Posted June 12, 2019
The photo here shows Dr Nicholas exploring a swamp-like, bog-like ecosystem in the far west edge of Parque Nacional Yaxha Nakum Naranjo. We do research on plants and animals (and insects and reptiles) at this park one week every month. We had just noticed a white flower that we had never previously seen in the previous 10 months work in this park. The only way to get close enough to photograph it was to wade into abyss (and hope it was not “neck deep”). Fortunately it was only knee-deep.
FLAAR Mesoamerica is a division of FLAAR that is devoted to studying flora and fauna and ecosystems of Guatemala. FLAAR itself was incorporated as a non-profit research and educational institution in 1969 to map the Mayan pyramids, temples, and palaces of Yaxha, an ancient city between Tikal and the border with Belize. From 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, and 1974, FLAAR together with Miguel Orrego and capable students from Guatemala and USA, worked to protect the fragile ecosystems here and Nicholas encouraged the then president of Guatemala and the FYDEP director of the Peten area to declare Laguna Yaxha and Laguna Sacnab as a parque nacional. The initial declaration was accomplished in 1974. It then took 19 more years to create the full size of the park as it is today; other individuals and other NGOs did this work in the 1980’s and 1990’s (so the park got Naranjo area added) and everything was finalized in the early 1990’s, 20 years after we initiated the idea in the 1970’s of protecting the ruins and the flora and fauna as a national park.
FLAAR-REPORTS is a division of FLAAR that was developed in the late 1990’s when Dr Nicholas Hellmuth was awarded a Visiting Research Professor grant and 6-month position at Japan’s national museum of ethnology in Osaka. The project in Japan was to teach the staff at the museum how to scan (digitize) and handle photographs in the museum’s archive (Nicholas was a photographer since age 16, and especially at age 19 when he worked at Tikal for 12 months).
So we have different teams of capable and experienced individuals working on separate projects: flora and fauna in Guatemala; inkjet printers, inks, printable materials, cutters, laminators, etc around the world. And a third division, MayanToons, which writes and illustrates books in Spanish, English, and local Mayan languages for local schools in remote rural areas of Guatemala.