Interacting with Students and Faculty at Zamorano University through Birds

Last night, I had the privilege of giving a guest lecture to the Biodiversity Club at Zamorano University about an hour south of Tegucigalpa, Honduras.  I spoke about the “Human Dimensions of Natural Resource Management.”  My basic message was that managing natural resources requires an integration of information and actions pertaining to wildlife, habitat, and people.  About 25 students, faculty, and staff attended.  The lecture was more of a rolling discussion stimulated by slides I put together from lectures I’ve given back at Cornell and modified to include issues from Honduras.

After my evening lecture/discussion, I was honored to get this photo with one of the

Assistant Professors (left) and two students.  Note the Syracuse University sweatshirt

worn by one of the students.  I almost felt like I was back home in central New York.

Photo credit: Oliver Komar.

               We didn’t talk only about birds, but bird conservation was certainly a major topic of discussion.  For example, we talked about the situation pertaining to protected areas here in Honduras – particularly National Parks.  There are about 17 National Parks in Honduras.  Each of them has a core area of protection – often at the highest elevations, in an effort to ensure protection of water sources for the many communities that surround the parks.  And by surround, I mean communities that exist within the so-called “buffer zones” of the national parks.  The buffer zones include areas that certainly deserve protection, but often heavily disturbed by human development (both for agriculture and for human habitation).  See the accompanying picture of the map for an example.

A map of Azul Meambar National Park (total area encompassed in yellow and green). 

The green represents the core area that is the highest elevation and which is supposed

to be off-limits to human development.  The yellow shows the buffer zone -- a protected

part of the National Park, but an area containing many small communities and which

is heavily disturbed by human development.  Photo credit: Jody Enck.  

               The communities that exist within the buffer zones not only impact the wildlife and habitat within that buffer zone, but sometimes (perhaps usually), encroach on the core protected area.  You can see examples of clearing on slopes for planning of corn, coffee, beans, bananas, or other crops, and for livestock pasturing.  Human habitation follows as local residents build structures to stay in while working in the encroached fields. 

               Developmental pressures and subsistence needs are great.  The situation is likely to only get worse as human population increases.  The students who attended my discussion pointed out to me that it is not only the responsibility of the government to protect biodiversity within these protected areas.  It also is the responsibility of people who live in these communities within the buffer zones.  One challenge is that most of those residents have no idea about the biodiversity that exists in these areas, why that biodiversity is important to them and to others, or about how their actions negatively affects that biodiversity.

               This point was driven home to me this morning as I accompanied a class from Zamorano University to the Finca Agroecologica Santa Inez.  A sustainable agro-forestry area owned and managed by the university on the slopes above the main campus, which is down in the valley.  Every day during the trimester, students spend half a day in classes and half in a learning-by-doing module that includes a lot of hands-on activities.  One week, the classes are in the morning and learning-by-doing in the afternoon.  Then the next week the schedule flips and learning-by-doing is in the morning. 

Students in a learning-by-doing module conducting an eBird transect count

in the Finca Agroecologica at Zamorano University.  Photo credit: Jody Enck.

               This morning, 11 students from an agro-ecology class conducted a bird census along a transect in the Finca Agroecologica.  Most of these students were not birders or naturalists of any type – fairly representative of the broader population in that sense.  When asked how many bird species we might see on our transect (of a couple kilometers), responses ranged from 8 to 20.  We saw and/or heard 48 species.  The point driven home to me was that even these ecology students are relatively unaware of the biodiversity right here in the campus area.  Of course, as ecology students, their discussion of the morning’s activity focused their attention on the need to help others, especially those living in and adjacent to protected areas, to become aware of the biodiversity around them, the importance of it, and the threats to that biodiversity that exist because of human development.

The entire class of friendly and engaging ecology students who I got to

accompany while they participated in a learning-by-doing model in the

Finca Agroecologica Santa Inez  at Zamorano University. 
Photo Credit: Oliver Komar.

               It is not just a matter of putting a line on a map around a biodiverse area and saying that people have to stay out.  There needs to be some tangible value back to the local residents from that biodiversity.  When eco-tourists come and visit these areas and hire local guides, eat in local restaurants, and stay in local hotels, the local residents can become more aware that maintaining biodiversity is one way to attract economic benefit to the local area.  That is why one important aspect of establishing sister birding clubs likely will be to encourage and facilitate visits by northerners to these areas.