Jaguar Detectives

Category: Day by day | Date: Jul 02 2008 | By: jaguardetectives

Between an activity and other I still feeding my Camera Data Base with the partial results of last film rolls processed. The project uses a Data Base especially designed for camera traps by Mathias Tobler from Andes to Amazon Biodiversity Program. What a wonderful tool! It takes a while to feed, but when it’s done, is possible to obtain easily from the same place all kind of capture frequency from each specie. Also, it prepare the data to run on statistical software as StimateS, Capture, Mark, etc. I want to share with you today some of the nicest photos from Ponte Branca that I was working today:

A giant-anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla).

It was quite a surprise! Giant-anteaters usually are more frequently founded on Cerrado and open areas, but we are with several records of the specie on our sampled Atlantic Forest fragments.

The azara’s agouti (Dasyprocta azarae).

As I write in the previous post: to promote predators conservation is vital to gather information on their prey. The azara’s agouti is another important felid prey on neotropics. At Pontal the specie was heavily hunted – and still been in some areas. Despite that, we are gathering good frequencies of capture.

A puma “posing” to a photo.

The SEE-U is definitely finished now with the departure of the TA Kaitlyn. Hope she arrive in safety at home. Thanks for everything Kaitlyn!!! As Chuck Palahniuk says: “Nothing is static…” and we at IPÊ are in another general meeting! I am counting the hours to come back home at Pontal and return to my normal activities! Need to confess that I am a little discouraged since one of my proposals submitted to an international organization – which I don’t want to cite the name by ethical reasons – was denied. This was a real important one… It’s a cruel world to beginners and with this one it sums 11 proposals denied since 2006. I am work hard on it and quite sure, which is confirmed by several researchers, on the quality of the project. Let’s see the next two that are to be evaluated. Despite some resources from the program, I need to raise funds to guarantee my own research line on small cats, but I am starting to really worry about it. Discouraging, really discouraging, but the show must go on and I will never quit.

I will travel tomorrow and am not sure if I will be able to post on Friday. As soon as I get access to internet again I will send news!

Cheers

3 responses so far

Category: Day by day | Date: Jun 30 2008 | By: jaguardetectives

Despite malfunction in two cameras we still increase our database on wildcats in Pontal and other important species. This is the first time we record a lesser-anteater (Tamandua tetradactyla) on our surveys.

The lesser-anteater.

As the cameras make no distinction between species, we are collecting information on mammal species abundance such as nine-banded-armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus), important felid prey on neotropical forests. To promote predators conservation is vital to gather information on their prey.

Nine-banded-armadillo.

Does anybody risk to guess which ocelot is this one at Ponte Branca?

The SEE-U Brazil Companion finished last Friday. Was a great experience!

SEE-U 2008

I am trying to post on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, sometimes is not possible, but I do still trying to keep you updated on our activities! Keep it coming!

See you on Wednesday!

9 responses so far

Category: Day by day, Jaguar and ocelot names | Date: Jun 26 2008 | By: jaguardetectives

Yay!!! Nice results start to appear from Ponte Branca!!! And more new ocelots individuals on our records! A particular one I will call Theresa, bestowed Theresa Siskind who very generously made the very first donation to the project via Wildlife Direct. Thank you Theresa!

The ocelot “Theresa”, at Ponte Branca.

Nothing is perfect and one of the cameras has malfunctioned, despite being programmed to work only at night, discharged the entire film roll in one afternoon taking amazing photos of… nothing!

A delightful photo of…? Night photo programmed - afternoon photo?

Maybe some remember when I spoke on fixing cameras in the fence trying to get the animals that use the paths on the pasture. So, I could not resist and did try my luck again and fixed one. There is! Some cats and lots of cows!

A beautiful Nelore at the edge of Ponte Branca… Ok, no more cameras in the fence…

There are much more news and some new species. Keep it coming folks!

We have set the date for the next jaguar expedition at Ivinhema to August 4^th until August 15^th!!!

See you on Friday!

5 responses so far

Category: Day by day | Date: Jun 23 2008 | By: jaguardetectives

It has been a lot of work on SEE-U, which is now on its last week! In all these activities I had to go to Belo Horizonte to presents my master’s research design to a committee on the University. Definitely a long day! Waked up at 3:30 a.m. to get a ride from IPÊ’s headquarters at Nazaré Paulista (where I am because of SEE-U) to São Paulo. Then a bus to the airport. A one hour flight to Belo Horizonte, more one hour and a half hour in a bus, a taxi ride and I – or what remains of me – finally arrived at University at 10:30 a.m. I just walk directly to the presentation room and when opened the door get surprised by the amount of people in there. I was not expecting so many people. All the students from my class was presenting their projects and I arrived just half hour before my turn… A mix of anxiety and nervous in the minutes before and here go…

And the conceptual model of the project…

Obrigado! Of course Wildlife Direct was in there representing all you that help to support our work donating through this blog! Thank you all!

I presented my questions and hypothesis, the design of the research with ocelots and some preliminary results. Questions? Two comments. OK! After lunch, two hours of conversation with my advisor, a local bus to the bus station, more one and a half hour to the airport, a nocturnal flight to São Paulo with beautiful view of city lights from sky – finally I get a window! Another bus a ride to Nazaré and what remain of me – and I can say that was not too much – arrive back at 22:00 p.m. Another day!

I just sent more eleven film rolls from Ponte Branca to process. Cross your fingers to good pictures!

See you on Wednesday!

One response so far

Category: Day by day | Date: Jun 18 2008 | By: jaguardetectives

At last, after three field days working in the same area, we return to Ponte Branca to fix the last three camera stations. It was a warm day and as soon as we reached the forest edge something moved fast making a great noise close to Cicinho. A rattlesnake (Crotalus durissus)!!! Cicinho jumped to one side and the snake to the other. We hold it just a second to guarantee a good picture before it goes. One jararaca the day before and a rattlesnake early that morning makes you watch your step very carefully all day long…

Cicinho and the rattlesnake.

The rattlesnake looking for a still place.

If you look too much for something you will find it at the end… Even using leg protection, we were concerned of snakes on the trails and it was not difficult to find a “snake baby”. Have no idea witch specie it is, but probably from the family Colubridae.

The baby-snake.

Cameras distribution on the fragment.

Finally, all our cameras are locked and loaded!!! Sixteen stations well positioned. Let’s see what it brings to us now!

See you on Friday!

8 responses so far

Category: Day by day | Date: Jun 16 2008 | By: jaguardetectives

Today we arrived on Ponte Branca late. Marina needed to return to her activities at the University and we dropped her off at the bus station to say good bye. Once we arrived at Ponte Branca to carry on our work we found good and fresh ocelot tracks. The best part: the track followed the trails where we fixed the traps.

Fresh ocelots tracks on our trails.

Our mission there was to fix our stations at the east part of the forest.

Here we go…

After a few minutes in the forest we had an unexpected not-exactly-friendly meeting with one animal that was just relaxing on the ground in a sunspot: a jararaca (Bothrops jararaca). A session of pictures, and as they say: Live and let live…

A not-so-friendly snake on our way. Or was that us in its way?

We left our not-so-friendly acquaintance waiting for a more distracted and of course smaller mammal to cross its way and - who knows - maybe become a meal. Let’s continue our journey. It was a good day to find animals. After the jararaca meeting and two stations up and running, we started to hear a very characteristic sound in the trees. There they were: the noisy brown-capuchin-monkeys (Cebus nigritus).

A brown-capuchin-monkey hiding from us!

Always curious and smart, they stayed a little before they went back into the forest looking for more interesting stuff than a group of humans in their territory. To finish our day, we saw four blue-and-yellow-macaws on a palm!!! These animals bring life to the forest! It’s just a privilege to have to opportunity to watch these animals in the wild. They used to be captured in all its range to become pets because of their beauty, which makes it almost impossible to find them now in some regions of the country. I tried my best to get good photos, approaching the palm step by step. But it wasn`t enough… they flew away, passing right in front of me, and – because of slow camera adjustments – I lost one of the greatest opportunities to have a wonderful picture. As they say: you win some, you lose some…

The blue-and-yellow-macaws at Ponte Branca.

Flying away

I am posting on old field companions, despite the delay, because I do think it is important to post chronologically. Right now, since May 19th, I have been working as a Teaching Assistant at the Summer Ecosystem Experiences for Undergraduates (SEE-U), promoted by CERC – Center of Environmental Research and Conservation by New York`s Columbia University . I need to say that it has been a great experience in both my professional and personal lives.

See you Wednesday!

2 responses so far

Category: Day by day | Date: May 21 2008 | By: jaguardetectives

Seis R concluded, time to prepare the stuff to a new sample: Ponte Branca! One of the largest fragments of our study in Pontal with almost 2.000 ha (a hundred hectares are equivalent to one square Kilometer). Finally our license was approved after a lot of burocracy! Since I had decided to decrease the distance between the cameras trying to raise information on margays (Leopardus wiedii) the number of cameras necessary on each surveys increase and we spend the afternoon preparing 25 cameras to fix in this fragment.

Marina, Fernanda and I preparing cameras.
It means:

- 75 batteries C;

- 50 batteries AA;

- 1 Kilogram of Silica;

- 25 Film Rolls ASA400;

- 25 mothballs;

Hum, it is becoming more expensive each day… Yeah, but as they say: The show must go on!

Early on Sunday Cicinho, Wilson, Marina and I leave Teodoro Sampaio to a new hard work day. One more time we just arrive at the forest edge and found puma tracks. The only difference is that one’s was fresh, really fresh! The puma was in the old cattle trail on the edge of the fragment just a few moments before we reach there! The recent tracks, a scratch and strong “cat” urine smell suggests that it leaves the trail because of the car, ops, Little Miss Sunshine noise. Good signal!

Preparing stuff to a long work day.

We start to walk inside the forest following an old trail to start our work and our friend was warning us that we were invading someone’s home. That forest had an owner and the fresh scratches on the ground all along the trail were it way to say that.

Silent warnings: puma scratches.

We walked all day long looking for good places. Unfortunately it is not enough, as we have a design to follow to collect good data we need to establish very well the distance between the cameras and a good place need to attend these two assumptions: to had evidences that animal use the area and be at the correct distance of others cameras. And…it is really hard to achieve. By luck, my faithful GPS and Cicinho knowledge on the forest facilitate the process.

Cicinho wondering the best places to fix the cameras.

One entire day and we fixed seven cameras in optimal places! We take around two and a half hours to choose a place and fifteen minutes to fix it… takes time to do a good work!

Testing cameras.

Last moments on moonrise.

The farewell sandwich and back home get a little rest to the next day.

See you on Friday with more of our adventures.

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4 responses so far

Category: Day by day | Date: May 19 2008 | By: jaguardetectives

Dear friends,

First of all I want to thanks a donation of USD 50,00 to our project. Many, many thanks!!! It will allow us to set two camera traps (3 batteries Size C: USD 6.50, 2 batteries AA: USD 3.00, 1 roll Film 36 frames 400ASA: USD 5.50) and process two films! Thank you very much!

By the way, as we are talking on film processing, I just get from the studio that two rolls from Seis R. That camera turned because of the elastic band gnawed did not stopped to work at all… and the most unexpected:

An ocelot!!!

We rotate it a little… cut it… zoom it… cut it again, and:

A new individual???

You tell me!

; )

9 responses so far

Category: Day by day | Date: Apr 18 2008 | By: jaguardetectives

After a while trying to solve Deep Thought (my computer) problems, I sent it to maintenance and now we are back to carry on sharing our experiences on jaguars and ocelots conservation.

Marina and I went to Seis R to check out the camera traps and fix the hair traps. We left Little Miss Sunshine about two kilometers from the forest fragment, where the road ends and walked on the open pasture under a typical hot tropical day. We just arrived on the fence at the edge of the fragment and found relatively recent puma and ocelots’ tracks in the sand.

A good signal! Hope to record each one of them with nice photos! To recognize tracks and footprints is a very important issue in fieldwork. It is relatively easy in some terrains as wet sand or mud, but in most cases only a trained eye is able to find what is under the surface in other terrains. Here I have to talk about our Jedi field assistants - Cicinho and Wilson - they are experts in finding and following what we call “carreiros” (literally “animal path”) inside the forest. Most mammal species - as armadillos, tapirs, peccaries, etc. - use always the same paths in the forest. And… where these preys are we do expect to find predators! These paths are the best places to fix cameras. For those who did not have the opportunity to meet or to be in the forest with someone who uses to track animals but have interest I do recommend the Tom Brown`s book “The Science and the Art of Tracking“, which with the aid of a footprint handbook guide of the local fauna can be really useful.

One can ask:

- Why do not put cameras in the fence?

Yeah! We find indeed lots and lots of tracks on roads and in open pastures around the edge of forest fragments. However these pastures have also… cattle, many times hundreds, and they seem to really enjoy being photographed, because once they find one camera they finish almost the entire roll. Despite nice pumas’ photos we got in an old road across Santa Mônica, the rest are photos from cattle.

A puma relaxing in front of our camera.

Back on Seis R, we started our journey inside and around the fragment to check out the cameras. One of them was turned as if was moved by something or somebody.

Looking closer we found out what had happened. Grasshoppers and/or ants gnawed the elastic band that fixed it. They come because of the salt from our sweat that impregnate on the band. Cicinho swears that he once just left his backpack on the ground to lunch and the “horse-grasshoppers” gnawed it opening a great hole. Now I almost believe…

Who eated the band?

We did walk all day long and each 500 meters Marina fixed a hair trap with catnip. Let’s see if it works!

Marina fixing a hair trap

The moon was rising at the early night when we did start to walk back on Little Miss Sunshine direction, and it looks just as a white point far away from our tired feet. Our reward: two film rolls, let`s see what surprise it contain.

7 responses so far

Category: Day by day | Date: Apr 17 2008 | By: admin

This week Marina Macharia- a geneticist student from São Carlos Federal University – who is evaluating ocelot genetic diversity of Pontal do Paranapanema and Foz do Iguaçu came to visit us. This issue is the theme of her master degree dissertation and she came to see how the project works in practice. In other words:

- To have hands-on experience in the field.

After a, let’s say, a longer than wishful period of storms – here we are in the end of the rainy season – we could prepare the stuff to check the cameras on Seis R. It does not help our field activities but creates spectacular lightning shows on night.

Lightining in front of our house in Teodoro Sampaio.

We are trying to apply a new methodology to collect cat’s hair samples using “hair traps” with catnip (Nepeta cataria). Who never saw a domestic cat rubbing someone’s leg and objects? Or even had one rubbing in your own leg? Indeed, many times some friends of mine that do not appreciate this animals as pets (how could then???) use to say that this is the reason: they do not like of this behavior. Writing this I am remembering all cats I had – well, we do not own cats, they choose to be with us – and all I can say is that I miss each one of then…

So, the point is that wild cats and other mammal species also use to rub in unanimated objects. And: wildcats also “get high” with catnip!!! We decide to test if by fixing Velcro wetted with catnip we can stimulate the ocelots to rub on it and theoretically there is a great chance that the Velcro holds some hair on it. If it works we will use these hairs to get DNA samples.

I bring some catnip from Belo Horizonte and test it at home to see the reaction of the neighborhood cats. They do not look very impressed. In fact, no one of the four cats that use to walk around our house rubbed in the trap. Let’s see if we get better results in the forest.

On the day by day life, my beloved friend and partner Deep Thought (my computer) starts to overheating more and more frequently and stops to work without any reasonable cause. It make me lose many stuff and close to the complete despair – after all I can not stay without this tool - I decide to open it by my self to change the refrigerator cream on the central processor unit. Do it yourself! Well, if I say that it did resolve the problem it is a lie, but was an interesting experience…

Fixing???

9 responses so far