The NATURE RESEARCH CENTER in Raleigh, North Carolina, has the capability to connect to all 1.5 million K-12 students in the state, as well as to students around the world. For its Opening, the NRC conducted 2 global town halls, courtesy of Time Warner Cable. During these town halls, CanopyMeg Lowman hosted conversations with scientists around the world — India, UK, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Philippines, Costa Rica, North Carolina, and Amazon. Here are a few letters written by students in rural India, who experienced the thrill of connecting to millions of global students who were watching the broadcast! These students are studying elephants in their schools, as part of a conservation program for their region called the Western Ghats.

Below Bhaskar writes about the incredible opportunity extended to the students both from the US and from India in connecting to the Global Town Hall Program:

We had chosen the subject of Trees and Elephants and how important it is to conserve the woodland forests for the conservation of elephants and the supporting environment. We engaged in direct conversation with the Mahout community to build a dialogue of understanding how elephants can play a role culturally and through natural history.

In the first phase, 17 students from the US as part of the ClicaAbroad workshop were taken to two elephant camps in Karnataka State and they spent time documenting the fascinating life of the Mahouts surrounding the National park. Due to the conflict with school holidays, they couldn’t be present for the opening of the global town hall event.

Here is a writeup on the workshop in the media:

• http://expressbuzz.com/search/with-love-from-ny/380993.html
• http://expressbuzz.com/states/karnataka/studying-mahouts%E2%80%99-life-through-eyes-of-children/385301.html

Later I took a group of 35 school children from Sri Vani School in Bangalore to the surroundings of Nagarhole Tiger Reserve to a local school COPS in Gonikoppa to interact with them and also experience the forest, elephants and surrounding biodiversity. I am enclosing some of the write ups from the students on their experiences and the images.

Write-ups and Letters (Adobe PDFs):

• Connecting Technology and Conservation
• My Days with Nature
• My experience and learning
• The day when I opened my eyes towards the elephants
• Trip to the hottest hotspot of the Western Ghats
• A report on our visit to Coorg
• A report on wildlife educational trip to Coorg

From The Hindu:

Margaret Lowman inhabits a space where few tread — tree canopies. Hema Vijay talks to the environmental activist who says India’s forests hold great potential for eco-tourism.

Strapped in a cord with a harness, she swings herself to land upon branches about 200 feet above the ground — in the heart of a dense rain forest. No, it is not adventure sports that this woman is into, but a science adventure. For 32 years now, Dr. Margaret Lowman aka ‘Canopy’ Meg has been straddling the tree tops of rain forests in Africa, Australia, Asia and the Amazon basin, to research on wildlife inhabiting tree tops.

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