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.
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… We did walk all day long and each 500 meters Marina fixed a hair trap with catnip. Let’s see if it works!
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.
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???
Dear friends, Our jaguars still without proper names and there are three ocelots to be named! For the female jaguar Mr. Pechir suggests Diane, Paula suggests Shakira and Elizabeth suggests Quilla.
New right side photo of our nameless jaguar! To the cub Ody by Mr. Pechir and De Niro by Paula.
And you Theresa? We are missing you in this issue! More suggestions? Votes? And how about the ocelots? A great hug from Brazil.
Dear friends,
The original photo: the ocelot across in front of the camera and it just get the picture when the ocelot was almost out of reach.
A close on the ocelot. You already have two different ocelot pictures. Can you tell if this ocelot is one of then or a third one? A great hug from Brazil! Cheers
Dear friends, And the photos analyses still revealing nice surprises! Here I want to make a “public” acknowledgement to Mathias Tobler from Botanical Research Institute of Texas. He create a database to organize and prepare the photos from camera traps to statistical analyses. Thank you Mathias! We started now to identify ocelot pictures. I am a little worried because in this sample there are just a few ocelots records. Think could fix the camera lowest – closest to the ground, on the ocelots eye level. The cameras in Seis R was fixed in this way. Let’s see… We get a beautiful picture of a tapir with a pub, as you can see the youngest had stripes that they lose when grow up.
On the latest post I put a picture of a melanic cub, think it deserves a little explanation. Melanic is the inverse of albinism, the animal born black and will be black for the rest of his life. It is quite common in jaguar small populations and there are a few studies on this issue. When the Prince Alexander Philipp Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied came to Brazil and collected samples from 1815 to 1817 he describes the jaguar and the black one as two different species and later he perceives that was the same. Indeed, in our field work sometimes we can see that to the local people is difficulty to the believe this! When we say that the black jaguar in son of a spotted jaguar they give to us just a look that say silently: - Are you trying to make fun with me?
Adult melanic jaguar on Pará photo taked from our team at Amazonian Forest in Pará. It is possible to see spots and rosets. And finally the ocelot cat! Can you tell if they are the same individual?
Cheers
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!
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?
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!
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
My name is Fernando Lima. I am a biologist and actually doing my Master graduate with my childhood dream: to work with wild cats. I am evaluating ocelot’s demography, home range and movement patterns through forest patches in the fragmented landscape of Pontal do Paranapanema region. I am working in the “Landscape Detectives” project since 2003 and I hope to increase the knowledge on this and other cats in Pontal and Upper Parana region to support Atlantic Forest conservation through corridor reforestation. I really like to read books written by naturalists that came to Brazil in the XIX century and their diaries. My hope here is that you enjoy this blog on our efforts to promote these fascinating animals conservation as I enjoy reading these earlier adventurers reports. Became part of our team! Welcome on board!
Me and my very first jaguar capture in 2004: the female “Livia”.
I am Laury Cullen, scientific research coordinator and conservation biologist with IPÊ. I obtained my Masters in Conservation Biology at the University of Florida, Gainsville and my Ph.D. at the University of Kent, UK. I had focused my research on the ecology of large mammals, applying conservation biology principles to the restoration of fragmented landscapes and community work. I have published over 40 papers and have received international recognition through the 2006 Rolex Award for Enterprise and the 2002 Whitley Gold Award. I am also a Fellow of the ASHOKA Foundation for social entrepreneurs. I have worked in the area for over a decade and have developed a very positive relationship with local people and landowners, as well as with local government for good policies in biodiversity conservation in Brazil.
Laury and the female jaguar “Tina” captured for radio tagging. |
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