Jaguar Detectives

Category: Day by day | Date: Mar 28 2008 | By: admin

Today, first of all I want you to apologize me about my english… You know, it is not my first language and I am afraid that something can sounds weird! Thank you all for the patience, think it can improve with pratice!

Well, our two days meeting was really productive and busy! New challenges, good news and old friends! But the show must go on…

After a while in rural zones working on Pontal do Paranapanema where I live now is time to attend the last classes to my Master’s Degree in Vertebrate Zoology in Belo Horizonte, capitol of Minas Gerais State. On Wednesday by morning I get a ride to São Paulo to get a bus to Belo Horizonte. It’s really weird to see São Paulo from distance: the sky is grey… the pollution makes the air so dense that you can see a grey cloud involving the town. Kind of Mad Max apocalyptical view… São Paulo is to Brazil what New York is to United States, with many more factories and cars. However, I get the first bus I could to Belo Horizonte. I choose to travel by day to see the mountains of Minas Gerais (those who had Google Earth in the computer can see the places!). am originally from there, from a small town in the mountains. Unfortunately the unique mountain in Pontal is the Morro do Diabo. To a native from Minas Gerais it is just a small hill, lowest than the one that I use to go every day to go to school. After 8 hours of travel and a little rest, I went to the university to see my advisor who receives me with:

- Oh, are you alive?

I told him the news and update him on the project activities. Time to work with data. Don’t tell to anybody but… I like statistics!!! Yes, I am a kind of nerd… Well, you will soon agree that this is not usual statistics.

Setting cameras in the field are just the beginning. When checking the cameras we change batteries and films if necessary. At final of the process get a great volume of films to process. But it is not just a kind of baseball cards collection, each photo needs to by catalogued, identified, checked and digitalized. The digital one goes to a data base where each photo is associated with the correspondent pair, catalogued, double check to see if everything is in the correct sequence, identified…so, think you get the point! It’s easy, but the point is the volume! We are talking about hundreds of pictures… This is what I will work on these days. My friends, I already have lots of news to share with you, I just don’t know how to starts. I am mounting a puzzle identifying the photos and I get our first unambiguous jaguar identification on the fragments survey, with photos from both sides. It’s a female with a melanic cub!!! There are 3 ocelot pictures, 4 of jaguars and 10 of pumas!!! And there are many more to be processed! We use codes to identification, but also names, wich is easer to remenber. So, I proposed a election for a nice name for our first jaguar on the fragments! Keep watching, we will need help on identification also!

Cheers!

Our first jaguar identified on the fragments survey! Wich will be her name?

The cub!!! Yeah, but the ocelots desappear from these areas…

Hey! Don’t rub the camera!

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Category: Day by day | Date: Mar 28 2008 | By: admin

After a little rest on Good Friday I was trying to figure out what was happening with one of the Camera Traps. We were fixing it on Thursday by afternoon and it gets a shoot without any movement in front of it. As in previous surveys some film rolls gets photos each 5 minutes (the interval we fix between one photo and another) we wait few minutes to see if it was the case. Yes, a new shoot after five minutes… Here go again, as Theresa said so well on Murphy`s Law:

- If it wasn’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.

The camera was discharging the photographic film taking nice photos of… nothing! It’s a great problem and if we don’t pay attention the camera finish a complete roll in a few hours. It is not easy to this electronic equipment resist to the humidity, tropical sunshine that changes quickly in amazing storms and turn to sunshine again. Even the stones break. So, I could not figure out what was wrong with the camera: at home it works properly. How to understand it?

Patience and carefull with the equipment is essential… 

Me and my Jedi Knights Cicinho and Wilson finish to setup more three camera stations on Seis R. Mission Complete! The last one station was special! We found an ocelot trail along an old road and the exact point were they (we do believe there was a couple) leave the road and goes inside the forest. A good signal! I can’t wait to see what we will get in that station. A nice sunset and back home to prepare my stuff to travel to Nazaré Paulista (800 Km from Pontal), the IPÊ head quarter to our general  meeting that happens each three months with all IPÊ’s researchers. Easter on road!

Cheers!

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Category: Day by day | Date: Mar 25 2008 | By: admin

Well, at least I can talk on our day by day. I truly acknowledge your patience, but do believe that was necessary to introduce the project concept in a “formal” before everything. Right now I am writing from the IPÊ’s head quarter were we are in our meeting that occurs each three months. Before came I was starting to worried about my ocelot survey in Pontal. For three weeks I was trying to fix the camera traps (cameras with movement sensors to photograph animals) in a new forest fragment. Unfortunately the Murphy’s Law is really strong and something weird starts to happen every time I prepared the equipment, called the field assistant, called the owner of the farm were is the forest and opened my mouth to say:

- Yes! I am going to field tomorrow!

Everything read? OK! Right. The weather then changed so fast and starts to rain amazing tropical storms… Field work cancelled… After a few days, another project needed the car, a VW-T2 that we share to field activities. As soon as they get the car, the grey weather clean up and became a beautiful blue sky… One can think in bad luck, fortunately I am not superstitious and prefer call it “chance”! Few days later, everything read, I get the car again… water falls from heaven… other project car turn… blue sky again… chance?

At this point you may be wondering:

- Why don’t you go to the field anyway?

Well, when I call to the farm I use to ask how about the road and the answer is:

- If you come you don’t will arrive. If you arrive you will not come back home.

Another issue is that our VW-T2 makes the one that appear in the movie “Little Miss Sunshine” a very nice car!

“Little Miss Sunshine” in action!

Finally on last Thursday we did it!!!

Me and my field assistants Cicinho and Wilson – actually they are more than it, they are my great friends – fixed three camera stations on the Seis R forest fragment, half of our original goal of six stations.

Cicinho in a relaxing moment after lunch

Wilson wondering the best way to fix the camera

Each station is composed by one pair of cameras, one in front another to get photos from both sides of the cats that can be identified then by their unique spot pattern.

Double check in the camera sensors

We spend great part of the time trying to find nice places - “hotspots” were the animals use frequently leaving tracks - to fix the cameras and opening trails.

Puma footprints on the road: follow the tracks to a nice place to fix cameras!

We came back home 10:00 pm. Cicinho and Wilson asked me to finish on Saturday, because they wanted to stay with their families on the “Good Friday” holiday. OK! I was so exhausted! A little rest would be nice. Think I should start jogging again!

Cheers

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