The Amazon Rainforest - Tiputini Biodiversity Station
Facts about this planetary ecosystem are as vast as the countries that it spans (those countries being Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana).
Millions of years old, more than half the world's species of plants and animals are found here. The Amazon makes up over half of the world's rainforests. With such sobriquets as “the world's lungs” and the “world's pharmacy” their global significance is no understatement.
But these are just words. These dense, pornographic forests are seething. And we had the pleasure to get up close and personal.
Not wanting to miss an opportunity to see these ecosystems that we felt had informed so much of tropical based permacultures, it was almost a homecoming of sorts to see this terrestrial biome.
Thank goodness we discovered the Tiputini Biodiversity Station (TBS), located in the pristine* eastern Ecuadorian Amazon tract of lowland rainforest, in the Yasuni Biosphere Reserve. Established in 1995 the research station takes its name after the Tiputini river, a tributary of the Napo River, which itself is a tributary of the mighty Amazon River – the second longest river in the world.
Our journey began in the jungle town of Coca (after a delightfully bumpy night bus from Quito). We met at a tacky riverside hotel and bar awaiting our ride. Details were vague and timings were off as we were told last minute that a film crew from one of the state TV channels would be joining us as Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa abandoned the radical Yasuni conservation plan despite Ecuadorians working to push a referendum on the question of whether oil companies could drill in one the most biodiverse places on earth.
Like the beginning of some drama, we meet our characters, who, pensively waiting, played at introductions in the oppressive afternoon heat. Lauren and Phil, permaculture know-it-alls, a young and green Scottish lad named Rory, an aspiring journalist Jason and a man and wife team Nancy and Jacob, one part worldly travellers, one part conspiracy crackpots (yes, they were from the U.S. of A). Boarding the boat with our incongruous pack lunch of cellophane’d sandwiches, packaged biscuits and saccharine juices, we were headed to one of the most abundant places on planet earth.
The wide Napo river drew in soon after we passed the gas flares from the oil extraction that is currently taking place in parts just outside of the Yasuni Biosphere reserve. After two hours on board we took a bus (another two hours) to the Tiputini river, picking up two avid scientists and TBS manager, Diego as our passports were checked by the Spanish owned petrochemical company operating nearby. There a motorised canoe swept us down the river for the last two hours as we saw the Amazon River Dolphin, and passed through tropical showers.
Arriving at the foot of a wooden staircase we ascended to a large open aired room which functioned as the cafeteria where Diego gave us the lowdown on the weekends activities. The research centre is made up of a two-storey lab, nine cabins, a library and classroom as well as electricity for the daytime. We soon settled in and were off on our first trip into the jungle. A serious field study facility with proper scientists meant we were in the company of people who cared and knew what they were talking about. We were delighted to meet one of their seasoned guides, Meyer. An absolute charm of a guide, his impish smile that would reveal a half broken front tooth took us on some memorable walks. Incredibly knowledgeable and patient with our questions, Meyer’s eyes would light like a schoolboy discovering something for the first time as he led us through the extraordinary world of the Amazon.
[Our wonderful guide Meyer]
We met the Sangre de Drago (Dragon’s Blood) tree, a wild crafted resin famous for its wound healing properties (he always carried a vial of the stuff); we cracked open some coconut like nuts and drank sweet water; he picked and played with mushrooms and insects; showed us the peripatetic palm Socratea exorrhiza, or, in common parlance the walking palm that takes its genus name ‘socratea’ after the itinerant rabble rousing philosopher Socrates. We had met the walking palm at Peter Kring’s wonderful La Isla botanical centre in Costa Rica; we were fed lemon ants, who, using their own "herbicide" (formic acid) create what myrmecologists (love that word, say it out loud and sound out why) call a devil’s garden: an immediately recognizable area where most of the plants have been killed by the ant’s acidic excretions except the one used as a home by the ants!; bird spotting with the monocular up a 30 plus metre observation tower.
[The healing dragons blood]
[The walking palm with its newly formed roots]
[Lemon ants eaten from their pod in the only tree they let grow in their acidic habitat]
[Nothing is wasted in nature, ants making quick work of a dead tarantula]
[A strangler fig tree doing it
Despite the poor soils (acidic and typically red due to the oxidation of iron oxide in the topsoil which can often turn rivers and streams a copper colour after rain) the Amazon rainforest is incredibly rich biotically because of the volume of light and water that falls on it.
Meyer took us to the suspended walkways allowing us access to the upper canopy, where so much life occurs. Sighting birds and blown away by the views, one of the scariest things had to be ascending a rickety ladder up to a metre squared platform at the top of a tall tree reaching above the canopy layer. A sea of green the seemingly boundless rainforest was magnificent. Later on we heard from a distance the incoming rain that swept over us while we were still up in the trees. Our walk back was torrential but all the more memorable for the super soaking. What would a weekend in the Amazon be without a thorough drenching.
[The sketchiest ladder climb ever]
Our final excursion was a river tour. Invited to float with the current we got in the water and experienced heaving jungle on both sides as we were washed and whirled around as the boat sped off. Jokingly panicking about giant caimans, anacondas, deadly pirahanas and all the other things we could be prey too, floating down the Tiputini was a humbling perspective. After all, it's the water that defines much of the Amazon with season variations being in the metres and a matter of life or death for many animals.
The Teleamazonas crew wanted to get some nice cut away shots of us in the jungle. They also wanted to interview us! Jason, the NY based journalist who we shared many a good conservation with alerted us to these Youtube clips, emailing us about his story and writing, “Lauren you have a speaking role, Phil your impassioned pleas fell on dead ears apparently, but you are at least an extra.”
Check the videos out here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oae8BC1mx8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNSrmP44aFQ
My inchoate cry to the Ecuadorian people was either so radical that it had to be cut, or perhaps it was just plain garbled spanish. Alas, the world will never know. (I had suggested that the Ecuadorians ask some very hard questions as to where the money for all the oil drilling would go and to who).
That evening we were invited to Diego’s presentation on the use of their camera traps at the field centre. He underlined the value of camera traps in conservation work as they would often reveal a world of life and movement that would otherwise conduct itself furtively in the presence of humans. The star of the show no doubts being the noble Jaguar, Panthera onca. The world’s third largest feline the highly adaptive Jaguar once ranged from southern USA to northern Argentina. Prominent in ancient Mayan and Aztec mythology, the Jaguar retains its near mythical qualities as our modern culture draws upon its grace and strength for the inspiration of stuff to sell us. Declining numbers have given the Jaguar the unwelcome appellation of near threatened, “a species considered threatened with extinction in the near future.” The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) publish a Red List updating the conservation status of the world’s flora and fauna. Like a reverse dictionary, the world is lighting up species, that soon gone will diminish not just our vocabulary but understanding of the planet.
[The true king of the jungle, the jaguar]
[fresh proof of their local existence]
TBS are currently looking for funds to continue their research into the jaguar population of Ecuador, a study that has never been done before which would create crucial information to protect them from further depletion. Get in touch with TBS to help out.
We left feeling buoyed by the fact that good people like Diego and Meyer are not only knowledgeable, but generous with their time. In a world where wilderness is disappearing and under threat from our own appetites we have to revisit our relationship to nature and reflect on our place in the ecology of things. As humans we have seen the stars, and plumbed the depths of the ocean. Aboard spaceship earth we can choose to pilot our way to a future that encompasses the life of all living things or charge our way along a path leaving a wake of destruction toward an unknown tomorrow.
[The plum throated trogan]
For information about the TBS and the Amazon rainforest:
www.usfq.edu.ec/programas_academicos/Tiputini
www.ran.org
www.amazonwatch.org
www.worldwilfe.org/places/amazon
*natural, unspoiled or undeveloped**
** if you discount the TBS buildings
