The Earth Summit 2005 was a success! The language "barrier" between the English speaking students and the people from the other parts of the Globe wasn't a problem. Students and teachers learned to get by without knowing the language of the person they were talking to. Once more, it was proved that when a group of people has a goal in common things tend to be much easier. Dan Bisaccio and Kurt Wootton's multilingual games also enabled the kids to break the ice and warm up to the environment.

A new 1 ha permanent biodiversity monitoring plot was started in the morning sessions and during the evenings the kids did presentations on the work they are currently doing at home. Special mention has to be made regarding the team from India which showed both commitment and big effort. On the whole, the teenage researchers were very excited to do hands-on work with full contact ecology! and in spite of the fact that they were exposed to the sun and bug bites, everyone was very interested and held good spirits.

During the two-week sessions of the Earth Summit the students also visited some of the cenotes in the reserve as well as one cenote that is home to ourfavorite pet, a female crocodile named Benita who seemed to be very happy in the presence of so many visitors.

At the end on the two-week period, Dan Bisaccio gave out a diploma to each student and teacher and in exchange, the students handed him a big collage made out of drawings and letters they had written themselve stelling how significant it had been to work with him. Many a person was just about to burst into tears. Dan Bisaccio’s work is indeed worth of recognition, emotional or other.

We wish to thank HabitatNet, Amigos de Sian Ka’an and El Eden’s staff for all the effort and work done. El Eden is looking forward to an Earth Summit in 2006!