Based on our summer 2014 wildlife and conservation expedition, two new books are now available which showcase the wildlife and landscapes of the Andean cloud forest and Amazonian lowland rainforests of Ecuador, and the amazing inhabitants and geology of the Galapagos Islands.
A major expedition like this runs every other year, and last summer we spent two weeks in two varied rainforest habitats in Ecuador with Operation Wallacea – a scientific organisation with whom pupils undertook wildlife and forest biodiversity surveys, living in the field for two weeks. Half of the team carried on to a tour of the iconic Galapagos Islands, with its unique flora and fauna famously explored by Charles Darwin during his voyage on The Beagle.
The two books are authored by expedition leaders David Corns and Stan Lampard, and also feature images by accompanying pupils. They can be viewed in full, and ordered, by following the links below to the Blurb store, or by clicking the cover images.
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Ecuador: Impressions of the Rainforest explores the niches of life in the Ecuadorean rainforests and the natural forces which define them: ‘water’ in chapter 1, Rain and the Forest; ‘light’ in chapter 2, Life in the Canopy; ‘nutrients’ in chapter 3, The Forest Floor; and finally ‘life itself’ in Chapter 4, Deep in the Rainforest. Each offers the merest impression of what it is to live, grow, hunt, feed, court, breed, fight and die in the rainforest, and how the rainforest itself completely shapes the lives of the plants and animals it comprises. |
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Elements of the Galapagos shows the islands in their most raw, ‘elemental’ form. Chapter 1 focuses on the Land on which the remarkable species of the islands have evolved; in Chapter 2, the birds of the Air, adapted to the Galapagos in their behaviour and form; in Chapter 3, the Water which defines, limits and extends the lifestyles of the animals; and in Chapter 4, the Fire from which these volcanic islands were born. |
The publication of the books coincides with Stan Lampard’s retirement from the school this Easter, after running expeditions with an emphasis on wildlife, wilderness, conservation and adventure for many years.
