March among the Ghost Forest trees, where the theme of food security will be discussed. The celebrity chef and food writer Thomasina Miers will create insect dishes and experts will debate the potential of insects as an alternative source of food if a predicted population explosion leads to a worldwide meat shortage.
A Midsummer Picnic with a palm oil theme is scheduled for June when Andrew Mitchell, head of the Wytham-based Global Canopy Programme, which involves Oxford University, will highlight the prevalence of palm oil in common foods. Palm oil cultivation is also causing widespread logging in tropical countries.
Closer to home, the Oxford Union has been invited to stage its first outdoor debate among the trees.
The huge Ghost Forest stumps are all indigenous species from the Suhuma Forest Reserve in western Ghana. They were displayed in Trafalgar Square and during 2009 climate talks in Copenhagen before their arrival in Oxford.
The absence of their trunks is intended as a metaphor for the loss of the planet's 'lungs'. Most of the ten trees fell naturally while the remainder were selectively logged.
Oxford-based artist Angela Palmer brought the trees to Europe to draw attention to the devastating rate of rainforest clearance in many countries – an area the size of a football pitch is destroyed every four seconds.
Her concern about climate change was cemented by a dream leading to visits to the globe’s cleanest and most polluted places - Cape Grim in north west Tasmania, cleansed by the winds of the Roaring Forties, and the Chinese coal mining city of Linfen, said to have the most polluted air and water anywhere on Earth.‘
Ghost Forest has been incredibly exciting,’ Mrs Palmer said ‘When I first went to Ghana I expected to see a wasteland of tree stumps resembling a war-torn battlefield. Instead I found thick jungle where the odd massive buttress had been cut right down to the ground.
‘Most of the trees selected for the Ghost Forest fell in tropical typhoons with their root system intact. I want people here to see the roots of the trees as well. For me they symbolise the nerve endings of the planet that man is ripping from the earth.
Mrs Palmer studied at Oxford University’s Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art and has worked with academics from all four divisions of the University on the Ghost Forest project. Departments include the Environmental Change Institute, Plant Sciences, Engineering Science and the Oxford Centre of Tropical Forests.
Oxford researchers and students have been using the exhibition as a field laboratory, studying topics ranging from the trees themselves to visitors’ reactions. International Masters courses in environmental change and biodiversity have also been using the stumps.
The Ghost Forest plans coincide with the UN’s International Year of Forests.
For more details contact Angela Palmer at angelaspalmer@gmail.com or on 01865 557733 / 07771 970679.