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As announced previously, the Chilean Network of Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research Sites hosted a two day workshop in Ushuaia, Argentina on bird banding and monitoring to expand the Omora Park’s 8 year program to both sides of the Beagle Channel. More than 35 individuals from divers backgrounds, including the Austral Center for Research (CADIC), the provincial government for natural resources, administrators of the national parks systems and local tourism operators. This activity is one in a set of activities that began in 2003 with the goal of linking researchers from the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve with adjacent Argentine colleagues.

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The Minister of National Lands Romy Schmidt recently visited the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve as part of an initiative to return ancestral property to the Yahgan Community in the area of Wulaia Bay on Navarino Island. During her visit from from 20-21 October, Minister Schmidt also visited the Omora Park, where she re-confirmed her committment to the University of Magallanes and the Omora Foundation’s efforts to use this site as a natural laboratory and “outdoor classroom” that also is a priority conservation site identified by the Chilean National Environment Commission. The minister’s activities were guided in the field by Dr. Andrés Mansilla (director of research and postgraduate programs at the UMAG), Rodrigo Medina (station manager of the Omora Park), and Ximena Arango (local education coordinator of the Omora Park).

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University of Magallanes master’s student Cristóbal Pizarro recently won first prize for best poster at the IX Chilean Ornithology Congress (26-28 August 2008) in El Tabo, Chile. The work, authored by Pizarro and his advisors Drs. Christopher Anderson and Ricardo Rozzi, was based on his thesis project, entitled Seasonality and habitat use by avifauna in coastal zones of the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve. In addition, this project has been financed by a scholarship from the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity, and in 2007 OSARA obtained the donation of binoculars for this thesis through the American Birding Association program Birder’s Exchange (BeX).

OSARA Program Assistant Kelli Moses presented the Tracing Darwin’s Path course series during the poster session at the 93rd Annual Ecological Society of America Meeting, held in Milwaukee, WI from 3-8 August 2008. In addition, Drs. Ricardo Rozzi, Gene Hargrove and Juan Armesto organized a special session on “Field environmental ethics: Integrating ecology and philosophy for biocultural conservation in southern South America.” In fact, the theme of this year’s event, which is annually attended by approximately 5,000 scientists, educators and policy makers, was “Enhancing Ecological Thought by Linking Research and Education,” yet again reconfirming the course that the researchers have charted for the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve Initiative.

UNT student Catalina Hungerford and Dr. Ricardo Rozzi recently received the award for “best student poster” at the 11th International Congress of Ethnobiology, held from 25 to 30 June 2008 in Cuzco, Peru. The poster, entitled Biological and cultural diversity in the forests of southern Chile: Biocultural verses in Pablo Neruda and Lorenzo Aillapan’s love poetry, is one more example of the biocultural research and conservation initiatives being pioneered in the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve. In addition, Ximena Arango and Tomas Ibarra traveled to Cuzco to present their work on the implementation of a charismatic flagship species and the cultural landscape of Cape Horn, respectively.

Coordinated by OSARA since 2006, the most recent iteration of Tracing Darwin’s Path, held in June 2008, for the first time brought together students from the University of Magallanes, the University of North Texas, the University of La Serena and a staff person from the U.S. Embassy in Chile. Course instructors Dr. Christopher Anderson (ecologist-OSARA) and Dr. Britt Hollbrook (philsopher-UNT) designed the class to provide students with a direct experience of not just studying biocultural conservation, but seeing how our international and interdisciplinary alliance is successfully putting ideas into practice through the implementation of the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve. Previous versions of the field course have focused on nature writing (2006) and ethnoecology (2007), and the upcoming version (December 2008) will revolve around the theme of “watersheds” - their use, ecology, philosophy and conservation. Students taking part in the experience include such diverse majors as anthropology, journalism, philosophy, psychology, biology, sociology and international relations. To see videos from the course, visit OSARA’s YouTube site.

The American Council on Higher Education has highlighted the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve in its “Solutions for Our Future” section. The feature story notes that the US-Chile consortium, including UNT and OSARA, works to study and conserve one of the world’s last remaining wilderness areas. It also recognizes the importance of the new “Basal Financing” award obtained by the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity.

Ximena Arango, Omora Park Local Coordinator, recently gave the inaugural talk for the academic year at Andres Bello University’s Ecotourism Program at Vina del Mar. Arango’s lecture on the Magellanic woodpecker (”carpintero”) as a charismatic flagship species of the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve demonstrates yet again that the wings of this great bird provide the perfect vehicle to “transport” the biocultural conservation activities of Cape Horn to the rest of the world. For more information (in Spanish), visit the UNAB’s website.

The UNESCO Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve served as the classroom for UNT biology major and OSARA Project Assistant Kelli Moses over the winter break. The course she took included UNT and University of Magallanes students from disciplines such as anthropology, journalism, biology, philosophy, art and conservation. <to continue>

In March 2007, the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity and the Omora Ethnobotanical Park offered Latin America’s first graduate-level course on Biocultural Conservation, emphasizing the integration of environmental philosophy and ecology. Directed by Drs. Ricardo Rozzi, Juan Armesto and Christopher Anderson, the course was a demonstration of the “trans-disciplinary” nature of such efforts with students coming from throughout the Americas and also from diverse fields of inquiry, including psychology student Carolina Jiménez.

Now, Jiménez has published an article that details the utility of psychology for understanding biodiversity in developing countries. She takes a critical look at the lack of dissemination of knowledge generated by social psychology and the low degree of collaboration it has had to other fields of knowledge, especially conservation and environmental education. To see the article (in Spanish), which also takes lessons learned from the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve, visit Psicólogos sin Fronteras.

Since 2007, Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Leah Dudley has been collaborating in the thesis of University of Magallanes student Ana María Caicheo, under the direction of Drs. Ricardo Rozzi and Francisca Massardo. In March, Ana María and Leah finished one of their final field expeditions as part of this innovative thesis that seeks to determine the role of insects in dispersing the spores of Tayloria mirabilis. The relationship of insects and non-vascular plants is a completely undeveloped field of inquiry in the Southern Hemisphere. This project is a collaborative effort between the IEB, UMAG and Omora with international associates from the University of Labrador, University of Connecticut and Cornell University and is a pioneering activity in the CHBR to determine the ecological role of the “miniature forests” of Cape Horn, which not only are some of the most diverse organisisms in the subantarctic biome, but could potentially also fulfill key ecological functions.

During 2008, the Omora Consortium has prioritized the formal and systematic inclusion of pre-school students and teachers in its outreach and training program. To that end, Omora Outreach Coordinator Paula Caballero and UMAG Masters Student Yanet Medina, under the supervision of Dr. Ricardo Rozzi, initiated a collaboration with Dr. Mirna Pizarro from the UMAG Education Department. In the coming year, Caballero and Medina will training UMAG students in the pre-school education program about the “miniature forests” of Cape Horn. Five of these undergrates will then conduct their theses in Puerto Williams with the public nursery school (JUNJI). In addition, the outreach program this year will also work with the regional JUNJI office to integrate environmental education material into the system’s pre-school curriculum.

During her OSARA internship in the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve in 2007, Clare Brown worked long and hard to check and fix the Omora Park’s 8 year database of bird banding information, accumulated since 2000 by numerous field technicians and volunteers. She then helped put those data into a manuscript on the autecology and natural history of one of the subantarctic forest’s few long-distance migratory bird species: the fío-fío (Elaenia albiceps). Clare will now use the experience gained with OSARA to conduct a masters in environmental science at Evergreen State Univeristy.

To view the resulting paper, please visit the website of the Anales del Instituto de la Patagonia.

OSARA is proud to report that the alumni of its first pilot study abroad program with the University of Georgia in 2005 have used there experience in the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve to aspire to new heights. Of the four UGA undergraduate students who conducted their honors theses under the direction of OSARA President Dr. Christopher Anderson, besides winning various awards and scholarships for their theses, all are now in prestigious postgraduate programs, including: Brett Maley (M.S. Warnell School of Forest Resources - UGA), Amy Trice (M.S. Odum School of Ecology - UGA), Clayton Griffith (M.S. Urban and Regional Planning - Georgia Institute of Technology) and William Collier (M.S. Social Ecology of Conservation and Development - Yale University). Congratulations “lab pups”!