It feels good to have more of the lab getting back into the swing of fieldwork after the worst years of the early pandemic! The lab has always maintained some field activity throughout the pandemic. Ezequiel Vanderhoeven had been working remote from field sites across Argentina; Robert Ang'ila and Peter Lokeny had been keeping active at Mpala in Kenya; Colin Donihue had led  the lizard team in field and lab studies across New England; Amanda Lyons led the terrapin conservation genomics team around the northeastern United States. But a lot of us had to cut back or go it alone more than we would have liked. The tide finally began to turn in 2022, though!

Highlights from a brief visit include:

1. A workshop with government officials (and other stakeholders) to discuss opportunities to better conserve wildlife and protected areas.
2. Hiking with a bushmeat hunter to learn about the first links in the wildlife trafficking chain—the way legal trapping of wildlife by local subsistence hunters can feed into international crime through the trade of endangered species, like pangolin. (Importantly, hunting was forbidden during my visit.)​
3. The magnificence of a primary Congo Rainforest on Equatorial Guinea's mainland.