College of Agriculture & Natural Resources Department of Fisheries and Wildlife

Major Advisor: 

Dr. Gary Urquhart

Background:

Armando Dans was born and raised in Bluefields, on the east coast of Nicaragua. He obtained an Agro-forestry Engineering degree at the University of the Autonomous Regions of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua and a Postgraduate Diploma in International Wildlife Conservation Practice at WildCRU/University of Oxford.

He has been focusing on the conservation of the megafauna in Nicaragua’s Caribbean Region. For the last seven years he has been collecting field data and conducting conservation actions with Dr. Chris Jordan (Global Wildlife Conservation/Panthera) and Dr. Gerald Urquhart (Michigan State University), focused on the Tapir’s ecology, the Jaguar’s corridor, and large mammals’ habitat conservation. He is the CO-PI of the Nicaraguan Tapir Project initiative and the Indio Maiz Patrol System, working in collaboration with the South Autonomous Government and the Rama and Kriol Territorial Government. As a conservation practitioner, he works in conjunction with local indigenous and afro-descendant territories as well as regional authorities and local universities to execute local actions for the conservation of some of the last strongholds for biodiversity in the country. In recent years, he has been training indigenous rangers; promoting the use of SMART with local officials to help monitor and protect national and indigenous reserves in addition to being involved in the creation of new PA's in his study area.