Croatia: The Forest Week IP
I chaperoned a student research trip in Croatia with Operation Wallacea!
J and I took eight DP1 students (11th grade) to Croatia for two weeks. Over these two weeks, students would participate in research projects, providing baseline population data for organisms outside Krka National Park and in the No Take (fish) Zone around Silba Island.
First week is in the Krka National Park!
*The Flight went well, students were great. Short flight: just two hours from Amsterdam.
*We didn't find the gift shop until too late! The Spit Airport has no tchotchky shops. How un-American. (This became an inside joke as students looks for souvenirs.)
* Road trip! We drove two hours through chaparral with limestone buildings and walls. It felt like Spain and Arizona had a baby.
* Operation Wallace hostel near Krka National Park! Crew is very friendly. Hostel is bare concrete but comfortable. It is very hot (35⁰C) and heat injury might be the greatest health risk (though the Park has black widows, scorpions, and vipers).
* WiFi is for researchers only (and terrible slow, they say). I'm sad I can't Video call my boys; I told them I would try. I managed to record and send a short clip. Dinner is catered by local restaurant and the vegan sausage with roasted potatoes and peppers was excellent! A little after-dinner instant coffee and I'm a happy camper.
* Everything is Conservation and Leave No Trace. Dishes are washed in basins out back (septic tank is very small). Showers are cold water shower heads in plywood stalls. No Fridge (staff only), no nearby shop, no internet: some of our well-to-do students might be roughing it for the first time.
Day 2: I'm Group D, with 5 students.
* Butterflies was lovely. A 2500 m hike offtrail to catch and count Brown Heath, and whatever else we could find. The students were enthusiastic and all but one made a catch! I didn't catch anything either.
Krka Butterflies caught previously.
*Lecture on the general purpose and how-to running field surveys. There was a brief introduction to each kind of survey and an overview of what that data is used for.
Some downtime doppelkopf!
*Lecture: Bat Ecology! The gist: bats are super important, bats are also mad at risk.
*Bird Workshop: There was a concern with the heat (39 C!) so we had a bird lesson instead of going out on a point count. It was pretty fun. We had some practice sketching and annotating birds in the park and then had a quiz. I'm happy to say I was pretty awesome at it.
*Herptiles!
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