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22
nd
June 2009
Staff Updates
Karina Berg continues to function as the Ecuador Country Director, overseeing not only camp life butdoing much hard work behind the scenes in Quito. Jon Escolar starts his second phase in the FieldManager position and staff members Andrew Whitworth and Matt Iles continue work at camp withtheir respective projects on amphibians and dung beetles. Intern from the last phase, Chris Beirne hasnow joined as a full time staff member after showing his expertise with amphibians, hard workingnature and adeptness in a tropical field environment. New intern, Daniel Neilson, joined at the beginning of the phase who was a volunteer from the previous expedition. Daniel was offered the internship as a result of his relentless hard work andenthusiasm towards all aspects of research and life at camp. Hannah Urpeth also stayed on for asecond ten week phase as an intern, working hard on the butterfly project and presentations in particular.Three weeks into the expedition a new staff member, Samantha Brimble, arrived and brought a wealthof enthusiasm and ideas to all aspects of research, TEFL teaching and local management plans andhas already begun developing ideas for future GVI projects.
Week One
9am in the hostel garden, a crew of excited volunteers gathered for their introduction. The adminsorted, they boarded their bus to Tena, a jungle town surrounded by stunning scenery. Torrentialdownpours didn’t dampen their spirits as they wined and dined at a good restaurant, followed by afew cocktails.After another bus ride, this time through dense jungle, a canoe then took them to GVI port. Theyclimbed up numerous steps to their home for the next five or ten weeks.Learning the wildlife of the reserve occupied thenext few days, with animated talks and slideshowson birds, mammals, tropical health, andEmergency First Response training (EFR), which proved very entertaining during the role playingscenarios. Machete training, vegetation mappinglectures, insect (not bug) talks were veryinformative, especially due to the enthusiasm of all the staff.The staff also managed to find time to take thevolunteers out on walks, both during the day andat night, going to a variety of different trails andseeing an extraordinary amount of wildlife, some of which is rarely seen. The highlights were twomating frogs, a Glass Tree Frog, a Green striped vine Snake by Stream One, which came just tenminutes after two Blunt-headed Amazonian Tree Snakes. An Opossum and a Tailless Whip Scorpion,which climbed over everyone, were a few of the other numerous excitements of the week.
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