Annoucement :
Cloudbridge is under new ownership! Genevieve (Jenny) Giddy is proud to announce that Cloudbridge Nature Reserve and Educational Centre, located in the cloud forest of the Talamanca Mountain range of Southern Costa Rica has been acquired by Salish Coast Land and Marine Conservation Association from the United States. It also has a 530 acre Bio-Reserve called “Woodwardia” in British Columbia, Canada. The transfer of Cloudbridge will begin June 1st, 2019. Salish Coast is now entrusted with continuing the Cloudbridge mission launched back in 2002 when Jenny and Ian Giddy founded the reserve. Jenny and her partner Charles will still be visiting the reserve from time to time, but with three young grandchildren, she feels it is time to devote her energies to family, and environmental issues closer to home. Tom Gode, the long-time Director of the Reserve and his wife Linda Moskalyk, resident artist and arborist, will stay on in their house at Cloudbridge for the foreseeable future, though Saskatoon will still be their summer home. Salish Coast looks forward to stewarding Cloudbridge into the future. The combination of a temperate rainforest, with the endangered (CDF) Coastal Douglas fir Biogeoclimatic Zone in British Columbia joining the rare tropical montane cloud forest, in Costa Rica’s southern highlands is a great opportunity to “Bridge” these two unique bio-reserves and create a larger carbon-sink. With flora and fauna of unparalleled biodiversity that will add to the ever growing private conservation projects worldwide. Both are open to the public and will continue to add to the scientific community a place to monitor and address the climactic changes occurring to the planet. For further information Visit http://www.cloudbridge.org/ and https://www.woodwardia.land/ Contact James Mack, Executive Director of Salish Coast Land, Marine and Wildlife Conservation at 408-444-1200 USA and 604-486-0015 Canada.
Research:
In the summer of 2017, students from the University of Exeter and Falmouth University in the UK did a preliminary investigation of the moth species of the reserve while trying out several types of moth traps. In the process they photographed 212 unique species and were able to identify 40 of them to species. Identifying moths is really difficult, so we are very happy with this result. http://www.cloudbridge.org/wpcontent/uploads/2019/05/2019_Moth_Diversity_Cloudbridge_Wells_etal.pdf
Hello my name is Leah M. Kahn, I’m a senior student at the State University of New York at Cobleskill, School of Environmental Science and Technology. I am a Wildlife Management student with a passion for parrots and behavioral ecology. I am an all-around bird nerd who loves exploring new places and birds to add to my personal life list. I came to Cloudbridge to study the elusive Sulphur-winged parakeet as a research intern. These little guys are prevalent on the reserve yet very much understudied. I am here to conduct visual encounter surveys to helped better understand how these parrots spend their time throughout the day. Sulphur-wings are commonly seen in flocks of 15-20 and when flying by, clearly make their presences known and heard.
Hello! My name is Ryan Andrews and I am an intern at Cloudbridge. I am working on the longterm bird study, conducting point counts and doing walking surveys. I have been a birder for most of my life but wanted to get involved on the field work side of things and Cloudbridge provided an excellent opportunity for this. I hope to increase my skill as a field biologist and learn as much about the birds and ecology of Costa Rica during my stay here.
«My name is Dylan and up until now my background has been very much focused on the marine environment. As part of my masters course I applied to spend three months working at Cloudbridge. It appealed to me as I wanted to challenge myself by working in an environment that was relatively unknown to me. While here I will be helping to set up a long term camera trap study investigating the reserves mammal species.»
My name is Martin Stankalla, I’m from Germany, 28 years old and finished my Master degree in Ecology last year. I decided to take this opportunity after my studies to go on a one year journey through Colombia, Ecuador and Costa Rica. After working with sea turtles on the Galapagos Islands I’m now looking for practical experience in monitoring birds here in Cloudbridge. I really hope to see a Quetzal!
I am Moana, 19 years old, from Germany and I was a volunteer at Cloudbridge for 2 weeks. I’ve always loved to travel and to be surrounded by nature. So when I decided to go to Costa Rica, I wanted to see all of it. So I did my research and found Cloudbridge. As a volunteer l take care of the garden and the hiking trails, but I also helped with the butterfly research. At Cloudbridge I learned more about environment and animals. I also got to know lot’s of new friends from all around the world. I will definitely come back!
Other volunteers in May included; Samira Turowski – Germany, Elisha Leon – Germany. Volunteers have been working on trail work, painting, gardening & landscaping, bamboo bridge construction and assisting researchers.
My name is Fabian and I am from Germany. I am here in cloudbridge because I decided to do volunteering in nature conservation for 5 weeks. Now I have already done 3 weeks and it is just amazing and even more than I expected. I can work here everyday on something different and I also can go with researchers and help them at their research. I am enjoying it to live here in the middle of pure nature and see so many different species of flora and fauna.
Discoveries:
Two new bird species have been seen in the reserve in May by our bird interns! The Crested Caracara (Caracara cheriway) was spotted and photographed by Jonathan Slifkin, and the Black-bellied Hummingbird (Eupherusa nigriventris) was also spotted by Michał Pawlik. Both were unusual sightings for this area. Well done guys! Photos: 1 and 2, Crested Caracara taken by Jonathan Slifkin; 3, Black-bellied Hummingbird from Neotropical Birds Online (https://neotropical.birds.cornell.edu/Species-Account/nb/species/blbhum1/overview).
Visitors:
Cloudbridge welcomed the 30 member Jazz Band from Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana. It was exciting as we toured to hear several young musicians discussing the possibility of doing a music internship at Cloudbridge where they could incorporate music composition in the cloud forest.
May 14-16 we were fortunate to be visited by a group from Aeres MBO Almere. These students come from a unique MBO school in Flevold, Netherlands with courses that connect city and nature. The group came directly from Work with Nature https://work-with-nature.com/en/ on the Caribbean coast. Matthijs Bol, one of the founders of Work With Nature was an intern at Cloudbridge in 2009. It is always great to work with a past Cloudbridge researcher.