Stauffer Teaches In Mexico

Representatives from 24 different national parks and reserves from throughout Mexico attended a workshop on Wildlife Population Analysis at the University of Chihuahua, in Chihuahua, Mexico in the fall, taught by fisheries and wildlife sciences professor Dean Stauffer. The class was organized for the Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas (CONAP), which is equivalent to the U.S. National Park Service.

The participants represented a diversity of parks, and work with a wide range of species, including gray whales, sea lions, shorebirds, horned lizards, manatees, songbirds, quetzal, desert pupfish, harpy eagle, marine snails, jaguars, tapirs, macaws, and trogons. The workshop focused on design and monitoring of approaches for wildlife of special concern within the various parks. Stauffer worked with individual managers to design approaches they could implement to monitor wildlife populations important to their particular parks. Support for the workshop came from the Global Environment Fund (GEF) through the Fondo Mexicano para la Conservación de la Naturaleza to CONAP. The workshop was organized and coordinated by Juan Carlos Guzman (’04 Ph.D. in fisheries and wildlife science) who works for the Protección de la Fauna Mexicana, A. C. (ProFauna). Guzman also served as Stauffer’s translator for the workshop.

Stauffer is an affiliate faculty of the Facultad de Zootechnia at the University of Chihuahua and has been presenting annual workshops on their campus since 2000. He has developed two one-week workshop modules on Wildlife Population Analysis and on Wildlife Habitat Analysis that are presented on an alternate year basis and form part of Chihuahua’s graduate curriculum. He currently is developing a third class on Wildlife Population Management that will be first offered in 2007.

4/12/09