Jaguar Detectives

Category: Jaguar Corridor Expedition | Date: Nov 27 2008 | By: jaguardetectives

After yesterday’s fright in the lock, we awoke at 6:30 AM and noticed a man meandering curiously toward us to look at the boat. Mr. Eliseu owns the house facing that night’s mooring. We were preoccupied with the CESP (São Paulo State Electric Company) high tension lines that cross the River right below Porto Primavera.

If there was any likelihood these were too low for our mast to clear, we would have to raise it only after we crossed the danger. Mr. Eliseu put us at ease, however:
- Gosh! You’ll cross easily!
We took his word for it and began to raise the mast, which we did in a record 45 minutes. In an improvised protocol, we used the pulleys from the primary sail for the job, as we had done the day before to lower it. This was much more effective than the strength of many arms. Imagining the primary sail (our sailboat has two: the master and the genoa) as a “rectangular” triangle, the part attached to the mast would be the hypotenuse and the adjacent side, the bottom portion: the latter, attached to the boom. The day before, the latter had lost four of its rivets. Mr. Eliseu, who was looking-on very interested, immediately offered us his toolbox. Using a drill connected to the on-board generator, we cleared the holes and installed new rivets.

… we cleared the holes and installed new rivets.

In the lock, the mast, which had been firmly tied to the boat, had lightly scraped one of the walls. This loosened the windsock (the indicator of wind direction). As the mast was now already mounted, we decided on another “improvisation”; we brought a harness for just such occasions. Our rationale: if the pulley supports the full weight of the sail and the force of the wind, it should easily cope with a slim human like me.

… it should easily cope with a slim human like me.

After a quick restocking trip to the supermarket, we bid farewell to Mr. Eliseu and the small crowd that had amassed to watch our handiwork on the boat…or, a là Douglas Adams: So long and thanks for all the tools! At 10:00 in the morning we were sailing with favorable winds and plenty of tereré .
We navigated with an east wind at the stern using only the master sail, maintaining an average of 5,5 mi/h; the current on the Paraná obviously giving us an extra push. This was the main goal of the expedition: we were officially in the Jaguar Corridor. This was the northern-most portion of the Corridor, near Morro do Diabo State Park and the Caiuá Ecological Station. The difference in landscape was noticeable; in truth, stunningly so. Everything we sailed through to get here now seemed so distant, as though it had happened ages ago. During the course of that day, we were surrounded by well-structured gallery forests, mosaics of islands and varzeas.

There exist theories that describe the relation between island size and proximity with number or richness of extant species. These, collectively known as Island Biography, posit that the larger the island, the higher the species richness. It seems obvious? It may well be, but many of the more important discoveries have come from the more banal deductions. The Theory of Evolution itself, which arguably provoked the most tangible revolution in the way humans see themselves, the universe and everything in between, described in Charles Robert Darwin’s The Origin of Species is so amazingly straightforward (with due respect) that Thomas Henry Huxley, upon reading the book, declared: How incredibly simple! I should have thought of this!
Interesting stuff, but let’s return to Island Biogeography. Again, it may seem simple, but it is worth emphasizing that we are presenting an extremely basic summary of the Theory for fear that if we delve too much into the technical and scientific details we would lose to tedium those that are following our expedition but are not interested in its strictly academic aspects. Thus, all jokes aside, we will try to maintain the text as relaxing and informative as possible without becoming too prosaic. Technical aspects will be sent to those interested. We hope that you understand and enjoy!
Lets return to the Theory. It has been adopted in various studies of forest fragmentation, where forest fragments become the “islands”. Sadly, this is fully applicable to the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, which today is reduced to 7% of its original size due to 500 years of the Brazilian extractive philosophy - well described by Warren Dean in his With Broadax and Firebrand: The Destruction of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest: “To those who come after: deal”.
The landscape surrounding the fragments, which in the original Theory was sea and ocean, is designated as the matrix by landscape ecologist. The matrix offers resistance, i.e. some species can cross long distances from one fragment to the other, whilst others have a reduced capacity to do so. A quick example: a jaguar can cross several kilometers of pasture and plantation to get from one fragment to another. However, a small primate cannot and depending on the distance, not even a large monkey such as the woolly spider monkey can complete this trajectory. Different species thus have different capacities to disperse. Why is this important? Depending on the isolation of a fragment or “island”, populations of a resident species begin to lose genetic diversity. Since immigration is rare, individuals from one group do not contribute new genes to other populations, the genetic variability of isolated groups diminishes. This causes higher mortality and lower resistance to disease, among other consequences.
This is the point of the Jaguar Corridor: inter-connecting the biodiversity of the Upper Paraná. Obvious? This time, perhaps simplicity is not exactly in order. We are not dealing exclusively with corridors. Many parks are islands that, in the long run, lose species because they cannot sustain large or sufficient enough populations to maintain genetic variability. As researchers, many times we hear (in truth, almost all of the time) that there are many animals, much forest, that it will never end… The fact that one sees an animal today does not mean that within a few generations it will still exist, even if the forest is still there. Even cattle ranchers have to work hard to maintain good genes in their herds using artificial insemination.
Another obvious example: Whoever has siblings raise their hands. Why - if you are not identical twins - are you not identical to your brothers and/or sisters? We receive 50% of our genes from our mothers and 50% from our fathers, but this does not mean that our siblings will receive the same 50%: they can receive different genes, the process is random. Now suppose that your father was the only human in the world who had the immunity gene for a disease and that this gene was not passed-on to you or to any of your siblings…the gene disappears when your father dies, which, of course, isn’t our wish. In fact, we wish all fathers live long lives and become grandparents.
All of this thinking can seem like folly to some, but in the end it is easy to understand and sometimes we are the ones with aversions to certain ideas. In the same way that mathematics gives elementary school children nightmares. In truth, such rationalizing raises the deepest and most relevant debates in the design of reserves, the conservation of threatened species and the relation between man and nature itself. For those who still insist on the “why’s” of preserving “little animals and plants” when there are so many people dying of hunger, there remains a question along the same lines: what if the little animal or plant that is on the verge of extinction possessed the cure for cancer? The motives for conservation go well beyond the simple interest of the future of humanity, but this is only an additional simple example. Moreover, citing “the dying children in the streets” as an argument highlights a fallacy: will exterminating species using destructive development models stop hunger? Are we destroying the Cerrado  and planting soybeans in order to end hunger, or to export to China so they can make pig feed? This debate is comical coming from persons who find it normal that football players are sold to foreign teams for sums that add to billions of dollars…
This brings us to where we are, feeding on and deriving inspiration from the adventures of natural historians who traveled Brazil at the start of the nineteenth century, but using the theories and the technology of our own generation: rediscovering the Upper Paraná and its Corridor.
Leaving behind themes too polemic and complex to be dealt with here, let’s return to the voyage itself. Along the course we traveled through Porto São José without stopping, although we were feted by children on the banks screaming “Stop here, Stop here…”. We were probably the first sailboat they had seen on this portion of the Paraná, a fact that was confirmed by the older fishermen. At three in the afternoon, we anchored in Porto Rico, where we also caught the interest of some local residents. We immediately savored a serving of fried Tilápia in the Beira Rio Restaurant; after all, no one is made of stone! We then sighted the Porto Rico Island with a sandy beach near the restaurant where we would overnight. At five in the afternoon, we sailed to it with an east wind, and purposely grounded the Pasárgada onto the beach. Afterward, we hopped off and began to explore the location.

That night, we improvised a grill and dined on grilled sausage…coated with sand (argh) and with a side of rice. Afterward, we turned-on the generator to power the laptops and prepared our diaries. We slept looking through Pasárgada’s mosquito net, with falling stars lighting up the sky.

Cheers