Connection in the Brazilian Rainforest

A nine year old Gransts, NM girl recently returned from a working vacation in the Brazilian Rainforest. An eco-sponsored trip by Earthwatch Institute, allowed Jennifer Scott and her family to help with field work and interact with the indigenous people of the region.

Scott and her mother have been studying the rain forest for three years during home school classes and they decided they wanted to see it for themselves. “I was so excited about the possibility of seeing the animals, plants and people of the Brazilian jungle,” Scott said.

The young girl became fast friends with a native girl and they are now actually e-mailing one another. “We were able to take one of those new wind-up computers that don’t need electricity and I spent a lot of time teaching her how to use it,” Scott reported.

Most of the time the family worked with a botanist from Switzerland who was frantically trying to catalog the indigenous plants. “Hans (the botanist) said it is very important to identify the plants and their characteristics before they all get destroyed,” Scott said. “He told us that many of the plants could possibly lead to new medicines and it was important to save as many as possible,” she added.

For more information: http://www.cibolabeacon.com/articles/2006/01/27/news/news3.txt

Quite an experience for someone to actually explore a topic they are studying not just in a book, but firsthand.

Tags: brazil , rainforest , indigenous , grants ,