Our primary interest in plants are utilitarian plants, especially edible plants (edible seeds, fruits, vegetables, pulp (around seeds), edible flowers, roots, tubers, leaves, stalks) of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador.

We have accomplished lots of successful research on flowers that appear in Maya paintings and sculpture. Plus have an improved list of all plants used for roof thatching.

Naturally we are also working to save endangered species and fragile eco-systems.

For fauna, our interests and research includes:

• Mammals: arboreal, terrestrial mammals, felines, two kinds of monkey
• Birds: waterbirds, birds of prey, hummingbirds, birds that are featured in the Popol Vuh, birds that make impressive woven pendant nests (orioles, oropendolas, cacique), and any endangered species that needs extra help.
• Reptiles: especially turtles and crocodilians (caiman and two crocodiles)
• Amphibians: toads, frogs, and in between creatures (uo).
• Insects: lightning bugs and other beetles, wasps, bees, termites, butterflies, moths, spider nest structure plus Arachnids and other crawly creatures.

If you live in the Tikal National Park for 12 consecutive months you experience all the varying seasons. So you get to see the different species of birds, ants, and everything else that are more prevalent in some months than in others. I was at Tikal the entire year 1965 plus another month a later year to do additional archaeological work there.

My first experience with the “jungles of Mexico and Central America” was at age 16, in 1961. I was trying to get to Palenque Maya ruins in Chiapas. The train would not arrive until early evening so I decided to experience the rain forest by hiking along the train tracks into the forest. After a mile or so I saw a local Maya and asked him if he could take me into the rain forest so I could experience it.

Today, in 2018, I am still asking local people in different parts of Guatemala to take me into the mountains, valleys, swamps, lakes, and also cacti eco-systems in two of the several seasonally dry areas of Guatemala (Rio Motagua and Rio Sacapulas, very far from each other and not connected).

In 1962 I was back in the rain forests of Chiapas, hiking to the ruins of Bonampak. The INAH archaeology team had kindly welcomed me to assist them in setting up their camp for that season. So I experienced hiking from one Lacandon settlement to another: lots of remarkable trees, flowers. What a great experience (as a teenager, the summer before I began my stint at Harvard).

In summer 1963 and again in summer 1964 I was back in the rain forests of Tikal, Guatemala. The archaeologists of the project noticed that I spent more days at Tikal per visit then most tourists and that I had experience with photography of architecture. So Peter Harrison asked if I would like to be a volunteer to work as a student intern at Tikal in the following year.

Then for several years in the early 1970’s I lived overlooking Lake Yaxha as founder of a project to map the entire city of Yaxha (together with archaeologist Miguel Orrego). Plus archaeologist Carlos Rudy Larios assisted during the first season. Living year after year in this area alerted me to the need to protect the ruins from looting and to protect the forest from being bulldozed, or burned down for cattle ranches. So I began to work for several years to have Lake Yaxha and adjacent Lake Sacnab declared a national park. In subsequent years Guatemalan environmental groups were able to encourage that an even larger park could be added to the core that I initiated (so the expansion included Naranjo). I had done mapping at Nakum but in those years never had time to get to Naranjo. Today’s park is Parque Nacional Yaxha Nakum Naranjo.

So protection of the forest and the animals of all kinds is a crucial priority of me personally and of FLAAR in USA and FLAAR Mesoamerica in Guatemala.