Do you know who is the “doctor of the foliage” who climbs the tallest trees in the world?
He is an Italian and right now he is on top of the giant plants of the Amazon rainforest
Andrea Maroè, known as the explorer or the doctor of the “canopy”, is on a mission for four months in South America to climb the tops of the giant trees of the Amazon rainforest.
The data, which he is collecting in his climbs, must be analyzed by universities to learn more about the secrets of the tallest trees in the world, which reach 100 meters, and the state of health of our environment.
Friulian by birth and Genoese by adoption, Andrea feels at home alone among the branches and cannot stay away from them: his expedition, after Peru, will touch Venezuela, Ecuador, and Brazil.
The expert explorer, whose professional definition is “Monumental Trees Specialist Technician”, is in his field a point of reference for the Friuli Venezia Giulia region but evidently, his activity now knows no boundaries.
Speaking of his current task in South America, he explained that calculating the average height of forests serves to estimate the production of oxygen: 5 meters more or less, on a global scale, make a big difference.
How he came across the passion for tree climbing is really very romantic and surprising: he discovered it as a child, hanging from the cherry tree his father planted for his birth.
This is his appeal reported by Wired:
“By cutting down the large trees, the entire forest around them also perishes. It’s not the big companies that cut them to build highways: the natives do it too, we have taught them that precious wood has a value “
Instead, here’s what his official biography says about the Giant Trees Foundation platform, the organization that manages its current mission:
Agronomist, arborist, instructor, professional tree climber, scholar, and popularizer of tree ecology. With over 10,000 trees climbed in tree-climbing around the world, back in 1997 (when no one could still think of it) he was the first to climb and measured, alone, the American redwoods; discovered the tallest silver fir in Europe and some of the most important trees in South America and New Zealand
In fact, it is also called for these enterprises: in addition to the fir found in Montenegro, in the Biogradska Gora national park, for example, he recently measured the tallest tree in Sicily, a record-breaking specimen of Araucaria columnaris at the Botanical Garden of Palermo, which is also in second place in Europe, after Portugal’s Araucaria.
“Andrea Maroè, in safe climbing technique, climbed to the top establishing the height of 37 meters and 62 centimeters with direct tape drop measurements, certified by the director of the Garden, professor Rosario Schicchi” writes Palermo Today.
Finally, Andrea Maroè’s vision of his own work is very poetic, as he wrote on Altitudini.it:
In the thick of the forests, I look for big trees. I study them and observe them. I measure them and listen to them. Sometimes I let myself be lulled by their silent sound as I hang on their tresses. Then, if I can, I sometimes write.
