NEW! ASANA (Friends of Nature of the Pacific Lowlands of Costa Rica), a Costa Rican NGO:, has been working on conservation and rural development issues in the region since 1987. Their main office is located within the Hacienda Baru Wildlife Refuge, which is a part of the Path of the Tapir Biological Corridor. The Path of the Tapir Biological Corridor is an ambitious project that stretches 100 km along the Pacific coast from Corcovado National Park up to Manuel Antonio National Park and Los Santos Forest Reserve. Just as the fence line of trees joined isolated patches of forest together, The Path of the Tapir hopes to create a corridor of forest joining these National Parks and Reserves. Jaguar and Tapir no longer reside on Hacienda Barú but can still be found in Corcovado and Los Santos. The hope is that one day these animals pass through this land once again. The Path of the Tapir Biological Corridor initiative is run by local conservation organization ASANA.  More ...

RíoArte internships: RíoArte internships in the south of Costa Rica offer much to students who want to conserve the environment. Known for enacting visionary policies to protect large and diverse areas of land, Costa Rica nonetheless is facing what some are calling an impending water crisis: rivers, and the biodiversity they nourish and support – corridors of water which link conserved areas – have been virtually ignored. Nor has the country found a way to involve significant sectors of civil society in conserving rivers and wetlands. Like many people elsewhere working to protect the environment, at this juncture, noted environmentalists in the country are questioning: How to move from what has been almost uniquely land-, to water-based conservation; how to protect corridors between conserved areas; and how to involve many different sectors of society, including women, youth, and people who live on the margins of society, in these efforts?  More ...

PRORENA is a collaborative research program led by the Tropical Resources Institute at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and the Center for Tropical Forest Science at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, with the active participation of more than a dozen other entities, including the Panama Canal Authority, Panama's National Environmental Authority, the University of Panama, and Panamanian NGO's, private companies, and private landowners. PRORENA's mission is the development of ecologically and socio-economically viable strategies for the restoration of native forest cover to degraded Neotropical lands. PRORENA has opportunities for summer research projects. Contact TRI staff for more information.

ICRAF AFRICA: The World Agroforestry Centre has established a relationship with TRI to involve TRI fellows on projects in East, West and Central Africa. ICRAF-TRI research priorities for 2004 include:

1. Developing a market information system for AF products and services in Africa (regional)
2. Assessing the contribution of AF to conservation in buffer zones.
3. Evaluating and supporting nurseries and seed businesses
4. Landcare Africa. Studying and supporting collective action in East Africa (compare to SE Asia and South Africa).
5. Evaluating and comparing extension methods
6. Evaluating AF species from multiple perspectives
7. Ecological survey work, hydrological survey in Lake Victoria region

For more information contact Diane Russell at D.RUSSELL@CGIAR.ORG, or visit www.worldagroforestrycentre.org.

Mindo Biosphere Station: is looking for researchers interested in cloud forest ecosystems in Ecuador. Interested students should contact Tom Quesenberry at mindo@ecnet.ec.

More information can also be found in the TRI office and at http://www.ecuadorcloudforest.com/html/station.html.

Iwokrama Research Centre: The Iwokrama is an autonomous not-for-profit research and development institution established in Guyana. Iwokrama manages and conserves 3,700 square kilometers of pristine Guiana Shield Forest, dedicated as a protected area by the people of Guyana. They would welcome F&ES student researchers.

For more information visit http://www.iwokrama.org

Iracambi Atlantic Rainforest Research and Conservation Center: Iracambi is a privately run field station bordering forest reserve in Brazil. TRI fellows are invited to join the iracambi team in addressing their research needs: a socio-economic study of local peoples, agroforestry, income generating alternatives, and a land use study.

For more information contact Amity Doolittle at amity.doolittle@yale.edu and Robin Le Breton at iracambi@iracambi.org or visit www.iracambi.com

Forest Concession Monitoring in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, Guatemala. A WCS-sponsored project to develop an ecological monitoring plan aims to measure conservation successes. Survey teams will be establishing study sites to evaluate ecological effects of current logging management on 1 km2 plots using indicator taxa, and measuring forest structure.

Website for more information is radachowsky@hotmail.org

Coffee and Rural Livelihoods in Western El Salvador: Project works on three shade-grown coffee co-ops in El Salvador. The aim is to research the social and agro-ecological system.

For more information contact amity.doolittle@yale.edu