La Sierra, ("The Mountains"), is a multidisciplinary field station being developed in the Deep River basin of the Toledo district of southern Belize. It is intended to provide a
cutting-edge platform for field research, education, conservation, and indigenously and globally sustainable development in a variety of areas and will complete a national network of
such stations. Situated within the Columbia River Forest Reserve, it is being designed and built gratis as an exercise in jungle construction by the Royal Engineers of the British Army.
It will feed and sleep up to thirty-two. Already over half complete, it presently features laboratories for biology, archaeology, and geology and accommodations for sixteen.
Of note, a cutting edge computer lab for Geographic Information Systems work (spatial data processing) and other technologically related research is planned for the near future.
Additionally, we have procedures underway to establish a La Sierra Clinic adjunct facility in the region that will support occupant and visiting doctors, scientists, and other
professionals as well as the local and surrounding indigenous Maya communities including those in the nearest villages of Medina Bank, Indian Creek and Golden Stream.
We hope to make the most of this facility, not just for archaeology and natural history but for all of the field sciences including indigenously and globally sustainable
development sciences (economic botany/ethnobotany, conservation, organic farming, cultivation sciences, natural resources management et cetera), the intersection of
modern medicine and public health with traditional healing modalities and many other venues.
In particular, we believe that La Sierra could prove very valuable to scholars, Belize, and the community at large by providing a platform for research, training, and
clinical services in biodiversity and global health; economic botany/ethnobotany and traditional healing modalities: shamanism, bush healing and herbalism; field medicine of
all sorts, public health and other healthcare initiatives; and sustainable endeavors development programs as well as other conservation sciences. La Sierra could support investigations,
educational programs, and clinical treatment for the local community and the world at large. Outlined here are some of our preliminary plans regarding prospects and priorities for
programming at the La Sierra Tropical Research Facility and Clinic Adjunct Facility.
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