Photo Credit: Crisbellt Alvarado The Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) recently held a major international, intercultural planning meeting last week in the Osa Peninsula. Attendees gathered from offices in Colombia and Suriname and also the ACT Headquarters in Arlington. Tribal representatives from six different partner communities also traveled from far and wide to participate. The meeting was the brainchild of Liliana Madrigal, Vice-President and Co-Founder of ACT, who also serves as Osa Conservation’s Board President. A native Costa Rican, Liliana helped found the Nature Conservancy’s International Program and Conservation International. She was...

Once, the idea that animals would go extinct was unthinkable; it was believed that the world’s resources were so vast that they could never be extinguished.   Yet, the dwindling numbers of so many well-known species such as the ferocious Tiger tell a different story.  Extinction is a natural phenomenon and should occur at about 5 species per year.  However, human intervention, climate change, and other factors, that rate is much accelerated and has been estimated by the Center for Biological Diversity to be 1,000 to 10,000 times the...

Bats Around the World When you hear “bat”, what do you think of? A small, hairy creature that is active  in the darkest hours of the night and who sleeps upside down? (That’s what I think of!)  And it’s true! But there is so much more to bats than that. Did you know that bats are the second largest order of mammals in the word? In fact, there are more than 1,300 bat species worldwide and they represent about 20% of all classified mammal species! And, they play a...

Have you ever seen the Exaerete, the bright green bee as long as your finger?  What about the Euglossa, known for it’s metallic blue, green, or red body? These insects and many others like them aren’t just any bees—they’re Orchid Bees.  The Euglossini (the umbrella term for Orchid Bees) are some of the most important pollinator insects of the Neotropics, known for their unique coloring, size, and even shape.  Their bodies can be partially metallic or covered in brown or black hair.  From Mexico to Argentina (and Florida...