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Our Mission
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Eco-Exchange frequently covers efforts to save endangered tropical wildlife like this sea turtle.
(© 1996, Chris Wille)
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The Conservation Media Center, based in Costa Rica, is the environmental news hub of the Americas. The program publicizes Latin American conservation efforts and issues, trains journalists in environmental reporting skills, and helps conservation leaders learn from their colleagues, share information about their projects, and design effective communications strategies.
The Problem
Around the world, concerned activists want to know more about promising conservation initiatives underway in Latin America as well as the difficult environmental dilemmas faced by scientists, policymakers and local people, in orchestrating these efforts. Because they lack extensive experience in reporting on environmental issues, few local journalists and foreign correspondents based in Latin America cover conservation. Meanwhile, researchers and conservationists North and South need to know more about the work of their colleagues, in order to share information and insights.
Solutions
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Keep the worldwide media supplied with fresh and exciting news stories about both environmental controversies and success stories in Latin America. |
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Provide the Neotropical conservation community with easy-to-access and updated information, important contacts and news about promising initiatives, in both English and Spanish. |
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Bring U.S. and Latin American reporters to the sites of field projects, so they can learn about biodiversity conservation and discuss how to report on these issues, and offer environmental reporting skills workshops to journalists in Latin America. |
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Help Latin American conservation groups make their public-information efforts more effective and far-reaching. |
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Results
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The bimonthly bulletin Eco-Exchange (Ambien-Tema in Spanish), featuring pithy news stories about tropical conservation, is distributed to more than 2,000 reporters, conservation groups, government agencies and research institutions around the world, reaching an audience numbering in the millions.
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The media center manages the Eco-Index, a searchable almanac on the World Wide Web that includes updated descriptions of conservation projects in Mexico and Central America. The information available for each project includes objectives, funders, accomplishments, lessons learned and much more. Eco-Index includes two listservs, the "Monthly Update" and the "Dialogue." To explore the site: www.eco-index.org. |
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The scores of reporters and scientists who call the media center are provided with hard-to-find information or are referred to experts who can provide answers. |
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The media center works closely with conservation groups in Latin America, helping them design public education and media campaigns. |
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More than 80 U.S. and Latin American reporters have participated in media center workshops, investigating conservation projects in Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua and Panama, and then writing news stories that have reached hundreds of thousands of people. |
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The Guidebook to Wetlands in Central America will be a reference for journalists throughout the region. The guide will provide reporters with a descriptive list of important wetlands areas in each country, current threats to these ecosystems, summaries of pertinent regulations, story ideas, reporting tips and contact information. |
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With the participation of more than 100 leaders of conservation groups and foundations in the U.S. and Latin America, the media center moderated a bilingual listserv that featured discussions of how conservation initiatives could be effectively monitored and evaluated. One result of this project was a Consensus Statement, published in 1998, which explains why monitoring and evaluation are so important and offers a series of recommendations. |
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Director: Diane Jukofsky
Conservation Media Center
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Contact the Rainforest Alliance: canopy@ra.org
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