Art & Education to Save a Bird from Extinction

Dear donors & supporters,

Time for good news! From a civil sociaty initiative in the town of Aquitania, one of the three municipalities sharing Lake Tota's shore, local authorities have chosen Cistothorus apolinari as their emblematic bird. This meassure has a potential to increase awareness among locals, and bring more initiatives to its conservation.

A week ago, there was a cellebration for that, in which community actions to protect this species were highlighted, and that included ours. We were somewhere else doing fieldwork those days and were not able to attend that cellebration, but we were told a recognition for our work was part of the event: Montecito's work was recognized, among others, for their contribution to this species conservation, from Aquitania Mayor's Office - J.Zuluaga (biologist in support to that initiative), tolds us afterwards.

Therefore, it's time to cellebrate, and keep up the work we do towards saving Apolinar's Wren from falling more in its critical conservation condition.

This was the environmental authority's statement, in regards to that "emblematic" news:

• The objective is to add conservation actions for the protection of this endemic species for Colombia and that is in critical danger of extinction. The Cucarachero lives in the wetlands of the Cundiboyacense plateau, and its largest population is in Lake Tota; the subspecies (C. apolinari) is exclusively associated with reeds, white grass and other coastal plants of wetlands, lagoons and lakes.
• "With this declaration as a flagship bird, another step is taken in favor of the conservation of Lake Tota, it is a significant achievement for our species in critical danger of extinction," said biologist Johana Zuluaga Bonilla.
• Main threats of the Apolinar's Wren: The destruction of its habitat, the low number of its population and the geographical distribution of the species restricted to the Cundiboyacense plateau, make this Wren a species sensitive to extinction. They live in very small strips associated with bodies of water, if these strips are destroyed the Wren disappears, so it is everyone's job to protect their home.
• It is time to agree to peace with nature and applaud these initiatives for conservation.

Thank you for your continuous support.

Warm regards,

Felipe Velasco
Fundación Montecito

Links:

• Support Apolinar's Wren Conservation with a Monthly Donation

Dear donors and supporters,

Project SueTy (whisper of a bird), as we call this initiative to help on Apolinar's Wren conservation by providing support to rural education with art and meaningful activities related to this species and its context, has made a closure of a stage, and now more stages are coming.

Our first purpose to provide art & education support to the children of Guáquira's School next to Lake Tota, was happily fullfilled, despite all the challenges brought by the well known pandemic.

We prepared a video for you, to provide an insight to the process, as it is to date - you can watch it here (it's only 2 min, with English subtitles): https://youtu.be/dULArvb2Z6o

Now, as it is explained in that video, we are aiming to upscale our activities into other schools of Lake Tota's area, in which that bird represents a clear opportunity for children and the whole community to be better aware of, hoping for them to increase the guardian's base, as it has been already started with our first school.

We have also developed a website to provide in there with some tools and resources for children to get closer to this bird species - you may wish to check it out, here: https://suety.abctota.org/

Thank you all once more, for your continuous support, and we will keep you informed in regards to the progress with SueTy.

Happy and healthy 2022 to all!

Felipe Velasco
Director, Fundación Montecito

Links:

• Support Apolinar's Wren Conservation with a Monthly Donation
• Get to know about Apolinar's Wren guardians

Dear donors & supporters of project SueTy,

As announced in one prior report, we have started contacting our rural school in person, again, and look forward to having activities with children as re-planned, in an aim to complete our set initial objective for this project.

Happily we hope not to have new interferences for this new effort. Please enjoy a few memory pics of our last meeting with the kids at Guaquira school in Tota, for this purpose.

Our priority now is to build-up a script in collaboration with this school, to create the story and produce a video aiming to raise awareness for Apolinar's Wren conservation at Lake Tota, from our rural children's voice.

Greetings to all,
Felipe Velasco

Links:

• Support Apolinar's Wren Conservation with a Monthly Donation

Dear donors and supporters,

From this September and lasting some months, we are having a new impulse on our project SueTy or "Save Endangered Apolinar's Wren w/ Art & Education": Two volunteers are coming to give us a hand in preparing a last phase of our project, aiming to work on producing the videography component, with the children of Guáquira School.

In previous weeks we have been working with them at discussing logistics and ways to carry on with our planned project, despite all the pandemic obstacles. And we have agreed on a plan to follow, waiting only for them to travel and meet up with us this coming month.

Meanwhile, we had a new monitoring of our beloved Cistothorus apolinari species (Apolinar's Wren) around Lake Tota, and happily we can report we found a few individuals in a good shape and... for the very first time we were able to find a nest of this bird, something particularly rare considering its peculiar habitat and endangered conservation status. A short post about all this was published here.

New monitoring rounds will come by the end of this year, and we will keep uploading its correspondent checklists on eBird and gathering them in the species' website we designed for it - here: https://a1.abctota.org/home

Kind regards,

Felipe Velasco
Fundación Montecito

Links:

• Apolinar's Wren conservation - [blog]
• Support Apolinar's Wren Conservation with a Monthly Donation

Dear Donors and Supporters,

Weeks ago we received a call from a representative of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) in Colombia, mentioning the start of a training course in Sustainable Tourism for the Spanisk-speaking community, and their will to direct some kind of support an education process in a rural area, hopefuly linked to conservation and nature - and this had a clear name for us: Our project SueTy, the one from which I am reporting now, that same one in which you our donors and supporters have generously linked in one way or another.

One thing led to the other, and soon after we were able to agree on a link from that Sustainable Tourism course to Lake Tota and education, as follows:

1. Lake Tota will be the real case of study in their course, and this week we already had our first session as guests to participate in it as facilitators for data provision and as a feedback presence for their student enquiries, among the course agenda. The 30 students come from 12 diferent countries, and have a variety of professional backgrounds.
   
   
2. As mentioned above, our project SueTy will receive some support from their team -to be discussed in the following weeks-, so far we have considered to enrich the project by adapting a format not previously considered (but a good tool to adapt education incentives under our current pandemic dificulties -still with a high impact on our rural areas-), and this is to create a podcast channel for the school, with children being always the primary guests, to discuss topics related to their education, their region, their rural life, and of course related to conservation of our little bird-friend, the Apolinar's Wren.

If you are interested to learn more about the mentioned course, please visit the links provided here.

Thank you once more to you all, for your previous support to our project. To have it alive and running was key to make that story told above, possible.

Kind regards,

Felipe Velasco
Fundación Montecito

PS.- As you already know, spreading the word of our project is an important support to move it forward, please consider sharing its link (shared below) among your friends, contacts and networks, thank you!

• Support Apolinar's Wren Conservation with a Monthly Donation

Links:

• GSTC course, official link in their website
• GSTC course, social media post1
• GSTC course, social media post2