What's happening with the capuchin project?

In my post “Why the Radio Silence?” I wrote that the capuchin research at Para La Tierra was continuing despite losing Laguna Blanca. PLT is collaborating with ProCosara and I would like to share a bit more about this great organisation and what we want to achieve through this collaboration.

Passionate residents and conservationists who were concerned about the rapid destruction of the Upper Paraná Atlantic Forest founded ProCosara back in 1997. The main goal of the organisation is the protection and conservation of San Rafael “National Park”. San Rafael is an incredible place and is considered by WWF as one of the 200 most important biological regions on earth. It is located in the departments of Itapúa and Caazapa. Currently San Rafael is the largest remaining tract of Atlantic Forest left in Paraguay (73,000ha) but it is privately owned and split into more than 60 different properties. Even though the area is designated to become a national park the reality is that the Paraguayan Government have never actually been able to purchase the land, so it has no formal protection.

River crossing in Urutau Trail (Photo: Josh Mays)

The lake at Nueva Gambach (Photo:Josh Mays)

ProCosara works to protect the forest through monitoring (both with a small aeroplane and with forest guards patrolling on the ground), land purchase and reforestation programs (in conjunction with WWF) and through education and promotion of sustainable land use practices in local communities. 

The ProCosara forest guards (Claudio & Victor) during a competition with the blowgun. (Photo: Margherita Rinaldi)

Teaching the guards how to use the blowgun. (Photo: Margherita Rinaldi)

For two weeks a month I take a groups of volunteers across the country to Nueva Gambach where Procosara’s field station is based. Nueva Gambach is a property belonging to Hans Hostettler and Christine Kohli de Hostettler – the founders of ProCosara. This property has 150ha of beautiful, near pristine Atlantic Forest and is located at the very southern tip of San Rafael.

When it rains the red dirt of the Atlantic Forest becomes an adventure to walk through! (Photo: Josh Mays)

The 15 days that we spend in the forest each month are tough but incredible. We get up between 4-4:30am and are out in the field before 5am. We then search the forest until dusk (12-15 hours later depending on the season) for the capuchins. The capuchins at Nueva Gambach are not full habituated, they are not even nearly as habituated as the monkeys I left behind at Laguna Blanca and they can be very hard to find. However, when we do find them we get to see some pretty exciting things, in my first week I got to see the hilarious solicitation behaviour of the females – something that took me nearly 4 years to see in Laguna Blanca.

The first time the volunteers crossed the river!

After the rain is great fun in the forest! (Photo: Marco Alesci)

The first ever Procosara volunteer group May/June 2017 (Photo: Josh Mays)

Walking past the lake to the forest Photo: Margherita Rinaldi)

Our first priorities at Nueva Gambach are to establish how many groups live in on the property and determine group demographics (we already have the feeding platform up and baited with a camera trap) and start to get an idea of where the different groups spend most of their time. In the long-term the plan is to combine this data with that collect at Laguna Blanca. This will hopefully provide a fuller understanding of the ecological needs of this species and allow development of a conservation strategy that will, in turn, help protect their habitat - the Atlantic Forest.

The forest guards putting up the feeding platform.

Adult male capuchin posing for the camera at their favourite sleeping site. This is by far the best place in the forest to see them and they seem to spend the night there every few days.

Capuchin munching on pine cones in the pine plantation on the edge of the forest. The capuchins slept in the pine plantation a lot during the winter months.

Exploring up the river.

Let's talk howlers.

Howlers are very curious.

Since Para La Tierra moved fully to Pilar in May this year one of the interesting new opportunities this opened up for us the chance to study the Black-&-Gold (or Paraguayan) Howler monkey (Alouatta caraya). The city of Pilar and the properties surrounding the city are absolutely full of these large, noisy primates.

But running away from people is just far too much effort for them.

Howler monkeys are the largest primate species in Paraguay with adult males weighing 5.3-9.6kg! They are not only sexually dimorphic in size but also colour: the adult males are all black while the adult females are yellow. Much easier to tell apart than the capuchin monkeys! As the name suggest, they are very, very loud. The most striking difference for me after nearly five years studying capuchins is their complete lack of fear of people. I have studied wild howler monkeys before, the mantled howler (Alouatta palliata) in Panama back in 2012 but after so long chasing after the capuchins as they vanish off into the dense Atlantic Forest, I admit I had forgotten what it is like to find a new monkey group, and not have them run away!

A very old female in Santa Ana

The sheer number of howlers both inside and outside the city, how easy they are to find, and the fact that they can be watched all day all leads to a very exciting conclusion: the possibilities for research are endless!! Currently working at PLT are Marco Alesci (Itlay) and Sara Bethel (USA). Marco is carrying out his data collection for his Masters evaluating the attitudes of the people of Pilar towards the urban monkeys and the dangers that these monkeys face living in such an unnatural environment. Sara is just about to finish a full site census of Santa Ana, a ranch just outside Pilar, where she has identified more than 12 separate groups of howlers.

Marco Alesci studies human/howler conflict and interactions in Pilar.

Sara Bethel carried out a full census of howlers in the Humid Chaco at Santa Ana Ranch.

Until now almost no work has been done on this species in Paraguay, and nothing has been published about the behaviour or ecology of the urban howler population in Pilar.  Some potential project ideas include determining the home range and daily path lengths of the urban groups, looking at behavioural differences between urban and forest groups, dietary diversity of the urban groups or establishing dominance hierarchies.  

Adult male roaring.

These are just some of the possibilities. Undertaking an internship with PLT means that you have the chance to plan your own project according to your own research interests. There are so many howler monkeys in Pilar that we need help ASAP to be able to collect data on them all! If primatology appeals to you and you want to get up close and personal with these fascinating creatures (in a country most people never get to visit) why are you hesitating! Contact Karina Atkinson (paralatierra.py@gmail.com) to apply for a position with our primate research team.

The howler monkeys and adventure awaits!

Why the Radio Silence?

So after nearly 10 months of no activity i am finally ready to restart this blog. Some people reading this know the reason for the radio silence. Over the last year my colleagues and I at PLT got a rather rude awakening to the darker side of life as a conservationist. I will give a very brief account of what is a pretty depressing story. 

Since 2010 PLT had operated out of Reserva Natural Laguna Blanca in San Pedro, Paraguay. Our goal was (and still is) to conserve Paraguay’s natural habitat using a combination of scientific research, community engagement and education of international volunteers and interns. This is not always an easy life to live - you are far from your family, you miss birthdays, weddings, births and funerals and you don’t earn a lot of money. However we all do this because we believe it is important and we want to make a difference and we know it is worth the sacrifices we make. 

Laguna Blanca (January 2013)

In October last year the administration of Laguna Blanca changed and for the next six months we tried our hardest to carry on as normal in spite of our lives being made increasingly difficult. Unfortunately the situation became unliveable and on May 1^st, Karina, Jorge and I packed the car for the final time and drove away from what had been our home. It wasn’t without its casualties. We were forced to leave behind our museum collection - the biggest in the country from a single site and an invaluable scientific resource. And for me personally, I had to say goodbye to the capuchins I had spent more than four years habituating.  Devastating doesn’t really begin to cover it. 

O Group juvenile (April 2017)

Laguna Blanca (January 2013)

However I’m sure we are not the first and wont be the last conservationists to have the rug pulled from under us and we might be bruised but we are certainly not broken.  

Thanks to an incredibly generous donation from the late Don Julio Contreras - a very impressive Argentinian biologist, we now own a beautiful house in the city of Pilar. And thanks to the generous people who donated to our end of year fundraiser we were able to transform this house into a scientific education wonderland that accommodates our new ecoclub project, our volunteer and intern program, a space for our new museum and a lab.  In regards to primatology there are lots of exciting new opportunities. Pilar is crawling with black and gold howler monkeys - every patch of trees in the town appears to have its own group! 

Black and Gold Howler monkeys at Santa Ana - a property in the humid Chaco just outside Pilar.

And the capuchin research continues! We have partnered with Procosara, a wonderful organisation dedicated to protecting San Rafael, the largest Atlantic Forest fragment left in Paraguay. Two weeks a month I take groups of volunteers out to Procosara where we spend 12 hours a day exploring this incredible forest.  The recent past may be dark but the future of PLT is looking bright. I have been in serious denial about what happened at Laguna Blanca but I’m now ready to take these lessons and use them going forward. I feel like I now understand the real issues conservationists can face and it isn’t the lack of good cheese, avocados or a fast broadband connection! 

Spot-billed toucanet at Procosara

Capuchin monkey eating pine cones at Procosara

So goodbye Laguna Blanca, O Group and F Group. It was an amazing four years. Ok future; let’s see what you've got.