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.
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| River crossing in Urutau Trail (Photo: Josh Mays) |
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| 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.
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| The ProCosara forest guards (Claudio & Victor) during a competition with the blowgun. (Photo: Margherita Rinaldi) |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| The first time the volunteers crossed the river! |
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| After the rain is great fun in the forest! (Photo: Marco Alesci) |
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| The first ever Procosara volunteer group May/June 2017 (Photo: Josh Mays) |
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| 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.
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| The forest guards putting up the feeding platform. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| Exploring up the river. |
