Let’s break it down: Community Engagement.

National Geographic project: part three.

The third part of this project was definitely the most challenging for me personally. Organising a training course in primatological field methods and environmental education for Paraguayan forest guards from different conservation organisations across the country.

Equipment that would be used during the course.

Course Guides - every protected area received a guide.

National Geographic, the International Primatological Society (through a second Lawrence Jacobsen Education Development Award awarded to PLT’s executive director) and PRO COSARA and Hans and Christine Hostettler (who provided the accommodation and space to carry out the course at Nueva Gambach) supported this course.

The course ran from the 10^th-14^th December 2018. It was the most wonderful display of teamwork I have ever been a part of. Myself, Jorge Ayala, Joseph Sarvary and Jack McBride worked like a well oiled machine to make sure everything went smoothly and the real hero of the week was Rocio, who wonderful, spot-on cooking delighted everyone.

After I had spent the two weeks leading up to the course not-so-silently stressing that it would be a disaster and no one would come I was delighted and amazed when we ended up with 41 participants from six different Paraguayan organisations. Forest guards from MADES (the ministry of the environment), Guyra Paraguay, OPADES, Guardaparques Voluntarios, PRO COSARA and Fundación Moises Bertoni came from reserves as far away as Defensores del Chaco in the far north of the country.

Welcoming everyone to the course. Lectures took place in PRO COSARA's salon.

Jorge preparing his group to learn about habitat surveys.

The first day of the course consisted of lessons about South America’s primates, the primates of Paraguay, why research is important for conservation and how to design a behavioural study.

The following days we broke into three groups and carried out different practical activities. Participants learning about census and survey techniques from me, habitat survey methods from Jorge and VHF telemetry and how to use a blowgun from Joe. These practical activities were great fun and still challenging as December in Paraguay is the height of summer and every day temperatures exceeded 40C!

The final day was led by Joe and focused on environmental education using the Voces de la Naturaleza methods. Once again our attitude was “learn by doing” and watching 40 adults running around like children as they learned different educational games was wonderful to watch!

Once the course finished I created a WhatsApp group of all the participants so that they can share GPS locations when they find wild primates in their reserves. Over time, I hope that this will give us enough information to conduct the first census of primate populations in Paraguay’s protected areas for more than three decades. In addition to this the guards are sharing photos and stories from when they carry out environmental education.

The whole experience really pushed me out my comfort zone. And I’m so glad it did.