Will Koomjian, from Portland, Oregon, in the US, was last week speaking to attendees of the New Zealand Arboricultural Association's annual conference, which Mr Koomjian said was perfect timing, as his project in Madagascar ended a couple of weeks ago.
''I was rigging trees for a lemur study. There's a species of lemur that lives in the rainforest and spends almost its entire life in the largest trees.''
His work involved putting cameras in the tallest trees to help document the lemurs and taking botanical samples from the trees to ''try and understand more about the forest canopy''.
''They [scientists] believe that there's probably a lot of correlation [between] the trees and how the lemurs use the trees.''
He and fellow arborist Shane Blacktopp, from Vancouver, Canada, were in the resort representing a non-governmental organisation, aptly named Ascending the Giants, which has been measuring and documenting ''superlative trees, the largest, tallest and oldest of their species'' globally since 2006.
Ascending the Giants co-founders Mr Koomjian and Brian French were invited to talk at the conference but Mr French was unable to attend and the timing suited Mr Blacktopp.
The conference was held on Thursday and Friday and on Saturday arborists did what they do best at the national tree-climbing championship.
Winners Nicky Ward-Allen, of Eltham, and James Kilpatrick, of Tauranga, earned tickets to compete at the international equivalent.
New Zealander Scott Forrest, the defending world champion, will also represent New Zealand next August.
New Zealand Arboricultural Association vice-president Chris Walsh said the work Ascending the Giants does is ''every arborist's dream'', but so is arborism in general for thrillseekers.
''It's the envy of a lot of people who work in offices.''
New Zealand leads the world in arborism innovation, Mr Koomjian said.
''The tree climbing community in New Zealand is incredibly small but it's really well-known around the world.
''A lot of the cutting edge stuff comes from New Zealand.''
