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Are We Developing Conservation Experts but Forgetting to Develop Conservation Leaders?

There is something I have been thinking about for a while. In conservation, we invest heavily in technical expertise. We train people to understand biodiversity, restoration, carbon, community development, safeguards, monitoring frameworks, and increasingly complex standards. And we should, but somewhere along the way, many of our best technical experts become managers. And that is where things get interesting. One day, you are valued because you are excellent at your technical work. Then suddenly, your job changes. You are no longer responsible only for solving technical problems. You are responsible for people. You need to motivate teams, manage conflict, delegate, give difficult feedback, navigate budgets, build trust with communities, manage donor expectations, and make decisions with incomplete information. The technical expertise that made you successful is suddenly only part of the job. Yet we often behave as if leadership will simply appear. As if being a brilliant conservation...
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What My Son's Leishmaniasis Taught Me About Getting Sick in Ecuador

 As many of you already know, this blog has always been my space to think out loud, a place for ideas, learnings, the things that stick with me long after they happen. Today's post is more personal than usual, and harder to write. Last week my son was diagnosed with leishmaniasis, and the days that followed taught me more about our public health system than I ever wanted to learn. For those who don't know it, leishmaniasis is a parasitic disease spread by the bite of a tiny sandfly. It's not rare here,   Ecuador has reported it for years, mostly in cases quietly absorbed by public hospitals and rarely discussed anywhere else. The World Health Organization classifies it as a “neglected tropical disease,” a category that exists specifically for illnesses that strike the world's poorest communities and never quite make it onto anyone's priority list. Somewhere between 700,000 and a million new cases appear worldwide every year, and most of them, like ours, happen far...
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Conocer para conservar: cuando la ciencia se convierte en una herramienta para decidir

Hay algo profundamente valioso en querer entender cómo funciona la naturaleza. Durante siglos, biólogos y ecólogos se han dedicado a observar, describir y tratar de comprender la enorme diversidad de formas de vida que nos rodean. Gracias a esa curiosidad conocemos especies que antes eran invisibles para nosotros, entendemos relaciones ecológicas extraordinariamente complejas y hemos descubierto procesos que sostienen ecosistemas enteros. Muchas veces, además, los conocimientos que hoy resultan fundamentales para la conservación comenzaron con una pregunta que no pretendía resolver ningún problema inmediato. Por eso, defender una ciencia orientada a la conservación no significa cuestionar el valor de la investigación básica. Al contrario: significa reconocer que nuestro conocimiento sobre la biodiversidad se construye poco a poco, gracias al trabajo acumulado de personas que estudian especies, poblaciones, ecosistemas, genes, comportamientos, interacciones y procesos ecológicos. ...
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Conservation by Design Was Never Just About the Forest or the species.

I remember the exact meeting where I stopped believing in perfect plans. We were sitting in a community hall somewhere in the Amazon basin maybe something like 20 years ago; plastic chairs, a fan that wasn't doing much against the heat, a stack of maps we had spent weeks preparing. Beautiful maps, honestly. Deforestation models, priority zones, protected area gaps, all color-coded and defensible. We had the science. We had the funding logic. What we did not have, it turned out, was the room. An older man in the back,   I won't use his name, but I still hear his voice, waited until I finished my presentation and then asked, quietly … And where in this plan is my son's future? I didn't have a slide for that. That question rearranged something in me that has never gone fully back into place. Twenty-five years + into this work, I still think about it more than I think about most of the technical papers I've read or co-authored. The Methodology I Actually Belie...
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Ikigai: Finding Meaning in the Everyday

  In a world that often measures success through productivity, wealth, and recognition, the Japanese word ikigai offers a gentler way to think about a meaningful life. Ikigai, pronounced ee-key-guy , is commonly translated as “a reason for being” or “that which makes life worth living.” It can describe the purpose that guides someone through life, but it can also refer to something much simpler: a morning ritual, a creative hobby, caring for a loved one, tending a garden, or sharing time with friends. People often assume that purpose must be extraordinary. They believe they need to discover one perfect career, calling, or mission that will explain everything. Your reason for getting up in the morning does not have to impress anyone. It does not need to become a business, attract attention, or change the world. Meaning can be found in small actions that make life feel worthwhile. For one person, ikigai may be teaching. For another, it may be cooking for family, learning a la...
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Mental Health at the Workplace: Building a Culture Where People Truly Thrive

 The Silent Crisis No One Talks About at the Monday Meeting There's a conversation happening in break rooms, in bathroom stalls, and in the quiet of a commute home, a conversation about exhaustion that goes bone-deep, about dread that arrives with Sunday evening, about smiling through a team call while quietly falling apart. Mental health at the workplace is one of the most pressing challenges of our time, yet it remains one of the least addressed. The numbers don't lie. The World Health Organization estimates that depression and anxiety cost the global economy $1 trillion per year in lost productivity. Burnout was officially recognized as an occupational phenomenon by the WHO in 2019. And yet, in most organizations, the response to a struggling employee is still a polite suggestion to "take a day off”, as if a single day off could undo months of chronic stress. This blog isn't about quick fixes or motivational posters in the office kitchen. It's about understandin...
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Conservation is a human problem, and it always has been

  After decades working in the field I've come to one unavoidable conclusion: you cannot save nature without first understanding people. There is a moment every field conservationist knows. You stand at the edge of a forest patch, species checklist in hand, satellite imagery overlaid with boundary lines, and you look out at a landscape that is quietly, relentlessly changing. Not because of some distant abstraction called deforestation, but because a family is clearing half a hectare to plant maize. Because a herder's cattle are following the same corridor they have followed for generations. Because a river that once ran clean now carries the residues of a village that has no other option. In that moment, the biology is simple. The ecology is legible. But the solution? The solution lives entirely in the domain of human behaviour. I have spent my career, working to conserve key ecosystems and species in Latin America, and more recently in other areas around the world, watch...
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