00:00In 2012, Elkins raised about $1 million, private donors, no government money, no university backing, just belief.
00:09He hired a small aircraft and fitted it with a Li-DAR scanner.
00:13The plane flew over three unexplored valleys in the Moskosha Mountains.
00:18Val is the team called T1, T2, and T3.
00:22The scanner fired millions of laser pulses downward.
00:25Each pulse slipped between leaves and branches.
00:28Each one bounced off the ground and came back.
00:32Computers stitched those returns into a map.
00:34A map of the forest floor, stripped bare of trees.
00:38And when the team looked at that map...
