• Prof. Doug Zook is now giving multi-media presentations on Tiputini and Amazon ecology

More than 150 advanced placement (AP) high school students from the Boston Public Schools "journeyed" to Tiputini and the northwest Amazon via a multi-media presentation given by Douglas Zook, Associate Professor of Science Education and Global Ecology at Boston University.

The interactive presentations featured dozens of slides, video clips, and sounds of the Amazon compiled by Doug during his recent travel there. The presentations were part of the "Bridge" program, which helps prepare high school seniors for their entry into the rigors of university science learning. The sessions were held at the auditoriums of UMass/Boston and the Harvard Medical School. In June, Doug also presented to nearly one hundred students at Somerville High School near Boston. All three events were well-received by students with numerous questions and expressions of interest afterwards. The sessions not only served the crucial purpose of getting students to realize how our own local areas like Boston depend upon distant, healthy rainforests, but served as fundraising for the Tiputini Support Group. Doug donated all honoraria for the presentations to TSG.

If anyone in the New England area is interested in arranging a multimedia experience for students on tropical rainforest ecology and conservation, and simultaneously support TSG, please contact Doug at dzook@bu.edu.

• UPDATE from Diego Mosquera, Tiputini site manager, March 2009:

We are glad to announce that the new house for the Tiputini Staff will be ready by the end of this month. The old workers' house was in pretty poor condition and needed to be rebuilt after more than a decade! We are using stronger materials (no wood) that guarantee this new house will last a lot longer than the old one. The structure is made of metal and the walls are now humidity-resistant.

It has about 1,900 square ft of area, room for 16 workers with all the facilities to make their life easier. There are 4 rooms, each of them with a bathroom. (Before, all of them had to share 1 bathroom). We really want to improve their living situation because they work extremely hard, and without them Tiputini would not be possible.

We are also rebuilding the laundry room, which will allow us to provide a better service to our visitors. The next step will be to build a new house for permanent researchers and a new house for the managers. The time that this will take basically depends on funding. All construction at Tiputini is very expensive due to cost of transportation and workers.

Although we are not particularly happy having oil companies close to us, it is probably worth mentioning that the Ecuadorian government finally reached an agreement with the oil company from Spain, Repsol. This company wasn't sure if it was going to keep their operation in Ecuador due to the country's instability in many aspects. As you know, we depend on them for much of our operation. The alternative would be a national company, which could have caused a lot of problems for us.

As for ongoing research, Jose Hidalgo is working on "Male selection on the blue-backed manakins" as his dissertation for a Masters degree on Evolutionary Biology at University of Missouri. Also, Andres Link, a Colombian primatologist is working on the Ecology of Spider Monkeys (Ateles belzebuth) toward his PhD at New York University.

We are having more and more groups visiting. Apart from the regular programs, this month we had the pleasure of having a group of students from a high school in Boston and a group of undergraduate students from the University of California.

• Check out BU Today's multimedia presentation on Tiputini and Doug Zook's recent excursion to TBS. Read more about the trip below:

"This was truly an amazing experience," remarked Zach Smith, a science educator from Tufts University, when heading back to Coca from Tiputini. Zach was part of a recent excursion of science education specialists - those who directly prepare students to become professional science teachers - to the Tiputini Biodiversity Station. Doug Zook, Professor of Science Education and Global Ecology at BU, led the group, which also included educators from Bard College, Tufts University, Brooklyn College at the City University of New York, Muskingum College, Bethel University, Alma College, Olivet Nazarene College, and the San Diego Natural History Museum (see group picture, above left). The trip will allow these leaders to further impact their students through the integration of conservation biology into the pre-service teaching training curriculums at each university. The excursion was a special awards program in support of conservation biology and sustainability education, offered by the BU School of Education's Curriculum and Teaching Department as led by Chairman Stephen Ellenwood.

At Tiputini, the sounds of the petroleum company's exploration and extraction were more prominent than in recent years. The oil companies are now only 12 km away from the Station and want to develop in the nearby Yasuní Biosphere Reserve. While the oil companies cannot be completely halted, strengthening the Station through education, research, and contributions to the Tiputini Support Group will give greater leverage and support to limit the potential negative impact on the region. The science educator group has already begun follow-up electronic curriculum development collaborations, and plans are underway to establish a BU School of Education-based, Tiputini-focused conservation biology educator network.

• Also see BU's Daily Free Press article about Doug Zook's recent trip to Tiputini

• Other ongoing research projects at Tiputini include a camera-trap project that involves capturing images of a wide range of wildlife on trails around the station, a study on seed dispersal and genetic variation of Myconia plant species, behavioral research on several primate species (conducted by the Di Fiore lab of NYU), and the TADPOLE organization's work with canopy fauna and tank bromeliads.