Connecting with you in 2025!
For OTS, 2024 was a year for renewing long-standing connections and making new ones.
Over a year ago, on a trip to Las Cruces for the closing reception of the show of artist Deirdre Hyde, former OTS Board Chair George Middendorf and President/CEO Beth Braker had the opportunity to connect with Deidre’s dear friend and fellow artist Florencia Urbina. About three months later, Florencia donated the usage rights to OTS for her family’s beautiful beach property in Punta Agujas, Costa Rica, which will become the site of OTS’ future “Estación Azul”.
Speaking of Las Cruces connections, OTS was also extremely fortunate to receive a legacy gift from OTS friend and researcher Dr. F. Lynn Carpenter. Lynn and her research were deeply connected with Las Cruces for the last thirty years. As a first project resulting from Lynn’s gift, OTS will launch the Tropical Center for Restoration Science at Las Cruces, thereby honoring Lynn’s life as well as the work of many other OTS researchers involved in restoring the forests in the Coto Brus region and beyond.
Many of you have connected with our vision to rescue our Legacy Data project and have generously supported this effort. Through donations from our OTS friends and from the RNP Foundation, we have curated and are ready to publish data from four different projects, each comprising decades of information on forest composition and structure in Costa Rica and South Africa. Our data team is selecting the next four data sets for consideration. Stay tuned for more on this project in the next issue of eCanopy.
In October 2024, OTS joined the Ecological Society of America delegation at the Biodiversity COP16 in Cali, Colombia, where we connected with many of you, learned about the influence of OTS on your careers, and had an opportunity to immerse ourselves in the complexities of the Biodiversity COP process. Read more about OTS at the COP in this issue.
At our research stations, our 40th annual Bird Count at La Selva and 5th annual Bird Counts at Las Cruces and Palo Verde connect our stations to the international community of naturalists and to the birding community within Costa Rica and beyond.
Of course, education at OTS means connecting the students and early career scientists of today with the 60-year scientific legacy of OTS. In September 2024, we relaunched the undergraduate semester program, Tropical Biology on a Changing Planet. In January 2025, for the follow-up, a second group of students arrived in Costa Rica for the spring semester. Our flagship graduate courses, Ecología Tropical y Conservación and Tropical Biology: an Ecological Approach, continue to run to capacity each year, as have specialty courses such as Tropical Ferns and Lycophytes.
In May, 45 people joined the OTS South Africa team to celebrate 20 years of extraordinary effort in relationship building over time. OTS/SA director Laurence Kruger credits the start of the program to early relationships and careful strategy, an ethical approach to education, an emphasis on long-term research projects, and human capital development built by emeriti OTS education leaders Deedra McCLearn and Nora Bynum. An important result of these efforts is the 20-year run of the semester program for undergraduates, African Ecology and Conservation.
At the November 2024 meeting, the OTS Board of Directors endorsed its support of the Dr. Nora Bynum Fund for Inclusion. Many of you provided personal support too, and some indicated their participation was a way of honoring those who made it possible for their own OTS experience. The first group of Bynum scholarship recipients have already started their OTS courses.
At OTS, we are thankful to continue the important work of research, conservation, and growing the scientific community. But it is your collaboration and involvement with OTS that make it possible for us to focus on advancing scientific knowledge of Earth’s critical ecosystems by connecting transformational education, innovative research, and capacity building.