The documentary film, Ivohiboro: The Lost Forest — featuring Patricia Wright, distinguished service professor in the Department of Anthropology and Herrnstein Professor of Conservation Biology — will be screened Saturday, April 26, at 11 am at the Sag Harbor Cinema.
The screening is presented by the South Fork Natural History Museum and Nature Center’s (SOFO) Young Environmentalists Society and the Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments (ICTE), and will feature a Q&A with Wright, the founder and executive director of ICTE and Centre ValBio.
Situated in the southeast of Madagascar on the Ivohibe massif, the Ivohiboro rainforest is an oasis at 1,500 meters above sea level, hidden within one of the island’s most inhospitable terrains. Wright, a world-renowned primatologist, leads an international team of researchers on a 30-day expedition to explore the region’s astonishing biodiversity and unlock the secrets of this ancient ecosystem in the documentary film by French filmmakers Lauren Portes and Fitzgerald Jego.
For Wright and her team of over 30 researchers from Madagascar, the U.S., Australia, the U.K. and Poland, the stakes of the expedition are high — to not only study and catalog new species, but also to understand how this forest has survived in such an unforgiving environment and what lessons it holds for global conservation efforts.
“To discover a rainforest in the middle of that arid, burned landscape stretching as far as the eye could see, was shocking, exhilarating, like a mirage in a desert,” said Wright. “The realization that a rainforest could thrive in central Madagascar gives me hope that we can conserve this relict forest and restore forests filled with biodiversity across Madagascar.”
Admission is free but registration is required. Email info@sofo.org. Sag Harbor Cinema is located at 90 Main Street in Sag Harbor, New York.
The film will be screened again on Monday, May 5, at 6 pm at The Explorers Club in New York City.
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