Help Local Leaders Save the Mesoamerican Reef

Hi everyone! Thanks for supporting the Mesoamerican Reef Leadership Program. We wish you a happy end of the year and a positive start to 2013. We’ll keep it brief, but we wanted to send you a few updates:

• At the start of the month the Healthy Reefs Initiative published its 2012 Report Card on Mesoamerican Reef health. You can see the results here. MAR Fellows Ian (2010) and Ana (2011) are representatives of HRI in Honduras and Guatemala, respectively, and were key parts of the process. We applaud this initiative and think the results emphasize that we still have lots of work to do!
• Leo and Angela, 2012 MAR Fellows, attended a mangrove workshop in Mexico the first week in December; we look forward to learning from them and are thrilled that Angela walked away with most of the equipment she needs to calculate carbon stock in mangroves (which she'll be sharing with other fellows working with mangroves).
• Mariela's project received funding from the New England Biolabs Foundation last week!
• We will be holding a writing training with the 2012 cohort on January 11 and 12 (having identified this as an area of need for fellows); follow us on Twitter or Facebook for tips and updates!
• In the first four months of 2013 we will be conducting an external evaluation of the MAR Leadership program.
• Sandra Pompa, MAR Leadership Program Officer, is moving to Mazatlán at the end of the year to pursue new horizons; we’re very happy for her and we are in the final stages of hiring a new team member.

Again, thank you for supporting MAR Leadership, and we’ll continue to keep you posted on our progress at forming a strong generation of conservation leaders!

Links:

• Check out our website!