Establishment of official collaboration with a local University!

Past weeks entailed efforts towards delineation of possible directions of development of the Tarsius Project. Since April we had been discussing with the University of San Carlos in Cebu City, which is one of the most renowned higher education institution in Visayas and in the Philippines. Staff of their Department of Biology make efforts to educate young naturalists pursuing Bachelor, Master and Ph.D. degrees in three disciplines: Biology, Marine Biology and Environmental Sciences.  To increase Department’s capacity, researchers from USC have been keen to collaborate with us on different levels. Consensus has been reached and on 24^th September 2016 the document of mutual agreement was signed. Collaboration will be conducted in research, education, community outreach, allowing students to be involved in our activities. One of the Project aims, building local capacity is thus coming true.

The first result of our collaboration was students and teachers visit at the Project site. On 24^th September 2016, 10 students from 3^rd Year of Environmental Sciences from the University of San Carlos listened to a lecture prepared for them by our Field Manager, Filip. They could learn more about tarsiers, with main focus on the Philippine tarsier as well as current approaches to protect and conserve wildlife species in the world. This talk was held at the new built office and lasted around an hour. They were also guided around the Project site, to see how the field work looks like, and were introduced to our tarsiers, Julius and Nina. This was an invitation to come and develop themselves with us in On-the-Job-Training, internships, voluntary work and most importantly, to write their theses with us.

We wish both USC and ourselves to have strong, long-lasting and fruitful collaboration which would benefit people, but most importantly, the Philippine tarsiers!

Text: Filip Wojciechowski

Photos: James Star