Dear Colleagues, Our daughter's 7th grade Geography class is having a fundraiser to buy and protect rainforest trees, and the organization they are choosing is 'rainforest forever': http://www.rainforestforever.org/index.html. The idea behind it is that donors will buy a tree, and get a certificate that has the GPS coordinates of the tree - something that will reinforce material learned in the class.
Sounds good so far. However, I have never heard of this organization, and their webpage does not give any real contact information, nor any scientific justification. Indeed, there are no names of individuals associated with the organization. All the news searches I have done reveal articles that repeat the information on the web page verbatim. Nevertheless, I can find no specific information that the organization is NOT legitimate, and I do not want to confront a teacher trying to do the right thing unless I know more. Does anyone have any experience with this organization, or any knowledge of its legitimacy? --Mike Michael W. Palmer, Regents Professor, Botany Department, Oklahoma State University 104 LSE Stillwater OK 74078 USA 405-744-7717 LABORATORY FOR INNOVATIVE BIODIVERSITY RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS: http://ecology.okstate.edu/Libra/ Wildfuels Blog: http://cas.okstate.edu/debo/blogs/ OSU Botany: http://botany.okstate.edu/ OSU Ecology: http://ecology.okstate.edu<http://ecology.okstate.edu/>
