From the Jungle In Amazonia
The Borrowed Earth Project was privileged to be able to conduct a long range interview with biologist and ecologist Xavier Tobin about the work he has been doing in Amazonia: and to relay the short interview that he did on our behalf with a member of one of the forest communities, Akilles do N. de Lima.
We are really grateful to both of them for this unique insight into work and life in the forest.
All photos courtesy of Xavier Tobin
Our Discussion with Xavier Tobin, researcher in Amazonia
The Borrowed Earth Project ‘TBEP’: Can you tell us who you are, how you came to be there in Amazonia and who you are working with?
Xavier Tobin: I am a biologist and ecologist, currently working on quantifying mammal movement in Amazonia. This has only been possible with much preparation and support from a large network. I have built relationships here in Brasil over the last two years whilst working on various projects with jaguars, giant otters, black caiman, arapaima, pink dolphin etc. By analysing animal movement I hope that conservation efforts can be strengthened through informed targeting/improved reserve design.
I am working with the Brazilian Institution Instituto Juruá and I have also been lucky enough to be supported by the British charity Rainforest Concern. This work is being carried out under the supervision of the great conservation researcher Professor Carlos Peres at the University of East Anglia I am extremely grateful to both Rainforest Concern and Instituto Juruá for their support in this project. Both organisations are making real positive changes in conservation and I have immense respect for their work.
TBEP: Tell us the aims of the project, and a bit about what that actually entails. For instance what we read about in 'setting a grid of camera traps', as against how you actually do that and what it entails?
Xavier: Amazonian forest integrity is globally significant in terms of its unparalleled biodiversity, carbon stocks and climate regulation. Native Amazonians depend upon Amazonian biodiversity and are therefore directly threatened by environmental degradation and biodiversity loss. Broadly speaking, the forest in the study area is classified as either terra firme or várzea forest. Várzea floods every year, terra firme does not.
These forests connect through the movement of fauna; species use both habitats to meet their metabolic and spatial requirements as floodwaters pulse through the year. Understanding the connectivity between the forest types as the flood pulses is essential in maximising the efficacy of existing reserves for those species/habitats and in designing future reserves/conservation measures.
Every year the flood pulse deposits a layer of nutrients (e.g. phosphorus) over flooded forest (várzea) floors. These are incorporated into plants and then move up the food chain. Through the movement of animals in subsequent dry seasons (and their defecation, deaths and decay) these nutrients diffuse upland into terra firme, where they are essential for plant growth.
Therefore the biodiversity of terra firme is fuelled by nutrients transported from flooding forests. Better understanding of this dynamic will allow greater protection of all of the biodiversity within that environment through informed explicit criteria in reserve design. Quantifying mammal movement is therefore both of benefit in their direct protection and is a vital step to quantifying the contribution of animals to maintaining terra firme soil fertility.
A camera trap is a camera automatically triggered by movement within its field of view. In this case that will be animals, including jaguars, tapirs, puma etc, walking in front of the camera traps. The camera traps can operate in infrared, ideal for nocturnal sampling too.
I am deploying two grids of 25 camera traps each in the Médio Juruá region (Amazonia, Brasil) during and between the yearly floods, to quantify and model how mammals move between the forests and use the different forest types. Camera trapping grids such as these have never been deployed in Western Brazilian Amazonia.
Deploying the grids entails cutting through the most impenetrable jungle on Earth. As a result this work is both time consuming and extremely difficult. Where possible we cut around the densest jungle, but it can still take over an hour and a half to move each 500 metres. A good day is the deployment of five camera traps in a straight line (a transect), each 500 metres from the last, to give a total of two kilometres over less than eight hours. Using GPS, the following day we repeat the process 500 metres to one side of the previous transect and so on.
This is the diagram we used to plan the first grid (where we were lucky enough to have an existing trail to work off of) with a team of local forest community members:
Just getting to and returning from the study site to our base requires two canoe rides and a trek. The camera traps will have to be retrieved to access their data.
This work will tell us what terrestrial fauna inhabit these forests and allow estimation of how many of each species. This study will provide novel quantitative evidence that maximising the connectivity between upland and seasonally flooded forests is vital in conservation planning.
Protected area boundaries are often natural features and do not consider connectivity, thus failing to truly protect ‘straddling’ and mobile ‘landscape’ species. This project will complement the work of Instituto Juruá, who have had great success in the region in sustainable development, biodiversity protection and conservation ecology research.
TBEP: How will the project’s success be measured and where does that fit into the issue of management of the Amazon?
Xavier: Conservation on a larger landscape/habitat level is of great benefit to both targeted rare species and their wider ecosystem. This forms the basis of measures to protect larger areas and avoid falls into the downward spirals of fragmentation and edge-effects. The successes of wildlife corridor conservation projects have underscored the importance of large-scale habitat interconnectivity, such as hedgerow protection in the UK and large corridor protection across massive areas in South Africa.
Rainforest Concern has several extremely successful conservation projects based on protecting wildlife corridors. This work is a step to taking this proven concept further, aiming to better understand functional connectivity within the convoluted Amazonian terrain and how this changes. Success is therefore difficult to quantify, but includes the explicit application of this understanding in reserve design. The revelation of rare species in the study area would be a great bonus.
Xavier Tobin´s Discussion with a member of one of the forest communities, translated from Brazilian Portuguese
Xavier: What is your name and how would you describe your community?
My name is Akilles do N. De Lima. My community is a direct part of my life, I was born here, raised here and I have now lived here for 26 years.
I am proud to be a resident of it, I am very happy with what I have, I have my own home, a family, plantations, etc.
I describe my community as a community organisation, where all residents tend to have the same goal of improving the lives of those in our organisation.
Xavier: Please describe how your part of Amazonia has changed in say the last 10 years, what are the biggest changes, and what has brought them about?
Akilles: 10 years ago, living in the communities was much more difficult, there was no 24-hour electricity, there was no communication, only radios to get information, there was no Internet, only in the city far from the communities, we did not have solar energy to power the water supply network in the community...
That made all the difference 10 years ago, when life in the countryside was more difficult. Technical innovations have changed our situation completely.
In recent years it is getting hotter. This makes it more difficult for us to plant our crops because the ground is harder, and it is harder to work in the heat. It is also more difficult to fish.
Xavier: What do you see as needed most to protect the areas you live in and the welfare of people who live there, what would make the most difference?
Akilles: Firstly, more income with more financial resources for families.
More health insurance, better school structures with greater access to job opportunities, such as: scholarships to attend college and thus train new doctors, teachers, biologists, dentists and so on.
This would be an extraordinary change in the traditional communities of the middle Juruá with more resources and access to these doors of opportunity.
Xavier: Please can you give us your permission to use your answers and discuss them in a blog for people interested in the forest and the lives of the people who live there?
Akilles: Yes. I hope that these answers can help to make a difference in the lives of the riverside communities of the middle Juruá in the future.