June 2006 E-Newsletter
June 2006 E-Newsletter of the Monteverde Conservation League U.S., Inc. (MCLUS)
Thank you for the donations! We are pleased with the generous reponse to the Earth Day post card asking for support for the purchase of the forest from Sr. Santamaria near Monteverde which was announced in the previous e-newsletter. We need to make two additional payments of $32,646.89 in Jan. 2007 and 2008 to complete the purchase. If you wish to donate via a secure online link, click http://mclus.org/give/donate-now/.
 Map, Santamaria Purchase, Jan 2006 (Click on picture for larger image)
Fox River Country Day School Trip. An end of the school year trip to the Bosque Eterno de los Ninos (BEN), the Children’s Eternal Rain Forest, was perfect for a Chicago area middle school. The students prepared in advance by studying tropical forest ecology. They brought their journals, binoculars, cameras and curiosity. They left their CD players at home and opened their senses to the sights and sounds of the rainforest. They delighted in hearing the howler monkeys early in the morning and were awestruck watching Arenal Volcano erupt, sending glowing magma down its side. Our expert guides opened the students’ eyes to the intricate relationships of the special ecosystem around San Gerardo Field Station, finding endemic frogs in the stream on a night hike. Very early in the morning the students all hopped out of bed to walk the Tabacon Trail and see the rare male bare-necked umbrella bird at its nesting site. Each one of the group felt like a partner as he/she worked to re-forest an old pasture and clean the trails at San Gerardo. They had a new world opened to them that they never will forget.
 Fox River Country Day School, Tree Planting, May 2005 (click on picture for larger image)
National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT). Dwight and Rachel have been attending NABT conferences for the last two years, displaying photos and sharing information in the exhibit hall. Many biology professors and high school science teachers learned that the BEN is a wilderness available to them to bring their students to study and learn in the wild. We also made contact with several travel companies that specialize in student travel-study. We are beginning to see the fruits of this exposure as groups are adding the BEN to their itineraries. Listing our trips on the National Science Teachers Association website brought a few new customers for our summer trips.
NABT Booth, Oct 2005
BEN Contest Winners for 2006. Dylan Sheets of Principia Lower School in St. Louis, Ellen Terry of Eckstein Middle School in Seattle, and Madeline Petrie of Little Red School House in New York City are the Student Ambassadors representing the three schools that raised the most money for the BEN in the past year. They are looking forward to their free trips this summer to experience the forest first-hand that they helped raise money to protect. The deadline for next year’s contest is Earth Day, April 22, 2007. If you know of a school or home school group that doesn’t about our contest, please urge them to visit our website,, so they too can participate. The forest wins every time – no matter how large or small the contributions are. Thanks to all the schools and students who participated last year.
MCLUS Trip Openings July 30-Aug 12, 2006. There are a couple of spaces open for this trip. The price is only $1695, not including airfare. For further info, see www.mclus.org/eco-tourism/.
