News

Oswald Schmitz, instructor for the strategies course of the Tropical Forest Landscapes online certificate program, is featured in the 2025 edition of the Canopy, YSE's annual publication. In the article "Animating the Carbon Cycle: A New Rewilding Model," Schmitz highlights the new interactive platform for the role that healthy wildlife populations play in boosting ecosystem carbon capture and storage, developed based on his synthesis of data and mathematical models. Read more.

In the spring 2025, Eva Garen led Yale School of the Environment master's students in her seminar “Engaging Landholders and Communities in Conserving and Restoring Tropical Forest Landscapes” on a spring break trip to the Azuero Peninsula in Panama. The field course was highlighted in The Overstory, the Yale Forest Forum's tri-annual publication. Read more.

Crepaldi presented “The IPÊ-ELTI Webinar ‘Biodiversity at the Center of the Dialogue’ and Its Outcomes” during the 2025 National Forest Dialogue Meeting, hosted by TFD-Brazil in Alter do Chão, Pará, Brazil. The audience included companies, sectoral associations, civil society organizations, community groups, Indigenous peoples, professional associations, and institutions of education, research, and extension. In her presentation, Crepaldi highlighted ELTI’s work in Brazil and shared the key outcomes of the IPÊ-ELTI webinar “Biodiversity at the Center of the Dialogue,” held in November 2024 in partnership with TFD-Brazil.

Bali Ocean Days and Showcase 2025, held in Jimbaran, Bali, focused on supporting Indonesia’s blue economy and marine conservation. Organized by the Sky Blue Sea Foundation and AIS Forum, the event brought together policymakers, researchers, and innovators under the theme “Empowering Blue Tech and Advancing Sustainable Ocean Solutions.” It featured discussions on sustainable marine policies, ocean technology, blue carbon, marine pollution, and sustainable fisheries. Highlights included the Sky Blue Sea Foundation Award to OceanX’s Dr. Vincent Pieribone, and an impact showcase of ocean innovations by various conservation groups. The event emphasized collaboration and sustainable financing to advance ocean protection and resilient coastal economies. Read more.

Two Tropical Forest Landscapes (TFL) participants and Three Cairns Fellows were recently featured on the Yale School of the Environment's website. Both participants in the 2024-2025 delivery of the program, Pervez Manan from Pakistan and Andrea Rodríguez Zepeda from Mexico shared their stories and why they chose to enroll in the TFL online certificate program. Read more.

Gillian Bloomfield, ELTI associate director of online programs, along with colleagues at the Center for Business and the Environment at Yale received the Linda K. Lorimer award for their leadership, innovation, collaboration, and overall excellence relative to their work on Yale School of the Environment's online certificate programs. Read more.

UFSB in partnership with Veracel Celulose, IPÊ, and Yale University, trained farmers in the Miramar community on the management of "erva-baleeira" (Varronia curassavica) for essential oil production, creating new income opportunities. The initiative aimed to train farmers in harvesting, storage, and oil extraction processes, as well as to develop a business plan to demonstrate the profit potential from the plant, which was previously considered a weed. The courses were conducted in collaboration with several institutions and highlighted the sustainable use of local biodiversity, attracting significant interest from the community. Read more.

Representatives from the Bahia Forest Forum (FFBA) participated virtually this semester in the second edition of the Productive Recovery Course, promoted by the IPÊ Institute, a member of the FFBA. The course aimed to provide technical training based on scientific foundations, showcasing productive systems that can help transform rural landscapes into potential Biodiversity Corridors. Topics covered included Agroforestry Systems (SAF), Silvopastoral Systems (SPS), and Native Forestry. Read more.

From November 2023 to January 2024, IPÊ – Ecological Research Institute and the Yale University Environmental Training and Leadership Initiative (ELTI) held the online course Restoration Monitoring. IPÊ shared a summary of the event on their website. Read more.

In 2023, ELTI hosted two online training programs in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United nations (FAO): Forest and Landscape Restoration for Young People in Asia and Forest and Landscape Restoration for Young People in Africa. In the article published by FAO, course participants Ahmed Abi Abdi Warsame and Yukie Yokoyama gave insight to their experiences. Read more.

On November 7 and 8, the Institute for Ecological Research (IPÊ)-ELTI, and the Socio-environmental Development for Family Farming Project (DSAF) at the Agroecology and Organic Production Studies Center (NEA) of the Federal University of Southern Bahia (UFSB) hosted an Agroforestry Planning field course. This course, which includes a total of 12 hours of training, was exclusively available to 20 farmers affiliated with the Nova Vitória Association, Maravilha Association, Produzir Association, and Irmã Dorothy Stein Association, all beneficiaries of the DSAF project. IPÊ shared a summary of the course on their website.

ELTI hosted a 2-day workshop to discuss research, teaching, and applied initiatives conducted by students, faculty, and staff members associated with The Forest School at the Yale School of the Environment focused on forest landscapes restoration in Southern Bahia, Brazil. Representatives of ELTI’s primary partner in Brazil, the Institute for Ecological Research (IPÊ), attended the event to share their work, including their capacity development activities as part of the ELTI project. The workshop produced recommendations for future collaborations that the ELTI and IPÊ teams will integrate into their strategy for expanding the IPÊ-ELTI training landscape (see the Overstory article about the workshop for details).

CIPAV-ELTI's Colombia Coordinator Zoraida Calle, ELTI alum Mauricio Carvajal, and CIPAV Executive Director Enrique Murgueitio published an article in De Carne magazine. The article summarizes soil loss prevention techniques and agroecological practices for soil restoration in the context of sustainable livestock production.

A new $3 million grant from Arcadia will support the Environmental Leadership & Training Initiative to continue to train and empower people from all backgrounds to restore and conserve tropical forest landscapes. This generous support will enable the team to expand the program’s reach by developing new online courses, increasing scholarship support for participants, and advancing the open access Tropical Restoration Library. Arcadia is a charitable foundation that works to protect nature, preserve cultural heritage and promote open access to knowledge.