Probing the Depths of Rain Forests

The globe-girdling rain forests have come to the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History by way of “A Disappearing Treasure,” an exhibition that sets the mind reeling. The tragedy of forest destruction is counterbalanced by the realities of economic development and world economics, with the visitor left to sort out a solution.

“I wanted to show that there is no single villain and there are extremely difficult problems,” Judith Gradwohl, the curator who created the traveling exhibition for the Smithsonian Institution, told us. “The causes and solutions are as diverse as the plants and animals we seek to save.”

Central to the exhibit is a world map, contrived for the exhibition from more than 100 separate studies to chart the accelerating loss of rain forests. Forests that once covered 4 billion acres are shown cut and burned and slashed to 2.5 billion acres. Towering murals and life-size dioramas transport the visitor to the problem itself. There are the Efe Pygmies in the Ituri Forest of Zaire, living in and on the forest, but who are in no way instruments of its destruction. Around the corner there is a modern American living room, its furniture, flooring, fabrics and much of its food mined from the forest with damage that may never be reversed.

“There are many pressing reasons to preserve rain forests and use them wisely,” the visitor is reminded. “Perhaps the most compelling is that even our survival is bound to their fate.” But as the visitor leaves the exhibit, a computer terminal invites each person to confront the practical questions that challenge public officials governing rain forests. And, in making mundane decisions about the route of a road into the Amazon, the difficulties of protecting the future become clearer than the solutions.