Tracing some of the Escuela Argentina de Naturalistas (Argentina Naturalists School – EAN) graduates, we arrive at the historic and prestigious Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales ‘Bernardino Rivadavia’ in order to discover the work of Cynthia Bandurek, someone who combines art, science and esthetics.

‘Since I was a little girl I ´ve felt fascinated by nature. At 8 I used to spend hours painting animals’. Cynthia is holding a paintbrush between her teeth while holding an old stuffed Andean condor in her hands. They both constitute a tightrope walker scene. She acknowledges having spent hours reading ecology books under a parasol on the beach. Needless to say, her generation (she as a teenager was no exception) started to sense something wrong going on in the planet and (feeling) that some of the wonders in this world were endangered.

This issue impressed her. She graduated and started Ecology studies. She did not waste time as she is not now while grooming the feathers of the inert animal which after a while into the restoring work seems to be looking at her: ‘We have rescued old holdings of the museum. These stuffed animals are dozens of years old, some almost a century. We expect them to, in some way, come back to life and give visitors to the exhibit an illusion.’

My undergraduate degree in ecology became a springboard for reaching the Escuela Argentina de Naturalistas (Argentine Naturalists School-EAN). ‘It was not until I found the school that I could delve into these topics. EAN was for me a special place where I found people sharing my passion, a place which opened up the doors for me to take action and achieve (things) regarding conservation issues.’

Cynthia started work at the Museum after being at the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) – The National Scientific and Technical Research Council, where she performed a clerical administrative job. ‘I obviously did not want to have such Administrative position but I am glad having hung in for a while’.

Needless to say, she possesses a certain vision of things and therefore this enables her to imagine landscapes where she has never been before and as a consequence transfer them to a painting implementing oil and acrylic strokes. In general, they are African landscapes, the Savana, lion families (‘I´d love to visit Africa, just its name makes my imagination run free’). But this young photographer and painter, who is also a dancer and acrobat in her spare time, has her mind set on Argentina.

‘If we want to preserve, we need to get involved and put one´s boots on’, she states. Cynthia is also taking part in an amphibian preservation project at Reserva Natural Otamendi (Otamendi Natural Reserve) under National Parks Administration (Administración de Parques Nacionales) and contributed work as field assistant for a population dynamics research on Butia Yatay at Parque Nacional El Palmar (El Palmar National Park), set in an enclave in the Province of Entre Rios.

She also admits that younger generations need to obtain more and better information on environmental problems and get ready for swinging into action. With the resources obtained at EAN, Cynthia ended up involved with Estación Biológica Corrientes (Corrientes Biological Station), a museum project of their own, in which interpretation and educational environmental activities for kids who are studying in rural schools of the littoral province are being proposed.