In 2006, we gave $4.8 million to the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies to create a field training programme for biodiversity conservation. The programme addresses the significant conservation challenges of tropical Asia and the Neotropics (an ecoregion that includes the Caribbean and North and South America). It will encourage local and national people and institutions to themselves take responsibility for the region’s nature conservation.

The programme, which is run jointly by Yale and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, will provide training for fieldworkers from the developing world. These will be coordinated from offices in Panama and Singapore. Courses will balance socio-economic aspects of conservation with natural science. They will be aimed primarily at park rangers but also at environmental policy makers and senior park and resource managers. The programme also hopes to develop a network of regional practitioners.

PROJECT UPDATE:

In 2011, we awarded Yale a repeat grant of $5,438,399 to fund the Environment and Leadership Training Initiative for the next five years.