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María Esther Gutierrez is an agronomy major specializing in orchid conservation. Her family originally comes from a town called Caranavi, part of the cloud forest region where the college is located. Though her family has resided in Carmen Pampa for more than seven years, she was born and raised along with her two sisters in La Paz. She never had the opportunity to meet her father. Maria Esther is thirty-one years old and just had her first son, an adorable thing only six months old. (María Esther's mother Francisca, known as Doña Pancha, is known and loved by many students at the college for her personality and her food: she runs one of the four food stalls on Campus Leahy.)
María Esther's project is about the cultivation in vitro ("in glass," in the laboratory in test tubes) of orchid seeds. She hopes to preserve rare orchids by cultivating them from their dust-like seeds. One of the major problems facing orchids is their natural beauty, which causes many onlookers, such as local farmers or tourists, to rip them from trees or out of the ground without understanding the detrimental effects on the ecosystem. By cultivating these orchids, she will help ensure the balance of the ecosystem in the Yungas by providing orchids for legal sale to discourage their removal from the forest, and to repopulate the forest if necessary.
Photo: María Esther poses with an orchid on campus.
Her thesis is one of the first of its kind at the college. This is a challenge for Maria Esther who has a passion for lab work but must deal with the fact that the college is ill equipped for this research. With funds from conBolivia she will be able to purchase some of the most important materials.
She hopes to continue her education by obtaining her masters in the United States specializing in conservation-oriented in vitro production, then come back as a professor and work at the college. We hope to have her one day on the staff at the college.
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