A State of Equilibrium and Covering up Our Dirty Little Secret

A couple of weeks ago I dropped Mick and his family off at the bus terminal in Santa Rosa and collected two new arrivals. Inge, from Denmark, has joined the primate team and Kelsey from the USA, is a general volunteer and is helping out with the many projects we have running at the moment. Their arrival marked the beginning of a period of calm; you could say equilibrium, here at Laguna Blanca. Much as I enjoy the high turn over of volunteers we have passing though here, there are also rare occasions when we have a few weeks with no arrivals and departures. It’s at these times when I get the chance to pause for a moment and reflect on what a wonderful life I lead and how lucky I am to be here. And so with that in mind I thought this would be a good opportunity to give you the reader a taste of what a typical day at Laguna Blanca is like. There are currently 10, soon to be eleven, of us in the house. Our mornings begin at first light which is when traps need to be checked. So everyone who is undertaking fieldwork us usually up and fed by 6am. The primate team head out into the forest on our motocart and spend a few hours looking for the monkeys in an effort to increase their contact time and work towards habituating the group. This will then be followed by machetting new trails in order to open up the forest to allow further access to the monkeys. Nick and Noah are studying the opossums we have here and so check the traps each morning. Rich has just had his proposal approved and will beginning trapping and recording the behaviour of Microteiid lizards this week. Dec is running the camera trap project so is moving his traps on a regular basis and Augusta is out in the cerrado getting filthy measuring Clyomys burrows. By mid-morning/lunch time everyone is back at the house. Nick and Noah might have a small mammal for me to process for the museum and Dec doesn’t get any peace and quiet until he has seen if there was anything on the cameras! After a hearty lunch the volunteers all work on a number of tasks needed to help keep this place running; varnishing butterfly boxes, painting signs, improving our maps, laminating photographs etc all of these small but significant jobs are so important to us here at PLT. It’s not just the little jobs that the volunteers do to help keep this place amazing. Last week we took on a massive job. Here in rural Paraguay there is NO environmental awareness and waste management or recycling are simply not concepts people understand. So for us as an environmental organisation it is a real challenge disposing of waste. We reuse what we can, glass jars or bottles for example are used in the museum or as vegetable patch borders and cans can be sold for a small amount of cash. Beyond that however the only options we have are to burn or bury our waste and with limited space the latter has now become a problem. We had a couple of large pits behind the house where non-burnable waste was being “disposed” of. However over the months these have overflowed and needed a good sort out. So that is exactly what we did! All of us took it on one morning last week and in the space of two hours had collected, sorted and organised all of the rubbish from the two pits and the surrounding area. Plastic bottles, cans and glass jars that had made their way in there have been removed and sorted for various projects we have coming up, tins are ready for collection and best of all the two pits are now buried and a massive new pit has been dug. Not only that but we now have a fully functional fire pit once again and on our next trip to Santa Rosa we will buy some new big bins so we can continue separating our waste and keep this good thing going. All of our volunteers past, present, and I am sure future, are so precious to us at Laguna Blanca, we simply could not do what we do without them. And it is nice on occasion to have the chance to sit back and reflect on what a great project I work for. “Volunteers aren’t paid, not because they are worthless, but because they are priceless” (Anon)

A house full of wonderful people, St Paddy’s day and here’s to another great year!

It’s all go again here at PLT. We have had an influx of new volunteers. First to arrive were Emma, Yvonne and Laura from Ireland who are stopping off with us during their trip around South America. They had planned to come for 3 days but having been here for a week they have now booked on for another 2! (Be warned readers, Laguna Blanca has this effect on people!). Shortly after the girls arrival, Maria joined us, coincidently also from Ireland. Maria is here on one of the volunteerships and will be assisting Jonny in studying the capuchins in the Atlantic Forest. And our 3rd arrivals were Dave and Jess from Australia who are also touring South America. They have been here a couple of days and already have done wonders with my garden (and know what they are doing too which is more than I can say for myself!)

Everyone’s arrival could not have been better timed as they were all here for St Patrick’s Day. Needless to say with Paddy’s day being so big in Ireland it wasn’t long before a table of events had been drawn up for the day which included a “donkey” derby, the inaugural Laguna Blanca St Paddies Day Parade and a enactment of the banishing of snakes from Ireland! The president of Ireland was invited to participate in a Skype link up but due to other commitments on this very important day was unable to accept our offer. But, according to his secretary, he thanked us for the invitation and wished us well for the day.

We had a real turn up for the books a few days ago too. While I was off site Karina and JP were handed a rattlesnake in a bag by one of the local people. This may not sound like much (and probably isn’t everyone’s idea of a gift!) but the point is it was alive and unscathed. Normally these docile snakes are killed at first sight due to the fear they instil in the local people here (which, let’s face it is not unreasonable as they do have an extremely potent venom). However this one had been brought to us so we could release it back into the reserve. This is such a great achievement and if we can turn this into the norm we could save a lot of snakes here in this area.

And finally today is the 1year anniversary of me leaving the UK to come to Laguna Blanca. It has been such an amazing experience I don’t know if it is possible to even begin to list the highlights. I have met so many wonderful volunteers, learned so many new skills and watched this project develop so much over the last 12 months. Thank you to all the amazing volunteers who have made it what it was. I am really so proud to be part of this fantastic project and can’t wait to see what the next 12 months have in store!

Until next time

Helen

Large Animal Releases!

Hello folks,

Let me start by wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. The end of 2011 really went out with a bang for us here at Laguna Blanca as we had an influx of large animals to add to our species inventory.

I think it is safe to say that the most exciting find for December was a southern tamandua (an arboreal anteater) we helped to rescue a few weeks ago. Karina and Jorge, one of our forest guards, were called to a local house where the family had it in their shed. They had caught it as it was up a tree looking lost and a bit distressed and they asked us to come and collect it. Needless to say we were more than happy to oblige and after a few false starts Karina and Jorge managed to get it secured in a sack and into the back of the car. We then took it out into an area of cerrado that borders the transitional forest and let it go. It was a little bewildered when we let it out of the bag but soon realised it could make a bid for freedom and off it went. If you would like to see a short film of the release you can watch it on you tube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M6R5zLVyg4

But the anteater wasn’t the only large animal to add to our list, whilst out driving in the cerrado recently Karina managed to photograph 2 lesser grisons (a black and white mustelid that look similar to honey badgers in Africa). We caught an agouti on our camera trap and on New Years Eve I got a call from one of the forest guards to come and get a snake. This wasn’t that unusual as I often get called out for snakes, however I don’t usually have a 1.72m long boa constrictor to contend with! Actually this one was the model capture, slow and not even slightly aggressive it was easy to handle and get into a sack (which was lucky as I had an audience of about 10 people!). We released it that afternoon after finding a set of scales big enough to weigh it first (2.5kilos by the way)!

The animal releases didn’t end just because the year did. On the morning of New Years Day a fisherman appeared on the doorstep with a water bird for me. He was actually trying to sell it to me but when I explained that it would not be possible for me to give him any money for it because we don’t want to encourage people to catch animals in the reserve he was quite happy to give it to me anyway. We took some photographs and measured it and Paul our scientific co-ordinator identified it as a Pied Billed Grebe. Then later that day when the weather had cooled down a bit we took it to a nice sheltered spot by the lake and released it – but not before it gave Becky an indignant peck!

And finally, speaking of pecking (ok this is a really tenuous link) our burrowing owls are all doing really well. They have all mastered the art of flying and are really very tame, allowing us to get within about 2 meters and occasionally joining us on the porch of the volunteer house! Whilst this is lovely they have also discovered they can get an easy meal by steeling the moths from our moth light sheet, something they are not so welcome to do!

OK guys that’s all for this time and think, if you haven’t made a New Year’s Resolution yet maybe it should be to come and volunteer with us here in paradise!

Byeeeeeeeee

Helen

Controls, close encounters and capuchins

Greg Goodfellow is into the last two weeks of data collection for his investigation into white-rumped tanager duets, territorial, and mate defence behaviours. He has been successful in collecting a healthy and valid amount of data over a 3 month period which will eventually allow him to test his project hypotheses through statistical analysis. Greg has achieved this result through dedication, hard work, and a rigid consistency in his fieldwork. These final two week for Greg will involve collecting the last few data points and also conducting control playback, i.e playbacks that are not white-rumped tanager duets. This will assess if it is simply bird vocalisations they respond to or the actual duet of a perceived rival pairs. Greg also videoed some very interesting behaviour today. During one of playback experiments which included the presence of two dummy tanagers, the resident pair flew over and approached the dummies within 0.5m. Then they came together just 1m from the dummies in the same tree and produced a return duet. This evidence shows that on some level the visual presence of rivals adds to the severity of reactions from resident pairs.

Our botany intern Georgina Snelling has now begun data collection from her 100m x 100m plots. Within each of her 12 plots she has randomly selected ten 10m x 10m quadrants. Data will be collected from inside these quads to eventually give a 10% sample of the habitats. Next week she will begin using the new equipment Para la Tierra are providing. These include a moisture and conductivity probe as well as a sunlight sensor. At the same time Georgina is building up a herbarium of ferns and other botanical samples from the reserve. This involves a lot of ‘keying out’ as botanists say.

Aimee Oxley has completed her data collection period for her Masters research into the affect of habitat disturbance on small mammals. She gained a good amount of captures and data during the allocated time period and is now collating it all together in preparation for statistical analysis.

Aimee’s study in the Atlantic forest has had an additional unexpected result and benefit. Over the last two months Aimee and the volunteers who have helped her have regularly observed tufted capuchins (Cebus libidinosus paraguayanus). The reactions from the monkeys to human encounters has been so encouraging that we are now aiming to launch a long term primate project at Para la Tierra. The monkeys were not scared (which is usually the case for unhabituated primates) and did not run away. Instead they were more inquisitive and stared at the people for a while and then carried on with their business. This is an excellent sign and we intend to habituate these groups and get to know them a lot better.

Finally, I am leaving Laguna Blanca for a couple of days next week to visit Asuncion. In the capital I will be collecting some important items for camp, holding some research meetings with Para la Tierra collaborator Dr Robert Owen, and also giving a presentation on the organisation at an English speaking class.

Until next time ill say goodbye.

Best wishes,

Luke

Helen's First Month

Well I’ve survived my first month at Laguna Blanca and I have to say I have LOVED EVERY MINUTE OF IT! We have had two wonderful volunteers; Aurelien and Sara from France. They stayed for a month and have not only been great in the field they have also been a tremendous help with my not so brilliant Spanish (I’m trying!).

The work we have been doing has been so varied and interesting. I have found some new areas that I’ve been exploring for frogs, with reasonable success (apart from the leaky wellies that is) and have added a new species to our inventory list. Aside from frogging (my favourite of course!) we have been out smammal (small mammal) trapping for 2 weeks of the month – at new and full moon - and today we went to check the traps on horseback (yippee!). We also helped a couple of interns from Paraguay; Rodrigo and Johanna to dig in some pit fall trap lines. This was especially rewarding for me as when I was a volunteer I was taught how to build trap lines and now I’m the one teaching the volunteers. And a very good job they did of it too!

I had a very exciting find the other day too. When I was out checking the smammal traps in the cerrado I found a very interesting snake which is only the second specimen to be found in Paraguay – the first was found by our intern Anna in February. This is great from both a biological and conservation aspect as it means that the range of this species is a lot wider than was first thought. Plus it adds to the list of species present at Laguna Blanca Reserve and demonstrates how valuable the cerrado habitat is.

Its not all been work work work though, we have still managed to find the time and energy to have a few drinks in the evening and even a couple of parties, including a Royalty themed fancy dress dinner party in celebration of the royal wedding back in the UK – all very silly and highly amusing.

It is surprisingly cold here at the moment and so we are all walking about wearing all our clothes and drinking copious amounts of tea, coffee and mate – a Paraguayan hot drink. But the mornings are crisp and beautiful and it is far preferable to a winter back home!