Finding SalvaNATURA: How did I get here…….good question.

 All very important things, but first let me just say that it all happened very fast, and all of a sudden I’m here in San Salvador actually working for a non-profit conservation organization…..and even I’m not sure how I got here. But I’m very glad that I managed it somehow!

Ok, so now down to it; what prompted my interest in C.A., and specifically the little country of El Salvador? Well my love of birds and coffee of course! I spent every spring and summer of my undergraduate career studying a variety of birds and their incubation behavior. I really enjoyed my bird work, but found that traditional ecological research wasn’t for me; I wanted to do applicable conservation work. This is what brought me to the Nick school in the first place. Combining my experience with birds and desire to conserve them and their habitat, and my recent increase in coffee intake (thanks grad school!) led me to do some research. I became very interested in importance of the coffee growing countries of the world in protecting the neotropical migratory birds that spend their winters there.

Pupusas!! The national favorite, and probably mine too. One of my first typical meals here in San Salvador. Pupusas are corn tortilla filled with such goodies as: beans, cheese, pork, chicken....the list goes on. Pupuserias are on just about every corner, and you can get these for around 30-50 cents each!

Many emails later, I discovered that the answer to my internship search was very close to home. It turns out that my good friend and fellow nick-schooler Ian Varley had worked with an NGO called SalvaNATURA, which luckily enough does a huge amount of research on avian conservation in El Salvador. I emailed the director of the Science Department, dropped Ian’s name, and voila I had a phone interview, which as you know was successful. Now, I’m sure it wasn’t all Ian that got me the job. A lot of it was my excellent resume, my great phone interview, and last but CERTAINLY not least: my willingness to work for free.

Now, I’m not totally funding this wonderful experience on my own. I wrote grant proposals….lots of them. The Nicholas School Career Services website (http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/career/) has a great page devoted to helping students locate funding for summer internships and research. I received my funding from the Environmental Internship Fund (EIF) a student run organization, which works to raise funds to supplement unpaid or low paying summer internships, and the Lazar Foundation, which encourages international internships through monetary aid. And thank goodness I did get funding or I would not have been able to come here!

Bird banding in progress. Lety and Roselvy (left, right repectively) give these little guys some leg jewelry.

Here are some links if you want to know more about SalvaNATURA and the work that it does in El Salvador:

http://www.birdlife.org/worldwide/national/el_salvador/index.html

http://www.freshwateraction.net/fan/web/d/doc_70.pdf