Blogs

A petition week. Friday 28th September to Friday 5th October Alan Lee and Anja Kirchdorfer A petition week. Friday 28th September to Friday 5th October The first I heard of the proposed bill to reduce the size of the Bahuaja Sonene National Park (BSNP) was in an email from Peruvian biologist Juan Grados. His opening line to the mail was “please read this, it is very important”. The first part of the email consisted of the resignation letter from the former head of the Institute of Natural Resources, Luis Alfaro Lozano, outlining his protest to the proposed bill.

“So, is rabies found here?” was one of the questions posed to me at the health and safety briefing to the earthwatch volunteers who had just enjoyed their dinner and been subjected to the lengthy “how to look after yourself in the jungle talk”. Yes, bats carry rabies”. I knew this from Louise Emmon’s fieldguide to Neotropical mammals where she states that bats should always be handled with gloves.

It has been a long time since I have spent Christmas in the capital of Madre-de-Dios, Puerto Maldonado. The last time would have been in 2003 when I was helping set up Project Fauna Forever run by Chris Kirkby of the Tambopata Reserve Society.

Of Percy Nunez and tropical botany Alan Lee The last few days I have been honoured to have been in the company of one of Peru’s most sought after botanists, Percy Nunez. Percy’s love of plants started early but was nurtured under the eye of Alwyn Gentry, who wrote the most comprehensive account of the flora of the Neotropics to date. Percy has also worked with most of the big names from the region, including doing one of the first macaw and parrot diet studies under the tutelage of Charlie Munn in Manu.

Feb 2008

By Alice Chang and Kathy Schroer

The colpa is the greatest, I just have to say
I almost don´t want to leave at the end of a hot day.

Nest observation can sometimes be a bore,
But Hugo I and Hugo II will soon be out the door.

Richard, Jhin, and Fino take us walking through the forest,
They point out all the animals, for us who are the tourists.

Jhin found the ocelot, Fino found the potoo,
And Richard found the toad and the spider, too.

Our heroes are the climbing volunteers,
Amazon women who have no fears.

Adrian is their leader, who also has no fear,

Encounters with Margays Photo story by Alan Lee A few weeks ago I was coming back from a late afternoon transect and decided to stop at the small clay lick close to Posada Amazonas to see if there was any activity. I waited there until after dark, but it was one of the quiet periods with nothing happening. Taking out my maglite, I proceeded to head back to the lodge. Shortly thereafter I picked up some brilliant yellow eyeshine from the undergrowth. Focusing the beam of my light, I made out the shape of a small spotted cat.

In July I was in Peru with a group of students from my University helping my supervisor with a field course on Neotropical ecology and monitoring techniques. It was a great time with various projects doing all sorts of things from transects to count butterflies, quadrats to count frogs, monitoring of the macaw clay licks and counting palms and trees. It was the first time that most of the students had been to South America, let alone a rainforest, and of course there was a fair amount of nervousness regarding the environment we would be spending the next two weeks in.

Although I have only been back in the forest for 2 weeks, I have been rewarded with some fantastic sightings, despite spending a lot of time with project administration, training and volunteer orientation. On one of the first transects I did at Refugio Amazonas, with an early start of 03:00am, a blonde Tamandua crossed my path on its way through the forest in search of termites.

The clay lick – a meeting place? The orange glow in the clouds on the horizon promised a beautiful view from the tower at Posada. As the clouds slowly turned from grey to orange, tinged to red, the colours in turn reflected from the low lying mist through which emerged the crowns of the trees below. A single “kah” alerted me to the first pair of Mealy parrots heading in from the east towards the clay lick to the north-west.

There is no better way to remind oneself of the need for finding a way to live with the rainforests than to visit an area that has not been protected. Recently, my wife and I undertook a journey from Puerto Maldonado, the world’s only Capital of Biodiversity, to Sao Paolo, one of the world’s biggest cities. This is the length of the current Interoceanic Highway, or Estrado do Pacifica as it is known in Brazil. At the moment the paved road reaches to within 40km of Puerto Maldonado.