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About CC / Community Conservation Personnel
Community Conservation Personnel
Staff
 Dr.
Robert H. Horwich, (Director) received his Ph.D. in zoology
1967 from the University of Maryland and worked in a postdoctoral position
in India with the Smithsonian Institution. Based on over 20 years of
research on infant development, he developed a successful method for
reintroducing endangered cranes into the wild used internationally on
a number of species. He has studied primate behavior in India and Central
America since 1967 and pioneered a reintroduction effort for endangered
black howler monkeys. In 1984 he began work with community sanctuaries
and established the Community Baboon Sanctuary in Belize. He is the
founder of Community Conservation Inc./Howlers Forever, Inc.
Lamar Janes
(Bookkeeper) graduated in biology from Stanford University and studied
limnology at UW-Madison. He worked for the Wisconsin DNR in limnology
and the Arkansas DPC&E in nonpoint source management and limnology.
He lives in a rural intentional community of 10 adults focused on creating
a permaculture.
Cynthia
Olmstead
(Projects
Coordinator) has a Ph.D. in Forest Policy & Economics from the University
of Florida focusing on landowner use of forestry programs. She
previously worked 12 years with conservation land trusts in Florida, Illinois
and Wisconsin.
Board of Directors
April Sansom (President) is currently working on a PhD in the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. She completed her Master's degree in Conservation Biology and Sustainable Development in October of 2003. The action research she conducted for this degree focused on the role of women in natural resources management decision-making in two small rural communities in Bolivia . Her doctoral work will take her to Ecuador and Mexico as well as Bolivia . April served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines from 1996-1998, and worked for the Philippines program of Conservation International for a year after that. She worked with an indigenous group of people on Coron Island that had just received legal rights over their ancestral land and water. She coordinated a conservation enterprise project, which focused on the processing of cashews by the local community people.
Jennifer Nelson (Vice President) has a BA in art and art education from Macalester College, St. Paul, MN. She has extensive experience in small business development and management, with an emphasis on marketing, particularly in the arts. She is most recently retired from her interior design firm in the Twin Cities metro area, and presently she and her husband are involved in native habitat preservation and restoration on their Crawford County Wisconsin farm. Her current interests include the study and cultivation of medicinal plants.
Dr. Terry Beck (Secretary) has a Ph.D. in Rhetoric & Composition from the Union Institute and has taught in the English Department at UW-La Crosse since 1978. He has a small farm near Avalanche, Wisconsin where he raises cattle, chickens, and wine grapes. He was a founder and long-time board member of Pleasant Ridge Waldorf School in Viroqua, Wisconsin.
IN MEMORIUM: Glenn Donovan (Treasurer), with an Associate Degree in electronics from Milwaukee Area Technical College, was a metal sculptor for 24 years, recycling spent and used parts of our industrial society in his work. He exhibited at nationally recognized art fairs and has received awards of excellence.
Scott Bernstein has a BS from the University of Illinois in Accounting/MIS, and completed his Master's degree in Land Resources at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in May, 2006. He is currently studying Environmental Law at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada. He has a strong interest in community-based conservation, environmental policy in the developing world and environmental dispute resolution. Scott did his thesis research on community co-management capacity in Belize. In the past, he owned a computer training and consulting firm, and has traveled, lived and worked extensively around the United States and the world. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Uzbekistan from 1992-1994. Scott's interests include writing, music, and photography.
Dr. Jack Pfitsch received a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in 1976. He is a math and computer science high school teacher who also devotes time to community and education issues outside the classroom. He was a founding member of the local Coulee Region Organic Produce Pool (CROPP).
Community Conservation Associates
These project personnel have worked and continue to work in collaboration on a number of domestic and international projects with conservation organizations, community development organizations, and governmental agencies. Community Conservation projects have also included active participation by a large number of faculty, students, and graduate students from numerous colleges and universities. In addition to informally working with many volunteers to accomplish long-term goals.
 Firoz Ahmed is completing his Ph.D. at Gauhati University with a thesis on tree frogs of the northeast states of India. He has published widely on frogs and is currently writing a herpetological guide for the northeast states. A member of Aaranyak, Firoz is an Honorary Wildlife Warden in Assam. He attended the Smithsonian Institution conservation/ management program, training on turtle conservation in the USA and attended the Applied Environmental Education Training Programme in Thailand. He recently won the Sanctuary-ABN AMRO Wildlife Service Award (see above). He was the voluntary coordinator of the Golden Langur Conservation Project from 1998-2006.
Chris Augusta is fine artist and explorer who has done primate and fish surveys for Community Conservation and initiated the Gales Point, Manatee project.
Harriet Behar is an organic farmer involved with organic inspections and organic farming training. She is now the Outreach Coordinator for
Midwest Organic & Sustainable Education Service (MOSES), our partner for the 2006 Organic Dairy Farming book.
Arnab Bose (below, far left) has four years College with Honors in Zoology. He is an expert on butterflies of Assam. He is currently doing research on the effects of the conservation effort on Kakoijana RF on the golden langur population, habitat and the community. Since 1998, as a member of Natures Foster, he has been the main community conservationist in the Golden Langur Conservation Project focused on Kakoijana Reserve Forest and is expanding his work to other forests.
Raju Das (above, far right) has a BS, from B.N. College in Assam with Honors in Botany (1994) and an M.Sc. from Gauhati University in Botany (1997) with experience in forestry. He teaches in the Government H.S. and M.P. School in Kokrajhar, Assam. A member of Natures Foster, Raju participates in the awareness campaign and research on the golden langur, its habitat and the communities in the Kakoijana Reserve Forest area.
Robin Brockett worked as a zookeeper before beginning extensive research on howler monkeys at the Community Baboon Sanctuary in Belize as well as working with the government of Belize to develop a local conservation-based center for animal rehabilitation. She now runs the Wildlife Care Center of Belize.
Dave Erickson is an award winning documentary producer whose 1996 documentary, "Community Conservation: Living In the Park" features a number of CC community projects.
Helena Fitch-Snyder is a behavioral research associate at the Center for Reproduction of
Endangered Species (CRES) in San Diego. She has planned and developed
research and conservation programs for endanged Asian primates.
Rajen Islari is President of Green Forest Conservation, an NGO based in the Kachugaon area. He helped initiate the Golden langur Conservation Project and stimulated the community conservation program in the Kachugaon area. He initiated and currently coordinates the newly formed Bodoland Forest Protection Force which is protecting the western part of the Manas Biosphere Reserve.
Dr. Gail Y.
B. Lash worked in Belize in 1992 and in 2000, evaluating the Community
Baboon Sanctuary as a model or private ownership conservation, as part
of her research for her M.S. from Georgia Tech and her Ph.D. from University
of Georgia.
Dr. Jonathan Lyon was one of the founders Community Conservation and worked as the Assistant Director on many projects. He is currently teaching at Merrimac College in Massachusetts.
 Kathryn (Katie) Mann received a BS cum laude in Zoology from the University of Maine (2002) where she earned high honors and scholarships and an MSc in Primate Conservation from Oxford Brookes University (2005). Her thesis was to assess the Punta Burica area in Costa Rica as a potential site for primate conservation. She returned to Punta Burica in 2007 to begin a project to help the Guaymi landowners protect and manage their indigenous reserve lands and the primates and other fauna and flora on them. She has experience in organic farming and served as a consultant for Ocean Futures Society in the Amazon on filming of the PBS series “Jean Michel Cousteau: Ocean Adventures.
Karenina Morales has become El Salvador's first primatologist in her investigations of the remnant populations of spider monkeys in the country. She is currently focused on working with the communities in four of these areas in an education campaign to involve them in co-management of their forests. Read about her project.
 Jacob Phelps graduated from Michigan State University, College of Natural Science with honors in 2007. As an undergraduate he was a Truman and Udall scholar. Brought up in Costa Rica, Jacob is an expert in orchids and worked in Thailand as an intern for World Wide Fund for Nature in environmental education and on the illegal plant trade in Thailand, Laos and Myanmar. He worked training members of the community of Democracia in Belize in co-management of protected areas. He is currently doing studies of ecotourism in Belize as an intern for Community Conservation.
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For Practitioners 
