Breakthrough research on a shoestring budget
Joe Foy's kids on boardwalk to station Photo credit:
On June 26, 1993, David Attenborough, star of countless BBC nature programs, along with a video crew from the Ted Turner satellite network, trekked into the Upper Carmanah and were hoisted up into the main research platform. The significance of the canopy research is not lost on the international media, nor is it lost on the international scientific community that continually asks Neville Winchester for more information on his procedures and findings.
So you might expect the canopy station and research projects, the darling of the B.C. scientific community, to be well funded today. They're not. WCWC struggles to maintain the station during the research season, April to October, succeeding to do so only through thousands of small donations from supporters and friends.
The B.C. government funding for the insect studies (provided through the Research Branch of the Ministry of Forests) actually dropped in 1993 to $15,000, down from $35,000 the previous year. Winchester appreciates the fact that the forest ministry acknowledges the importance of his work, but the funding provided is not adequate to meet the project's basic needs.
For the past three years, Winchester and a small crew worked long and hard setting out a complex range of insect traps in the forest canopy, on the forest floor, and in nearby clearcuts. The traps had to be tended and specimens collected on a regular basis. At other times the same crew members worked for the Wilderness Committee or the marbled murrelet study team, combining forces as needed to ensure all the necessary field work got done.
The money to build the Upper Carmanah research station camp came originally from the profits of the award- winning best seller coffee table book, Carmanah Valley - Artistic Visions of an Ancient Rainforest published by the Wilderness Committee in 1989. Since then, the Committee has been raising money continuously from its members and the general public to sustain the station's operations -- so the international community of naturalists and forest researchers can continue to seek the secrets of the ancient temperate rainforest.
