Making the case for conserving Tajikistan's fruit-and-nut forests

[PhysOrg]

It was spring 2017. I was in the middle of my master's program and was rapidly running out of time to find the perfect thesis research project. My ideas had ranged from the unrealistic—a canopy camera-trapping project in Ecuador, to the extreme—abseiling down Saint Lucia's Petit Piton mountain to investigate a threatened juniper tree. I was profoundly relieved when I found a suitable project. The plan was to travel to Tajikistan, a country that I would previously have struggled to place on a map, to study the state of its fertile forested valleys.

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