Program Details

Location: Belize City, Belize

Dates: Summer 2025: June 24–August 6, 2025

Applications: Accepted on a rolling admission basis

Accommodations: Primarily camping or rural lodge

Credits: 15 quarter credits or 10 semester credits

Language: English instruction

Courses: Environmental Wildlands Studies, Environmental Field Survey, Wildlands Environment and Culture

Prerequisites: One college level course in environmental studies, environmental science, ecology or similar. 18 years of age

Program Costs

Application Fee

Paid when you submit your application. Refundable until you are formally accepted into a program.

Program Fee

Your tuition for the program, paid directly to Wildlands Studies.

In-Country Logistics Fee

Covers most on-the-ground expenses such as transportation during the program, camping and lodging fees, park and nature reserve entrance fees, permits, study facilities and other related logistical costs. For some programs, this fee also covers a portion of your meals. This fee is paid directly to Wildlands Studies.

Estimated Airfare and Mandatory Travel Insurance

Airfare costs are covered by the student and vary depending on your starting location and airline ticket prices. Travel insurance is required for our programs. Details about airfare and travel insurance will be provided in the Logistics Packet.

Estimated Food and Personal Expenses

Our estimate for the out-of-pocket expenses you will incur during the program for items such as food, snacks, drinks, laundry, entry visa and personal items. This amount will vary from student to student depending on spending habits.

Belize Summer 2025
$    150    Application Fee
$ 7,500    Program Fee
$ 4,850    In-Country Logistics Fee
$ 1,100    Estimated Airfare and Mandatory Travel Insurance
$  400    Estimated Food and Personal Spending

$14,000  Total Estimated Cost
Summer 2025: Program fees due by May 1, 2025 

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The Program

Join us in the neotropics for a fascinating journey into Belize’s diverse ecology and cultural mix, as we carry out field investigations in support of real conservation. Due to Belize’s rich biodiversity and its relative isolation, much is still unknown about the nation’s flora and fauna, and that which is known is not always well understood. The opportunity for discovery and deep learning awaits us on many levels.

Our team conducts a wide range of ecological research and monitoring, drawing on scientific and naturalist observations, species identification and behaviors, and various wildlife transects. Traversing the country from ‘ridge to reef’, we will explore the biodiversity across Belize’s key terrestrial and coastal ecosystems: rainforests, savannah, wetlands and riparian zones, and coastal mangroves and reefs.  We assess the effectiveness and long-range sustainability of resource management strategies in Belize’s protected natural areas.

Off the Belize coast exists the second largest barrier reef in the world. Studded with mangrove and coconut palmed cayes, and guarded by atolls to the east, the 180 mile long reef is ecologically complex and intimately tied to the rainforests through its many water courses that deliver nutrients to the sea. In this system, dazzling numbers and varieties of plants and animals are supported, including thirty coral species, sea turtles, manatees, and over 250 varieties of fish, living in and along the reef system. Snorkeling through the reef environment we will study the ecology of the system, assess the nature of human interactions, and document the extent of human impact.

Belize is a land inhabited by a fascinating mix of cultures. Our studies invite and encourage meaningful interaction with local people, and at times we may find ourselves as their guests. Our ethnographic conversations (informal interviews) with allow us to gain insight into personal histories and perceptions of the country from the various groups living within its borders. In this manner, we will develop a sense of how the different cultures view themselves in relation to the land, the ‘nation’ and how the concepts of conservation and stewardship vary across cultural lines and through time. We will also consider the effects, both environmental and economic, of Belize’s vast protected area network on local communities, as well as the enhancement or degradation of their cultural senses of history, place and home.

By the end of the program, all of us will have an in-depth knowledge and understanding of Belize's extraordinarily rich ecological and cultural diversity, and we will have developed the ability to apply scientific field methods and observation across a variety of conservation contexts and sensitively explored the human dimensions of wildlife stewardship.

 
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More Details

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Syllabus

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Manual

 

Program Photo Gallery

Daniel Couceiro

LEAD INSTRUCTOR

PhD Candidate in Education and Learning Sciences, Wageningen University, 2020

Daniel is a conservation biologist and ecologist focused on the connection that humans hold with the land, and how this sense of place and territory can be levered to motivate environmental stewardship. Daniel has worked in the Peruvian Amazon as the manager of the Wired Amazon Project, a citizen-science research initiative that investigates jaguar populations, Brazil nut trees phenology and discovers new species of insects.  He became a National Geographic Explorer and Rufford Grantee in 2020 with the creation of a conservation education program in Colombia oriented towards the engagement of the youth of rural communities in wildlife protection. Living half the year in Bulgaria and the second half in Columbia, Daniel works as a consultant for different conservation projects. Daniel leads our Belize Program and our Spring New Zealand program.

Daniel’s other program: