An impromptu rattkesnake workshop, fuzzies falling out of the sky and old friends reunited

I love it when it gets hot, so much more goes on! For example last week I was walking towards the beach in the late afternoon when Jonny phoned “there’s a rattlesnake in the water, a rattlesnake in the water RIGHT NOW!” as I sped towards him it was clear there definitely was a rattlesnake and what a beauty! The beach was swarming with Paraguayan tourists and Jonny was keeping people back (not too tricky when most people are afraid of snakes) and keeping an eye on the snake. I jumped into the water with the snake and waited to see what it was going to do. Although rattlesnakes have potent venom they are not aggressive so I was confident that I could keep my distance whilst steering it away from people who may panic and harm the snake. Once it was on the beach it stayed where it was, so I asked Jonny to run back to the house and get a bag and the snake grabber. I needed to bag it and take it somewhere safe away from people. While we were waiting, quite a crowd had gathered so I used it as an opportunity to talk about the species and explain that whilst these snakes are venomous they aren’t aggressive so the actual threat they pose is fairly low. Jonny returned and our star was a model example while I demonstrated how to catch and safely bag a snake. A collective sigh of relief followed by a round of applause from the crowd concluded a successful and admittedly quite exciting snake rescue. We took it to the forest and released it unharmed. I love my job. But it’s not just the scaly wildlife that gets rescued. I was working in the museum a couple of days ago when one of the forest guards came to find me. On the floor in the corner of their house, was the most pathetic neonatal small mammal, squeaking its little heart out. Even the most hardened herpetologist is going to go weak at the knees at the sight of that; so I had no hope! I scooped him up and took him home. Sadly after two long nights of round the clock feeding he didn’t make it, it was always going to be a long shot but at least we tried and we did manage to establish he was a rodent before he went off to the great cheese board in the sky. And finally it was exactly this week last year when Norman Scott and his wife Joan came to visit us at Laguna Blanca. Norman Scott is a world expert in herpetology and one of PLT’s extrernal collaborators. He returned, and this time brought his family with him. It was such fun to have 3 generations of Scotts and their respective partners here. Nick Reed is Norman’s granddaughter’s partner and is a film maker by profession. How convenient! A PLT movie is something we’ve wanted to make for a while now, so when Nick suggested that he wanted to get some footage, everything simply fell into place. We would like to say a massive thank you to Nick for his hard work making this happen and to the interns Georgia and Ruby for being brave enough to talk about their projects on camera, plus all the other volunteers who contributed their personal footage to the film. Be the first to view it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHlICBk2zzM&feature=plcp Now there is no excuse not to come and volunteer with us! Until next time Hx

I had a dream by Georgia Lorenti

I had a dream. A vision of distant cultures, exotic wildlife and enthralling adventure. I had always seen myself as a great explorer, boldly going where no one had gone before. Convinced I was destined to master the world of primatology, I packed my bag and boarded the plane to Paraguay. South America represented the ultimate getaway, an untouched paradise, an adventurer’s dream. I was a pioneer on the verge of discovery, a traveller of the open road. Fuelled by the promise of adventure and with my iPod set on shuffle, I donned my new fedora, and arrived in Asuncion. Armed only with the Spanish speaking capabilities of a German shepherd, it quickly dawned on me that I was out of my depth. I was in a foreign country and miles away from home. Up the creek without a paddle, had I bitten off more than I could chew? No, this was my first solo expedition and adversity was to be expected. I simply gritted my teeth, laced up my hiking boots, and became really really good at charades. After the initial shock, the rest of the journey was smooth sailing. The people were very friendly and extremely patient. I caught the earliest bus to Santa Rosa and was soon safely at Para La Tierra. Once at the reserve, I was immediately enamoured by the pristine beauty of the sanctuary. The lake glistened a beautiful cool blue and the hot sun bathed the dry landscape. The reserve was teeming with wildlife and the staff were extremely welcoming. I soon felt right at home, and what a place to live in! In my first couple of weeks we had three visitors to the house, a beautiful tropical screech owl, a brilliant black tegu, and a massive rococo toad. Living in close proximity to such like-minded people also provided the perfect opportunity to form some terrific friendships. I met several great people and often found myself laughing hysterically. I deeply enjoyed playing volleyball on the beach, despite having the hand-eye coordination of a dead badger. Swimming in the lake became a daily ritual which I will miss immensely. I had joined Para La Tierra as an intern for the primate initiative, which centred on a small population of capuchin monkeys. This project had been started 10 months earlier and was still in the initial stages of habituating the capuchins. Habituation is a long process which requires an enormous amount of time, dedication and perseverance. It involves many hours spent locating the capuchins, marking their GPS location and recording their behavioural activity. Most of the time, the capuchins were observed travelling as they were still largely unaccustomed to the presence of humans. My internship started almost immediately and I found my supervisor to be extremely knowledgeable. He quickly introduced me to the Atlantic Forest, which was to be my office for the next four months. Initially, my main responsibilities involved observing the capuchins and trail maintenance. It soon became apparent that I was hopeless in the forest! I spent a majority of my time stumbling over tree roots, tearing my clothes on branches, stinging my hands on nettles, and wrapping myself in spider webs. In general, my face spent more time in the mud than looking up for capuchins and I was starting to doubt my future in primatology. Jane Goodall had made it look so easy! What was I doing wrong? Then suddenly, everything changed. A heavy crash of branches caught my attention, and was followed quickly by a strange chirping noise. My heart starting pumping, the adrenaline started rushing. There they were! Up in the canopy! I completely forgot what I was doing. All the training I had received totally disappeared. I was looking at real capuchins, wild capuchins, and all the weeks of struggling through unforgiving forest seemed utterly worth it! It took my breath away, and has continued to do so every time since. One of the greatest aspects of completing an internship at Para La Tierra is the opportunity to plan and carry out your own piece of original research. The supervisors are all very willing to offer guidance and constructive input, but ultimately you get to design your own field study. My project featured an investigation into the forest structure and selection of sleeping areas selected by Cebus libidinosus paraguayanus. The aim of the study was to determine whether capuchin monkeys selected their sleeping areas at random or due to a particular preference in forest structure. As the capuchins were still unhabituated, following them to their respective sleeping sites was out of the question. This was a huge limiting factor! I had to rely on finding them during the night or just before dawn, when the capuchins were already asleep. It took a lot of effort and a lot of early mornings, not to be attempted by the faint hearted. At the conclusion of my project, I had located six sleeping areas and sampled the forest structure by completing four belt transects. A statistical analysis of my results revealed that the capuchins preferred sleeping areas with <75% canopy coverage, tree diameter of >65cm, and a first branch height of >18m. In addition to the capuchins, every day at Para La Tierra presented the opportunity to see more and exciting animals. I had the great fortune to see a large variety of creatures, such as rattle snakes, coatis, tarantulas, frogs, turkey vultures, opossums, and even an armadillo! Once in the forest, I happened to dump straight into a fox! He was very civil, I apologised for inconveniencing him, and we both parted as friends. He was off conducting whatever foxy business he had to attend, and I was in hot pursuit of the capuchins. Alas with any great quest, it became time for it to end. The adventure must finish and the explorer must embark on a new and exciting venture. In stories, such as the odyssey, the hero would have learned a valuable lesson and is better prepared for the future. Para La Tierra was, I hope, the first stop in my on-going saga. I have learned so much and have absolutely loved every moment. It was the perfect starting point and an amazing experience. The ultimate question is this? Are you ready to take up the mantle and be the hero of your own quest? Go ahead, I dare you… Georgia Lorenti Para La Tierra Intern

It’s good, no great, to be back!

Well helllooooo Para La Tierra, Man it’s good to be back and it is SO DAMN HOT! Anyone who has been following this blog will know that I’ve not been around for a while now as I “popped” (ha! 68 hours door to door if you fly from Rio!) back to the UK for a summer of visiting friends, family and festivals. And it was amazing but is now a distant memory as I settle back into life at Laguna Blanca. You’d think after two months away that there would be a gentle ease back into life at the reserve. How naive! It’s been all go from the word, well, go. I had a lovely group to arrive home to; Ruby who is undertaking a bat inventory, Grant studying beetle parasites, Georgia our primate intern and Airell a general volunteer who is getting involved in everything, are all here with myself, Joe and Jonny. And in the last few days Jacqui a primate team volunteer has also joined our group. Within days, nay, hours of my return we had a group of 15 students come and stay. They were from FaCEN; the biology department of the university in Asuncion and were here for two nights camping in front of the house and cooking over an open fire. The group had teams studying three taxa; butterflies, herps and bats, and on their only night of trapping the bat team caught a new species for San Pedro Department Lasiurus blossevilli, much to Ruby’s frustration! On Saturday night we joined the group for a bonfire and bilingual game of charades which I have to say was surprisingly successful, even if my team didn’t win! The FaCEN haven’t been the only group to come and stay. Paul Smith our Scientific Co-ordinator has just been for an overnight visit with 12 tourists. One of Paul’s other jobs is to host tours through Fauna Paraguay (www.faunaparaguay.com) and because the avian fauna in particular is so diverse here, he often visits with groups of birdwatchers. This was great for us as not only did we get to meet some likeminded people we also took a trip up to the White-winged Nightjar land. This is a piece of cerrado north of the reserve is one of the last breeding sites for this critically endangered bird; our flagship species featured on our logo. The breeding site is actually precariously positioned on private land sandwiched between an area of marsh land and a eucalyptus plantation and is probably only still there as the marsh provides a fire break for the plantation. PLT are currently working hard to ensure the continued existence of this site. It was a fantastic experience bouncing over the cerrado at night on the back of the 4x4, using a massive spot light to detect eyeshine from the birds and being able to get near enough to the birds to take close up photographs. The volunteers all agreed it was a great evening. And although our group missed them Paul spotted not one but two maned wolf while he was there. Despite our extreme jealously we are delighted to add this sighting to our species list, especially as this species is listed as Near Threatened by the IUCN. And in other news we are very happy to announce the publication of not one but two scientific papers. “Smith et al (2012) New distributional records of amphibians for Departamento San Pedro, Paraguay (Amphibia)” is a checklist paper of 12 new species of amphibians that we have found since beginning our amphibian inventory and is free to download at http://www.checklist.org.br/getpdf?NGD056-12 or on the PLT website at www.paralatierra.org. And “Smith et al (2012) The Didelphimorphia (Didelphidae) of Reserva Natural Laguna Blanca, Departamento San Pedro, Paraguay” is our opossum paper featuring all 6 species of opossum found at the reserve and is published in the most recent edition of Acta zoológica lilloana. And as an extra bonus, this journal chose one of our photographs for the cover picture of their September edition. Fame and fortune awaits! I think that’s all for this time, see you in a couple of weeks folks. Chauuuuuuuuuuuu Helen

Time Flies

It’s amazing how time flies. Our fearless leader Karina has been on vacation for 3 weeks already and it feels like just yesterday that she was handing over the keys to her office, the master list of arrival and departure dates and telling me with complete seriousness to be careful not to burn the whole place down. The first few days of her being gone definitely felt a bit weird; everything stayed the same, Ruby was still catching bats, Georgia still chasing her monkeys but there was just something missing from the place. It’s just not the same without her, however miraculously we have managed to keep PLT from completely imploding. I have to admit that the thing I disliked the most about Karina not being here was that I had to take over the weekly shopping. Thankfully Helen has recently returned from England and I immediately thrust that responsibility into her lap. She, having had a slightly overextended holiday in England, has come back full of enthusiasm and new ideas. She’s been tilling our garden and we’ve already got a beautiful bench of seedlings popping up out of recycled egg crates and milk cartons. In terms of the scientific progress, Ruby’s bat project has reached its halfway point and she’s caught an amazing amount of bats across 5 different genera and an estimated 8 species since we’ve started. Georgia is less than halfway through her project but has already completed an entire transect line of vegetation sampling and found at least one of the capuchins sleeping sites (The capuchins announced their displeasure of being awoken in the middle of their sleep by throwing their feces down from the tree tops to display that even monkeys can wake up on the wrong side of the bed/tree). Airell has been integral to both projects, helping Georgia on her late night forest treks and helping Ruby with preparing the bats that have been caught. He’s also spent a lot of time macheteing in the Atlantic Forest and trapping for opossums in the Transitional forest. On another note, I’m sure that the majority of you were aware that October 1st was International Bat Conservation Day and to celebrate such an important day Ruby, the forest guards and I went to teach a lesson in the local elementary school. We prepared a “A to Z, of Bat Facts,” powerpoint and Jorge did a fantastic job presenting it in a mixture of Spanish and Guarani. We finished the lesson with a craft where the students traced their hands on a piece of paper and cut and pasted them onto paper bat bodies. The lesson ended with the whole class flapping their paper bats about the room making high pitched squeaking noises. Happy International Bat Conservation Day to everyone. Joe

Tangled puppets by Ruby Easther

When I was a kid, I used to have two string puppets. One was a carpenter and the other a little drummer boy. They were handmade works of art that some family friend had bought me for one of my earliest birthdays. As I grew up I would carefully take out my string puppets to play with, but more often than not they would end up horrendously tangled. My Great Aunt Margaret was the best at untangling my little string puppets. Oh, if she were here now. Untangling bat nets can test the limits of anyone’s patience. My name is Ruby and I am an intern from New Zealand working on a bat inventory of Laguna Blanca with Joe. I have been here for almost four weeks now and have seen tarantulas, scorpions, owls, giant moths (that allegedly suck your blood and predict who is going to die by perching on their doorframe) cute little beetles and one huge, big Black Tegu (who we named Targaryen) all just inside our little PLT house. In addition to these weird and wonderful critters, there is no shortage of spiders. As I do not possess any arachnaphilia (yes, that is a made-up word) I have successfully made my bed a fortress against spiders – the top bunk completely encircled by a mosquito net and a foot away from the walls in all directions. I am one step from putting a moat around it. Airell, a volunteer here, suggests a moat of vinegar - apparently insects and spiders don’t like vinegar - I quite like the sound of that. But we are getting off topic, bats are where it’s at. Joe and I have been setting up 5 bat mist nets in different habitats to catch a selection of bats that reside in the reserve. So far we have caught 17 bats, 9 of those in one night! I’m not sure how much you know about bats, but it turns out they are not only strong and feisty but also spindly and easily tangled. As you may imagine, catching a bat in a bat net leaves not only a mess reminiscent of a child’s string puppet but also a sharp set of little bat teeth which wooden puppets seldom boast. The bats we have caught so far have been a pretty decent variation in size, my favourite being about the size of my thumb and weighing all of 6grams. Six grams! So tiny. We think this little guy is Molossops temminckii, the Dwarf Dog-faced Bat, but to be certain of the species of any of the bats we catch we need to remove their skulls and feed them to PLT’s flesh-eating beetles(!). Once the beetles have done their thing, we will take some measurements of the skull and identify them further from there. Anyway, I’m off to the cerrado to catch some bats, Ruby

Zen and the Art of Trail Maintenance - A blog entry for PLT by Rosemary Gamsa (part 2)

Here is the essence of The Zen of Trail-Clearance / Maintenance (using the term Zen very loosely, as I know little about it) and its most obvious effects: One experiences a sort of time-dilation in the physical action; the upswing, the core torsion, as the body twists, coiled and ready to unleash the optimum amount of force, at the optimum angle. There is beauty in this moment of stillness and balance as the machete reaches its zenith, and the trained eye judges precisely the thickness, solidity and elasticity of the target material. Will the blade deftly slice, scythe seamlessly, exert a blunt force trauma, bludgeon, smash, land like a professional executioner’s sword, or recoil sending a spray of red soil up into the eyes? The judgment is made in a split-second, the body shifts a degree this way or that, and the cutting edge arcs downward, whistling. The result is a satisfyingly severed root, a neatly spliced and knotted vine, or a stubborn thud as the unrelenting tangle of underbrush springs back, having moved but one millimeter. It is an art to not take the results personally, sometimes the easiest section of pre-cut path is the nastiest to clear. Neither can one rest on one’s laurels after a series of elegant and rapid-fire slashes. The fresh, leafy forest soon gives way to dry, head-high grasses; to bouncy and treacherous bamboo, full of rotten tubular beetle hotels and crawling with gentlemanly spiders, making off discreetly on their long legs. Myself, I like to picture them in tails and top hats, bumbling along to fetch the morning paper, it helps dispel any residual fear. All too frequently a devastatingly large ants’ nest is revealed, and one must scarper, leaping and hopping crudely from the scuttling legions, abandoning the persona of the intrepid explorer. As the weeks have gone by I have experimented with siphoning emotion into the clearing action, seeing if a particular image or thought process alters my effectiveness with the machete? So far, it seems that the most balletic work comes from a silent mind, or at least that unencumbered by words. Having no internal dialogue is a blessed state, and many of us will have been advised to practice this through mindfulness and meditation. Macheteing is an active form of meditation on some days (or it is until a situation arises, usually involving ants to break the calm) but on other days it is a sort of dance; partnered to a steel edge and a gracefully long wooden handle. A dance which the machete and the wielding party can move together, alternating tenderness and wild abandon, in an utterly secure grip. Visualize each debonair swing left and right; the bold advancing together into the tunnel of twisted branches and huge wet leaves; edging backwards from the falling of a suspended bamboo log, then swishing through the gentle confetti of dead leaves and caterpillars. Sidestep in a series of genteel foot and blade-tip taps to the ground; kick leaf litter aside joyously, recklessly; trample and jig on the loosened earth; launch a swaggering fling of kinetic energy up, up into the canopy; and finally repair to a quiet spot to ‘sharpen up’ on a rusty but stylish file. And all the while, be it a session of dancing, a cathartic smashing, or mindful contemplation, the soundtrack is provided by a plethora of tropical birds and insects, which are unpredictable, funny and eerie by turn. Then there is the difference in the debris concerned; if it is freshly cut, or old and gnarly. Like any psychological obstacle, the older and well-ignored ones are the real buggers to deal with. A newly sliced path gives way pleasingly, and fast, the soil underfoot is revealed bright red and silky. On the more neglected trails (or those too daunting to take on immediately) the hardening piles of dead matter seem to lock together like some form of torturous twining Tetris. It taunts and teases as the machete blade pings off, ricocheting at alarming angles. In and around the fallen trees, that must be crawled beneath, or hurdled over, a dense matting of mossy crust develops. This in turn attracts peculiar assemblages of fungi, caches of invertebrate eggs, alien larvae and ghostly, crystalline spiders. Glutinous slug-like caterpillars, equipped with toxic spines, wander aimlessly through the litter; clouds of butterflies descend to feed on sweat whilst gigantic crickets munch away at the nylon of one’s rucksack or ‘bug-proof’ clothing. More than once an hemipteran of disturbing appearance has crashed into my face and taken up residence in my hair. The very fabric of the forest is moves and seethes; look closely enough and lose all sense of time and scale. It feels sacrilegious to chop through such a wealth of organic, bustling strata, given that most of it is (to the layman) un-named and unknown… Please, botanists, entomologists and all experts in small wriggling indecipherable things, come here to Para La Tierra and tell us what they are! Of course, all this is all very well when the weather is fine; cool enough to be vigorous, and bothered not too much by mosquitos. When it is really baking and humid, the ability to slash and clear takes on a new level of dedication, and I admire those who function well in the heat. I am a temperate beast, and when most of the other volunteers are out sunbathing and volleyballing, I am usually hiding under a shrub, mumbling fondly about how nice and chilly the UK is at this time of year. However, on the torrentially rainy days, when thunder rolls in and the lake lights up with sheets of milky-blue lightning, we all sit under the porch and look longingly at our machetes. Or write long mellifluous monologues about the Zen of neo-tropical scrub-bashing. Everything here at Para La Tierra has the potential to be a valuable lesson; be it the replacing of irrational fears with realistic ones, the acceptance of proximity to ants, or the grass (and vegetables available for dinner) being markedly greener on the other side. I could happily wax lyrical about the challenges of moth-cataloguing, beetle-wrangling, or the gentle art of acquiring bedtime spider-tolerance, (or, and there’s a paper in here somewhere, ‘what drives the volunteers here to develop an unquenchable, passionate dependency on Game of Thrones?’) but it is all for another time. To sum up; come and try it for yourself; this adventure has done me a power of good. When I am back in Britain, plodding through tarmacked streets of dog poo and dog ends, under a washed-out, skyscraped horizon, I will yearn for the hum of mosquitos, the cool tongues of butterflies on my skin, and the singing of glittering machete steel at dawn. Rosemary Gamsa Para La Tierra Volunteer 2012

Mbaracayu

Hey Everybody! I’d like to quickly give you an update of how things are going here at RNLB before telling you about the amazing opportunity I had this past weekend. We’ve had two new arrivals since the last post: Airell, a volunteer from Canada who will help with the primate project, and Ruby, an intern from New Zealand who’s helping us out by taking on the bat inventory. Ruby and I have been prepping to start up the inventory tomorrow night and with all the poles and nets sorted and we are both anxious to start catching some bats. Georgia has begun her sleep-site study which has meant that she’s been walking out to the forest before sunrise to try to catch any of the capuchins that are having a lie-in. The house is slowly filling up again and everyone is getting involved in all the projects. This past week, I had the amazing opportunity to visit a neighboring nature reserve in Paraguay for a weekend: The Mbaracayu Forest Reserve. The refuge is located on the border of Paraguay and Brazil just 5 hours from RNLB and is a whopping 64,400 hectares. The immensity of the forest is immediately noticeable as you drive toward the reserve; as we drove past the soy fields and cattle ranches that are the unfortunate but typical Paraguayan landscapes, we crested a hill and what lay in front of us was a never ending ocean of forest. Once inside the refuge, the forest’s size remained awe-inspiring; we found a tree that was so thick it took five people with arms spread out to ring around the trunk (the tree was 200 years old!). The reserve was founded in 1984 and has an amazing variety of projects going on at all times. The most impressive in my eyes was their work with community outreach and education. They have helped the local populations to not only adapt to the increase in tourists that come to visit the reserve but also to profit from their presence. They also run a high school for girls that focuses on environmental education and female empowerment. The school is completely self-sustaining as they grow most of the food they eat in a garden tended by the students and pay for anything else they need with profits from a student-run chicken coop. Karina, Conce, Jorge and I arrived originally to learn from them about how to run a chicken coop but on arrival we decided to split into two teams to take full advantage of all the projects that were taking place at the time. While Karina and Conce visited the chicken coops, Jorge and I took part in a Tour Guide course that was run by a member of the SENATUR (Servicio Nacional de Turismo). We learned a lot about what it takes to qualify as a nationally recognized Tour Guide as well as a few tricks of the trade. All in all it was an amazing learning experience and we left Mbaracayu not only inspired by the beauty of the forest but also by the versatility of the projects run by those living and working on the site. RNLB has come a long way in the past two and a half years, but seeing the extent of influence the Mbaracayu Forest Refuge has on the nearby communities, it’s clear to me our job is FAR from finished. I know that I returned to Laguna Blanca with a mind full of ideas of what amazing new projects Para La Tierra can get into next, we just need your help to get ‘em done. Joe