Sunday talks center of old growth trees

Arborists Brian French and Will Koomjain will speak Sunday, Feb. 21 at 2 p.m., as part of the continuing "Sundays on the Gorge" talks at the museum.

The presentation, which will include a short, award-winning documentary on one of their projects, will be in the DeGroote Theater. There is no charge other than the normal admission fee to the museum.

French and Koomjain are the state coordinators for the Oregon Big Tree Registry, which has archived Oregon's largest known trees, by species, since the 1940s. Ascending the Giants allows them a non-confrontational approach for old growth conservation and advocacy.

Both men have been life-long admirers of trees. When French was 10, his mother grounded him for trying to create a forest in his bedroom with pots of ferns, cedars and pines. A few years later, he found he could make a living climbing trees, and at 22 he became one of the youngest certified arborists in the country. He currently serves on the "Oregon Community Trees" board.

"As I matured, I realized what I truly wanted was to be at the pinnacle of the forest," he said. "Measuring champion trees has helped fulfill that childhood dream."

Koomjain grew up in Illinois and fell in love with the Northwest on a family vacation to the region. He recently returned from a seven-month trip to Indonesia measuring tall conifers, and plans to return in 2010 to continue his explorations (despite having had to battle dengue fever on the 2009 trip.)

"Most people just see trees from the ground, looking up at them," he said. "With Ascending the Giants, I hope to give people a new perspective, to help them see trees from the inside out, the way a climber sees them. With the loss of our last remaining giant trees, we are courting not only a loss of biodiversity, but the loss of our collective ability to be awed by nature."