DURHAM, N.C. – Dalia Amor Conde, a PhD student in landscape ecology at the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at 91ÉçÇø¸£Àû, has received a prestigious 2005 WINGS Women of Discovery Award and been named a Carey Fellow.

Conde was honored at a March 3 ceremony at the National Arts Club in New York City.

The WINGS Awards were initiated in 2003 by the New York-based nonprofit organization Wings WorldQuest Inc. to recognize, promote and celebrate the contributions of extraordinary women explorers.

Conde was a recipient of the inaugural WINGS Field Work Rolex Award, awarded to promising student explorers. She was selected for the honor in recognition of her field studies using global position system technology to analyze the effects of deforestation on jaguar populations and habitats in the Mayan rainforest of Mexico, Guatemala and Belize.

Conde has conducted her research in the Mayan rainforest since 1999, working with the Mexican nonprofit organization Unidos Para la Conservacion (UPC) to develop sustainable and productive projects with the forestry communities in the region.

In 2002, she joined the research group of Dr. Stuart Pimm, Doris Duke Professor of Conservation Ecology at the Nicholas School, as a doctoral student, and began focusing more specifically on jaguar habitats in the Mayan rainforest. Her husband, Fernando Colchero, is also a member of Pimm’s research group taking part in the rainforest research. He is a PhD student in animal population dynamics and landscape ecology.

Other research partners on the jaguar project include scientists and students at the National University of Mexico, Ecosafaris, and UPC.

The five women explorers winning WINGS Women of Discovery Awards this year in non-student categories were marine archaeologist Sue Hendrickson of the United States; planetary geologist Nathalie Caprol of France; paleoarchaeologist Ana Pinto of Spain; ethnographic photographer Marianne Greenwood of Sweden; and Himalayan mountaineer and Tibetan scholar Sabriye Tenberken of Germany, who has conquered many of the region’s highest mountains despite being blind.

For more information about Wings WorldQuest and its awards, visit its Web site at.

Wings WorldQuest has awarded Dalia Amor Conde the 2005 Field work Rolex Award Wings Women Discovery Award for Lifetime Achievement and has selected her as a 2005 Carey Fellow.