View of Finca Santa Cruz coffee plantation in the buffer zone of the El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve

This was an incredible personal and professional experience that has proved invaluable to my academic and professional career

Juan Pablo Galván was a 2007 TNC Conservation Science Intern who did his internship in Chiapas, Mexico

I did my TNC Conservation Science Internship during the summer between my first and second years of grad school at the University of Maryland, College Park in the Sustainable Development and Conservation Biology (CONS) program. Even though it was only the first year of the internship program and my colleagues and I would be the guinea pigs, I was immediately interested in an internship because it was conservation focused, sought to help get minorities into conservation careers, and held the possibility of working in the country of my choice.

Since visiting Chiapas had always been a dream of mine it shot right to the top of my list. Thanks to Renee's and the rest of the staff's hard work in matching up intern interests with the needs of TNC supervisors we were able to set up my internship in Chiapas.

Nine other interns and I attended the Intern Retreat in Portland, Maine in June. It was great to meet the other interns and meet my supervisor, Alejandro Hernandez, who was also able to attend the retreat. Together we developed a Project Plan for my internship with set goals and a timeline based around what I wanted to get out of the internship and what TNC's needs in the region were. My explicit goals were to make professional contacts in the region, develop baseline data reports for conservation easement lands in the buffer zone of the El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve, refine lists for the plant and animal species present in El Triunfo, and learn how TNC functions as an organization. I think we all came out of the retreat with a clear idea of what was expected of us as interns and what we wanted to accomplish for ourselves.

Chiapas was one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. I got to sit in on meetings between TNC and partner organizations, participate in the signing of conservation easement contracts, meet a lot of people actively working on conservation projects in the region, and learn a great deal about the social, economic, and conservation issues facing the region. I learned a lot about how TNC operates internationally, working with and through partner organizations, and actually worked a great deal in the office of a regional conservation partner called Pronatura Sur under the guidance of Margarita Ocampo. I was able to learn how different types of organizations had different roles, such as establishing policy and regulations, to funding and training other organizations, to implementing on the ground conservation projects. I also developed and acquired new skills like bird identification and conservation project planning. On the weekends and whenever I wasn't working in the office I visited reserves and national parks with forest and Mayan ruins, went birding, and saw nearly all the different regions of the state. While most of my work was done in the office, I was able to do more than a week of fieldwork in the El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve, an absolutely gorgeous area, to collect data on the flora and fauna found on conservation easements that Pronatura Sur was estbablishing in the area.

This internship was an incredible personal and professional experience that I will never forget and that has proven invaluable to my academic and conservation career. I made excellent professional contacts in TNC and Pronatura Sur, gained a great deal of knowledge and experience, completed all the goals we had decided upon for my internship, experienced many amazing places and cultures, and made a concrete contribution to conservation efforts in one of the most biologically rich and threatened areas of the world. Administrative matters such as expense reports were sometimes a headache given that this was the first year and they were still working some kinks out, and at times it was a challenge to coordinate with extremely busy supervisors and colleagues, but this was nothing compared to what I gained from this internship. I wrote several papers for various classes based on my experiences in Chiapas, have obtained other internships due to my contacts from my first year as a Conservation Science Intern, and am in a much better position to compete for jobs due to the contacts and experiences I accumulated during the internship.

All my supervisors and colleagues and the staff running the Intern program were wonderful. Renee has a passion for getting people involved in conservation and trying to diversify the conservation field, and she and the rest of the staff are fabulous at answering questions and supporting interns in whatever they need. Anyone who participates in this program will definitely gain a great deal from it.