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

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Butterflies Flutterbies

This week saw the beginning of our new butterfly project; studying the impact (if any) of road and trail disturbance on the fruit feeding butterfly communities in the Yachana Reserve. Matt and Sam set off on a sunny Saturday morning, with high hopes and a much higher goal: setting up 40 butterfly traps in one morning! Once in the field they quickly ran into a number of logistical problems that slowed their progress to a crawl. Morale was low until Matt lost his footing and slid into a ravine, bringing a trap and a cup of fermented banana bait down on his head. Then as they ate lunch in the pouring rain, they decided to give up for now and head back to camp.

After some minor tweaking of the project design, a group of volunteers and staff (Sam, Ali, Matt, Emma, Emily, Amy and Vicki), headed out Sunday morning to try again. Within hours the traps were filling up with butterflies. By the end of the day they had collected 32 butterflies, with two new additions to the species list – nice job. 13 days left to go….

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