The End of an Era

After over 6 years of intensive research and community development work in and around the Yachana Reserve, GVI Amazon is coming to a close. We have finished our final research project (look forward to our Road Effects paper, coming soon!) and are handing over the project to our partner, The Yachana Foundation. They will continue to maintain and monitor the reserve, using it as an hands-on science education center for students -- we're very excited to see what fabulous things this next generation of scientists find! For more detail on GVI Amazon's closure, and our accomplishments over the years, please read on...
GVI Amazon Closure Statement

Saturday, October 11, 2008

It’s only been a week?!




Most of us feel like we were born here – there was life before Yachana?? It’s been a busy week, learning about our roles here both in camp and out in the field and we’re acclimatising with long sweaty walks through the rainforest! There have been introductions to tropical ecology, birds, insects, amphibians and reptiles, and we’ve all been enjoying the cooking of our in camp student interns, Robert, Mauro and Jairo (although there are fears the cooking will go swiftly downhill now that EMs are in charge!). We are now preparing for bird and frog call tests on Monday (is it the Yellow Rumped Casique that sounds like R2D2?)

I think a highlight for most of us was the night walk. Leaving camp at 7pm, about an hour after sunset, we split into two groups to navigate trails with our torches in the dark. Both groups came back boasting of their sightings, which included a baby caiman, various tree frogs and poison frogs, an owl butterfly, a scorpion, a common blunt nosed tree snake (the thinnest in the world!) and various jungle rustlings suggestive of monkeys. It was fantastic!

We are also settling into our camp duties and generally feeling incredibly lucky to be living in the Amazon rainforest, lounging in hammocks watching butterflies (when we’re not working hard, of course!). Monday will bring the start of our first week properly out in the field and we’ll begin classes at the local school.

Now seems like a good time for our first trip to the swim hole…it’s particularly hot.

Until next time – adios!
Anna Nelson-Smith

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