Zenobia Barlow, “Confluence of Streams”
«Children are born with a sense of wonder and an affinity for Nature. Properly cultivated, these values can mature into ecological literacy, and eventually into sustainable patterns of living.»
This month we celebrate the education of reforestation with our community through a community tree planting project. This was a group effort through the partnership of Cloudbridge, MINAET, the Pelicano Hotel, the Uran Hotel, The Mariposa Guesthouse, and the San Gerardo de Rivas school. Trees were supplied by Cloudbridge and our workers prepared the site which is located along the Chirripo River near the town of San Gerardo. This property which is owned by MINAET was part of an old pasture that we hope will be transformed into a forest for the purpose of an educational area for visitors to the town in the future. It was a steep, wet slope to haul the trees and tools down and everyone got a bit muddy. We planted 200 trees and had alot of fun doing it!
Rolando hauling trees down
She’s diggin it!
planting a Cecropia
Linda, back from Canada just in time for tree planting
trudging through the mud to plant
Volunteers and Visitors
Coert is a young Dutch cell biologist who decided to spend a couple of weeks at Cloudbridge and volunteer. His enthusiasm for being out in nature was an asset for the reserve. He hiked every day to help out with our biological survey program. he checked camera traps, did observation surveys, and entered the information in our data base.
Elsa, originally from Italy but now living in Spain also volunteered at Cloudbridge for two weeks. She planted trees, did some translation services, and joined our team of researchers who went up Chirripo to check camera traps.
Fanny and Marcus from Switzerland. Wow, these two were amazing voluteers. They just showed up one day and decided to stay for awhile. They enjoyed the Casa to themselves and spent time relaxing and playing guitar. Every morning they joined our work crew. Some of their tasks were planting trees up the new trail, cleaning up around the classroom, and they transported cement and posts up the trails and then helped building new gates.
Fanny and Marcus
Drew, John, Rachel(from USA), and Tomas (from Costa Rica) arrived together to lend a hand with our biological survey. Drew having worked at Cloudbridge earlier this year, led the group up Chirripo to check all of the camera traps. They had a few adventures with the rainy, stormy weather and had lots of stories to tell when they returned. We really appreciated their efforts in order to retreive the data cards from the cameras.
Rachel, John, Drew
Tomas from Costa Rica
‘ Thanks for giving me the chance for knowing my own country’
Carl from USA is here in Costa Rica to study his Spanish. He helped with the community tree planting and is currently working on our weather data. He plans on staying in Costa Rica until sometime in January. Enjoy your adventure Carl.
Carl
Martin Mayhew and his family from England have been in Costa Rica for the entire year. They are living in San Gerardo de Rivas and experiencing life in another part of the world. Martin is volunteering with his wonderful carpentry skills. He has built doors and shelves for our classroom and the new cabina. We really appreciate all his help. We are going to miss this family when they return to England as they have become a vital part of this community.
Martin
Other Activities
Lots of new gates to replace the old decrepid ones.
Alonso with new gate
The new cabina for the researcher accomodations is complete.
New cabina
The new trail was finished with the addition of some steps and tree planting for riperean zone restoration along the stream. We have decided the name should be the ‘Sentinel Trail’ because of the close proximity of a tree we call The Sentinel along with other old growth sentinels that can be viewed from here.
Representitives from Cloudbridge have been attending local meetings over concern for a proposed dam on the Chirripo river. So far there is little information available.
Announcements:
Job Posting – Cloudbridge will be hiring a new manager as Tom Gode will be working in the position of Executive Director and focusing his time on our expanding programs. The manager position will be posted on the website in the near future. It will also be posted on www.conbio.org. If anyone is interested you can also email Tom at tom.gode@cloudbridge.org