Report prepared by Meghan Stewart and Cassandra Kosterman, students in BCIT's Fish, Wildlife and Recreation Program.

Judith Rosales is a Venezuelan biologist that has extensively studied the riparian forests of the Orinoco River Basin. She has written many articles regarding the counties ecology.

Website: Orinoco.jrosales.s5.com

Jesus Rivas is a biologist from the University of Central Venezuela. He was born in Venezuela and worked at the University of Boston, made National Geographic documentaries, obtained a Ph. D. at the Laboratory of Reptile Ethology in the University of Tennessee. Currently, he is completing his dissertation on anacondas in Venezuela, teaching at the Otterbein College in Ohio and creating documentaries. He is interested in natural history, ethnology, and conservation and more specifically habitat degradation from human activities. He usually deals with the behavioral ecology and conservation of green iguanas and green anacondas in the Llanos of Venezuela and sometimes with the Orinoco crocodile, spectacled caiman, and green sea turtles. He says "I believe that until we offer real solutions for people that live in rural areas to live in harmony with nature we will continue to sink in our current environmental crisis. I am a firm advocate for conservation education at both the early grades and at the college level. I also believe that if we are to succeed in the campaign for habitat conservation it will not be by using a whole lot more of technology, but by using a little bit more of common sense." He wants to raise money to help create a nature reserve in the Llanos and other important South American areas to protect them from logging, oil exploration, and poaching. The nature reserve would have a tourist lodge where tourists from all over the world can experience the area while being educated.

He can be contacted at jesus@anacondas.org and you can check out his website and a National Geographic article about him.

In the National Geographic article the writer comments on how Jesus finds the anacondas: "To find the snakes, he wades-barefoot-in the knee-deep water of the Venezuelan llanos, the lowland savannah that is flooded each year during rainy season."