More Highlights from CLC, Poland 2008

As Alex's post illuminated, Bernhard Smallencroft's keynote address, "Navigational Discipline: The Ethics of 2D Labyrinths," voiced many of the dominant notes from this year's annual Contemporary Labyrinthology Conference in Poland. But our colleague Czeslaw Gorski shared a number of other fascinating—nay, alarming—presentations and panels that attending labyrinthologists are still buzzing about. A new addition to the CLC, Labyrinth Conservation, trumpeted a poignant call to arms.

Paddock Lawley (England), Bao Rong (China), and Christa Ayodele (Mauritania): "Endangered Labyrinths"

In this presentation, rising biolabyrinthologist Lawley teamed up with ecolabyrinthologist Bao and cultural labyrinth historian Ayodele to report on the distressing ramifications of deforestation: the endangerment of tropical labyrinths. Lawley and Bao explained that these rarest of labyrinths, which emerged over thousands of years of co-evolution, serve a critical symbiosis among flora, fauna, and the remote tribes that dwell within the jungles. Deforestation is threatening the future of these labyrinth ecosystems, and Ayodele passionately warned that the destruction of these labyrinths will result in the loss not only of tropical plants and animals, but also the tribes that depend on the labyrinth ecosystem.

The images below tell the disturbing tale:















A passageway way in a Bolivian tropical labyrinth in 1999.
















The same passageway, from the reverse port of entry, today.

We at the CLP can help to end this dreadful loss of labyrinth ecosystems: the construction of the Paul Brown Labyrinth can raise the direly needed awareness for this disturbing trend.