Stephanny Arroyo Arce & Belen Castuera

Belen Castuera: Stephanny. When people ask what you do for a living, what do you say? Because when I’m asked, I say I’m a banker. The conversation is over. End of story. But in your case you work with jaguars, with a tracker dog… I find it so interesting.

Stephanny Arroyo Arce: Yes, sometimes it’s a bit complicated. I tell them I’m a biologist. And then ‘what do you do’? And I say ‘well, I go on field trips throughout Costa Rica looking for feline feces.’ And they ask ‘what do you mean?’ So I explain that it’s a genetic tracking project, that I work with a Labrador retriever. And people become very interested in the work.

Belen: When did you realize that things like jaguars, Reventazon, and Costa Rica’s hydropower generation were connected?

Stephanny: Reventazon is the largest hydropower project in Central America – so it is going to have a potential impact on biodiversity. It is in an area that is very important for the conservation of jaguars. Panthera started monitoring activities to understand what the area was like before construction started so that the impact of the project on biodiversity could be understood and so that mitigation measures could be put in place to avoid cutting off this route for the jaguars.

Belen: What is the greatest lesson you think you have learned in your work?

Stephanny: When I started college I only wanted to work with animals, I did not want to work with people. But I realized over time that this is not possible – if you want to do conservation you have to reach people first because at the end of the day they are the ones who take the decisions. On the one hand I need to be in the field and collect and publish data. But I always need to ensure that the data makes sense to people in government, in municipalities, and in communities, because that’s how they will want to protect these animals.