Biodiversity and Human health in Surabaya

At the end of July Moreno visited the Department of Biology at Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS) in Surabaya, Indonesia. This was a great opportunity to establish cross-cutting collaboration on several biodiversity topics as well as human health topics.

The visit was an occasion to meet ITS staff and students, and present some of the research done at the BGC lab. Java is one of the most biodiverse islands on Earth, and faces several challenges for both biodiversity conservation and human-wildlife coexistence.

This was also a great opportunity to visit several national park (full of endemic orchid species) and several NGOs, including a local base camp where snake rescuing volunteers do a fantastic job at mitigating human-snake conflict in Surabaya and surrounding areas. This visit sets the start of a great collaboration between BGC lab and ITS.