Hey I've got an idea for the people behind the fake rainforest in Coralville: There's a real rainforest that needs saving.



The Trib requires free registration, but you can get the jist from these quotes:



"The Peruvian ecologist and her colleagues had just celebrated their success in getting Peru to create the world's largest privately managed national park, the Cordillera Azul, or Blue Mountains. The park designation, an internationally watched experiment approved in May 2001, was supposed to forever protect the immense rain forest region from commercial exploitation. But a few weeks later, Rodriguez learned that Occidental Petroleum Corp. geologists were inside the Cordillera Azul, mapping 30 sites to determine where they would position underground dynamite charges for seismic testing. The oil company already had found strong indications of black gold beneath the rare, pristine plant and animal communities in the rain forest. . . Multinational oil corporations are not the only entrepreneurial forces that want to search the park for natural resources that could be turned into profits. The 5,225-square-mile region, which only a few years ago was literally off the map, is an ecological treasure-trove of lush forests flush with rare plants and animals amid spectacular 7,000-foot mountain peaks."



Maybe they could use $20 million or so? That would leave us $160 million left from the estimated $180 needed to build the fake rainforest, which we could use to ship our kids down there to check out what we saved.