Local youth leaders from our citizen science project “Vida entre Volcanes” on the northwest side of Costa Rica organized the third Christmas count together with members of the Tenorio-Miravalles Biological Corridor Committee and local businesses. This is an important step for community-based conservation processes, as it will be their first independently organized activity as part of the process of empowering communities about conservation actions at the local level and increasing their active involvement.
“Seeing how local youth raise their voices, get involved and actively take ownership of a process is a clear indicator that we are on the right track. Expect more about this bird count results in the next newsletter. ”
Sofia Pastor-Parajeles.
Moving to the southern part of the country, the Oncilla Conservation team held a workshop where 23 people participated (12 women; 6 indigenous) representing 9 Biological Monitoring Brigades of the Amistad-Pacific Conservation Area. Now more people know how to use the data analysis program CameraSweet, which enriches the results obtained from the monitoring. In addition, contacts were established for future collaboration, and a field trip is already being coordinated with the Las Tablas Brigade to carry out joint monitoring of the oncilla populations in the area, which is an area of interest and priority for the conservation of the species.