14 Sep Congrats to this Year’s Greg Gund Fellowship Recipients

We at Osa Conservation would like to extend a warm welcome and congratulations to Samantha Weintraub, Kevin Smith and Juan Manuel Ley, this year’s Greg Gund Memorial Fellowship recipients. Osa Conservation’s Greg Gund Memorial Fellowships provide funding for Costa Rican and international researchers to conduct science-based research in the Osa Peninsula. These fellowships are provided through the generous support of the Gund family.

Kevin will be studying amphibian populations, communities and habitat in the southern part of the peninsula and will be developing materials for participatory amphibian monitoring projects on our properties in Osa. These will be a great tool to support of citizen science at our stations!

Samantha is no stranger to the Osa. She visits us frequently at Piro Biological Station for her ongoing tropical soil research. As a Gund fellowship recipient, Samantha will be studying forest dynamics in wet tropical landscapes and topographic controls on soil development and biochemistry (you’d better let her elaborate) as well as work with local schools.

Last but not least, our friend Juan Manuel Ley is back! If you volunteered or visited our station over the past year you probably met this very wonderful and insightful plant researcher while he was based at Piro. Juan Manuel is returning to elaborate a field guide identifying seedling varieties of the most important trees in OC’s forests.  Most seedlings differ greatly from their adult versions, so this guide will be a tool to help students, researchers and others correctly identify tree species at different stages while they attain mature size.  So, if you’re into tropical trees (and who isn’t), he’s your man.

Please join us in welcoming this tropical trio and if you’re a researcher yourself these fellowships are a great way to spend some time in the most incredible place on earth (yes, we’re biased but you will be too once you experience it for yourself).