“You can’t save what you don’t love and you can’t love what you don’t know”
Contributing to basic research on the diversity, population status and life histories of the poorly known animals and plants of the Sierras de Managua has been a focus of LTI since 2018. Biologists Yuri Aguirre (a) and Octavio Saldana have been researching the bat community, so important for pollination of perennial food crops and for re-seeding the forest. And Entomologist Jean-Michel Maes and his students (b) have studied the butterfly and moth communities (c), important as pollinators and as food for insectivorous birds and mammals.
Dynamic community education in real time goes on concurrently with our research (d), and community members are sometimes able to participate in the research itself (e) or observe how its done. LTI provided critically important funding for guides in 2018 in order to continue the 13 year-long Christmas Bird Count in the Sierras de Managua and Carazo Plateau, a citizen science program (f)essential to monitoring bird populations over time.
LTI’s research results housed in the “George Washington Carver Reading Room” within the RBG Community Library (g) can be consulted for university and high school projects, development of teaching and extension materials, or simply to satisfy curiosity about the natural world around us. Complementing our own work, the GWC reading room has a great collection of nearly 400 publications in Spanish on the local fauna and flora, local agricultural practices, and natural resource management practices.
We are proud to promote a beautiful coloring book (h,i) for elementary-age children, the brainchild and creation of artist and LTI supporter Allison Connor. The coloring book honors 16 animals of different groups that comprise the local fauna. Allison’s illustrations teach the true colors and names of the animals and celebrate their beauty. LTI collaborates with this project with technical advice on the animals to include, and on reproducing and distributing the coloring book in the schools that we work with (j).
Research and Education in Local Natural History
“You can’t save what you don’t love and you can’t love what you don’t know”
Contributing to basic research on the diversity, population status and life histories of the poorly known animals and plants of the Sierras de Managua has been a focus of LTI since 2018. Biologists Yuri Aguirre (a) and Octavio Saldana have been researching the bat community, so important for pollination of perennial food crops and for re-seeding the forest. And Entomologist Jean-Michel Maes and his students (b) have studied the butterfly and moth communities (c), important as pollinators and as food for insectivorous birds and mammals.
Dynamic community education in real time goes on concurrently with our research (d), and community members are sometimes able to participate in the research itself (e) or observe how its done. LTI provided critically important funding for guides in 2018 in order to continue the 13 year-long Christmas Bird Count in the Sierras de Managua and Carazo Plateau, a citizen science program (f)essential to monitoring bird populations over time.
LTI’s research results housed in the “George Washington Carver Reading Room” within the RBG Community Library (g) can be consulted for university and high school projects, development of teaching and extension materials, or simply to satisfy curiosity about the natural world around us. Complementing our own work, the GWC reading room has a great collection of nearly 400 publications in Spanish on the local fauna and flora, local agricultural practices, and natural resource management practices.
We are proud to promote a beautiful coloring book (h,i) for elementary-age children, the brainchild and creation of artist and LTI supporter Allison Connor. The coloring book honors 16 animals of different groups that comprise the local fauna. Allison’s illustrations teach the true colors and names of the animals and celebrate their beauty. LTI collaborates with this project with technical advice on the animals to include, and on reproducing and distributing the coloring book in the schools that we work with (j).