External Partners

Naturaleza y Cultura Internacional is a conservation NGO that protects biologically diverse ecosystems in Latin America in collaboration with local people.   NCI was founded in the southern Ecuadorian city of Loja in 1997 and has since expanded into six countries:  Ecuador, Perú, México, Colombia, Bolivia, and Brazil.  In its twenty years of existence, NCI has helped protect 5.6 million hectares of some of the world´s most biodiverse and endangered ecosystems. Naturaleza y Cultura Internacional (NCI) seeks student researchers to conduct biodiversity monitoring and research in the Andean, Amazonian, and Tumbesian dry forest ecosystems in southern Ecuador where NCI owns and manages nature reserves. 

Mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) is the most valuable neotropical timber tree. It is now listed on CITES Appendix 2 because logging has rarely ensured its regeneration. The Programme for Belize (PfB) manages the 260,000 ha Rio Bravo Conservation and Management area for conservation, education and sustainable forestry. In the early 1990s, PfB asked Laura Snook, a Yale F&ES graduate who had done her doctoral research on mahogany, to advise them on silviculture to sustain mahogany production. Between 1996 and 1998, she established a series of experiments to evaluate what kinds of treatments yielded the best conditions for mahogany regeneration, natural, planted, or sown. Laura is now seeking assistants to participate in this long-term research on regeneration and growth of mahogany and other tropical forest trees in the rainforests of Belize.