bruce byers consulting

Screeching Macaw, Unseen Jaguar

Forested ridges rolled away in the early morning light as far as the eye could see from the top of Canaa, Sky Place Temple, at the ancient Mayan ruins of Caracol. Howler monkeys were still roaring from the tall trees
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Belizean Blues

Earth is a water planet. Over seventy percent of her surface is water (the word “earth” comes from roots in ancient Germanic languages, and she was portrayed as a goddess, hence “her”), and the atmosphere is full of gaseous water.
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Ukrainian Spring Continued: Into the Dark Forests of Polissya

March 2011: In my last episode, recounting a trip to the Russian-speaking steppe region of eastern Ukraine in March, 2011, I described the larks singing, the crocus blooming, the blue sky and sunshine on the golden steppe as it was
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Ukrainian Spring

March 2014. Almost exactly three years ago, in March, 2011, serendipity handed me the opportunity to lead a biodiversity conservation assessment for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Ukraine, and I worked with a team of exceptional Ukrainian consultants.
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A Sunday on Cerro Guanacaure, Honduras

August 2013. We left the rambling, hacienda-like Hotel Gualiqueme in the dark at 5:15 AM, and crossed the long suspension bridge over the Río Choluteca, heading east toward the border with Nicaragua. But we soon turned north, passing through the little
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Pondering the Ponds of Nags Head Woods

November 10th, 2012. Hurricane Sandy had brushed by North Carolina’s Outer Banks on Halloween, and some beachfront neighborhoods were still assessing the damage and digging out a week and a half later. But today was a glorious fall Saturday, with
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Potoni Sacred Forest

Friday 21 September 2012.  We sat in the shade of an old spreading mango tree in Namutoria Village and talked with community for an hour or so.  About thirty community members, and five forest guards in green army-style uniforms sat
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Visiting Revolutionary Ecological Relatives in Philadelphia

July 12th, 2012. If they are blood relatives, the connection is distant, and untraceable.  But they are some of my intellectual and philosophical ancestors, and this past weekend I made a pilgrimage of sorts, to Philadelphia, to visit the old
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Conserving Watershed Forests in Sierra Leone’s Western Area Peninsula

The Freetown Peninsula is one of the only parts of coastal Africa, and the only place in West Africa, where mountains meet the coast.  When Portuguese explorer Pedro de Cintra sailed past this coast in 1462 he imagined he saw
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A Pilgrimage to the Monarch Butterfly Overwintering Refuges in Michoacán, México

On cold, grey, winter days in January and February a bright memory sometimes flutters into my mind, and I’m off on a daydream of a trip to see overwintering monarch butterflies in their mountain refuges in México in 2004, now
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