Interpretive Guide Training in Colombia and Costa Rica
October. Jon will be leading a 10-day workshop for interpretive guides from throughout the Colombia National Parks system, financed by USAID. Jon also worked with the Rainforest Biodiversity Group and Fermata, Inc. to hold two day-long workshops with guides along the Costa Rican Bird Route in Sarapiqui, Costa Rica in May. Photo from Tirimbina Rainforest Center by Raquel Gómez
UNESCO PUP in the Balkans
April. Jon has begun training public use coordinators at Durmitor National Park in Montenegro and Ohrid City in Macedonia to carry out at least portions of the public use planning process. That he's wearing the same shirt as the photo below is merely coincidence.
UNESCO PUP in Vietnam
January. Jon is working with UNESCO’s World Heritage Center to  assist two World Heritage Sites and a biosphere reserve to improve their tourism planning and management. Picture of My Son Sanctuary.
Named to Faculty of Latin American School for Protected Areas
August. San José
,
Costa Rica
.
Jon will be teaching park planning and environmental interpretation and education at ELAP for a bachilor's degree in protected area management for current employees of the National Park System and a course on adaptive management and organizational learning for a virtual master's degree in protected area management.
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Keynote Speaker: Conference of the Sustainable Tourism Network of Colombia
September. The network has invited Jon to give the opening talk entitled “Well-Planned Tourism Can be a Force for Biodiversity Conservation” for the 8th such meeting, held in Medellin.
Interpretive Talk on the African Savannah
January. Jon gave a multi-media interpretive talk to Costa Rican tourists who will be taking a tour of Kenya and Tanzania with the Costa Rican outbound operator Mundo Expeditions.
US State Dept. Lecture Tour in
Africa
on Ecotourism Development
June 09. Jon visited
Africa
again with the State Department’s Strategic Speaker Initiative to
speak about and meet with Africans on ecotourism development and
environmental protection. He visited Swaziland
and Malawi
.
First tour in
Liberia and Cameroon
. He first
visited
Ecuador
and Bolivia
in 2007 about environmental interpretation. Photo: Host of
Swaziland’s
national TV daily breakfast show interviews Jon about ecotourism. See press release
on embassy website.
See all talks and conferences.
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Querencia Forms Pact with Env. Law NGO
August. Querencia gains the support of CEDARENA, Central America’s leading environmental law NGO. Given that Querencia has an office within CEDARENA's office, the location should provide ample opportunity for future collaborations.
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| Jon is co-founding Querencia Experimental Center for Carbon Neutral Communities, a non-profit organization and ecovillage in Costa Rica whose mission is to demonstrate and diffuse techniques for low-carbon living; not just the hardware of green architecture and alternative energies, but the software social organization skills such as consensus building, conflict resolution, cooperative living, etc. |
