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Participants in the bilingual nature guide program look at a large beetle.

By JON KOHL

Special to Honduras This Week

LANCETILLA, Tela -- Former Vice Minister of Tourism Jacqueline Foglia was practical and to the point as she addressed the audience of the second graduation of bilingual nature guides in Honduras April 1. She urged the participating organizations to put their newly graduated nature guides in English classes as soon as possible to increase their fresh English skills. She also told them the ministry will carry out field trips to see how all the graduates are doing.

Then she switched to English directing her comments at the guides, emphasizing that they must continue practicing their new guiding skills and continue studying to improve their natural history knowledge. These are all essential to make them effective nature guides in Honduras's protected areas.

The graduates of this course will have the opportunity to make important contributions to their protected areas. In 1998, the first crop of 15 guides graduated in Honduras and then dispersed across the North Coast to work in protected areas in Trujillo, La Ceiba, Roatan, and Tela, representing five NGOs and Lancetilla.

This year the guides represent 14 different organizations from across the country: AESMO (Ocotopeque), AMITIGRA (La Tigra National Park), the Lodge at Pico Bonito in La Ceiba, the Pan American Agricultural School (Zamorano), ECOSIMCO (Comayagua Mountain National Park), FUCAGUA (Trujillo), National Park Foundation (Picacho), INADES (Biological Reserves El Chile and Guajiquiro), Lancetilla Botanical Garden, MOPAWI (La Mosquitia), Municipality of Comayagua (historical downtown), Proyecto Aldea Global (Cerro Azul Meambar National Park), Proyecto Celaque (Celaque Mountain National Park), and the Honduran Tourism Institute.

The last sponsored Erasmo Sosa, the national coordinator for ecotourism, who was admitted as a "special guest" to learn English, some new guiding techniques, and to understand the program.

LOCAL PEOPLE INVOLVED

Unlike more traditional guide training programs, this course trains local people to be involved in conservation activities in their protected areas by sharing a conservation problem with visitors and then trying to involve those visitors in conservation projects, whether through direct donations, volunteerism, or in-kind contributions. With the help of their supervisors, who are also trained in a parallel and less intense training to the guide course, they develop varied programming to attract repeat visits and bring in more money for conservation programs.

Hector Castellanos is currently the administrator of the environmental education center in Cerro Azul Meambar National Park. He intends to use his new interpretation skills in English to develop tours based in conservation themes in the trails that exist around the center.

Yadira Murillo, 21, was a secretary only five months ago, and is now Lancetilla Botanical Garden's only English-speaking guide. (A graduate from the previous course, who also speaks English, is now Lancetilla's administrator.)

Franklin Almendares, who operates out of the Rosario side of La Tigra National Park, has the great task of developing Rosario into a living historical village echoing the old mining culture that once thrived in the region outside of Tegucigalpa.

The course involves recruiting local people who are sponsored by a park administration or tour operator allied with a park. After going through an extensive selection process, the students enter a three-month course where they live, breath, and speak guiding (almost entirely in English). The course has from three to five native English-speaking teachers sent down from an organization based out of Harvard University, called WorldTeach, and three coordinators, two of which are Honduran, and a third a graduate from a prior course.

During that time the guides learn English for nature guides, environmental interpretation, natural and cultural history, conservation, and tourist attention. They carry out some 10 tours and a number of other projects, such as stationary presentations, a school presentation and some kinds of simple design practice.

A RARE PROJECT

The course methodology is being developed by RARE Center for Tropical Conservation, a conservation organization based in Arlington, Virginia. The process has been developed over 12 courses in three countries in the last five years, Costa Rica, Mexico (Yucatan and Baja California) and Honduras. Soon the program will be expanding into the Dominican Republic and South Africa.

RARE also has several other projects in Honduras, including a profitable, low-impact trail development program, a public use planning program, ecotourism promoter training program, an interchange program for participants in the other programs and is facilitating the creation of the Mesoamerican Ecotourism Alliance.

The Honduran member of this alliance is REHDES; based in La Ceiba, this consortium represents six conservation non-profits on the North Coast. RARE has just signed a three-year agreement with REHDES and Fundacion VIDA of Tegucigalpa to pass the administration of its ecotourism programs to REHDES so that the technology can be reproduced by Hondurans without external help.

The current course was executed by Fundacion EDUCA of Tegucigalpa with RARE Center with significant support from the Ministry of Tourism as well.

But the real benefits of this kind of programming now derive from the work of people like Barbara Ortega, the newest guide in Trujillo; or Ivan Henriquez, the administrator of the visitor center in Celaque Mountain National Park; or Tiburcio Palma at Picacho; or Martin Herrera in La Mosquitia; or Yeni Hernandez in Comayagua Mountain National Park, who was converted from a primary school teacher into the park's first bilingual nature guide.

Readers are encouraged to visit these guides in their new environments. The very presence of English-speakers will help the new guides to push their English skills and practice tightening the connection between tourism and conservation of natural resources in Honduras.

For more information about any of these programs, contact the REHDES office at 440-0385 or by email at <rehdes @caribe.hn>.

Jon Kohl is the program coordinator in Honduras of RARE Center for Tropical Conservation.

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