Blog entry: Third week

Blog entry: Third week

Brazil, Emas National Park, 10 - 16 December 2012

Another weekly update from the ENP and surroundings. Perhaps it is possible for me to update this blog every week after all, fingers cross! So, this week was the first week that we are left alone. As you may noted from last week Desiree is now already in Campinas / Sao Paulo and it is up to us now to fulfil the task here in ENP. Because every cameras are already placed at the appropriate places we only have to check and monitor the status of each cameras.

For our convenient we have divided our sampling areas into several sub-areas, which we can easily use you to plan our visits. Our priority is the area with high chance of harvesting (i.e. areas which the sugarcanes are quite tall). So at the first day we focused to check these areas. On average we can check around 8 cameras a day. which is ideal, because we have around 50+ active cameras to check. Hence it will take us about a week to finish checking all of the cameras.

The weather around ENP is a little bit unpredictable now, with a high chance for precipitation. Rain is  good because it will erase the old tracks from the paths where we will practice to conduct the track census. The downside is the quality of the road will deteriorated after a night of rain.

partial rainfall is a common thing around this region 

On either Tuesday or Wednesday, we went to check our cameras in a valley and also to practice recognising tracks (quite fresh Puma tracks!) when suddenly a bus appeared and destroyed all the tracks. When the bus stopped, a couple of guys went to us and we greeted each other. Apparently they were from the ETH (bioethanol company which owns all of the cane fazendas in the region). It was an immediate challenge for us. With some Portunol  I have managed to explain what we were doing in the area. The guys from the ETH seems to understand and luckily we also got some basic phrases from Desiree, to ask when they are going to harvest the canes. Fortunately this area will be harvested around May / June, so we could leave the cameras in this valley with more ease in our heart.  Of course, it is also a good news for the wildlife in this area. As there are a lot of wildlife in this area considered on the amount of tracks that we saw along this path.

Puma (Puma concolor) tracks!

On another areas there was another challenge for us. When we came, we saw a lot of activities and big machines. So we wondered what will happened. It was during lunch time so all the workers ceased their work and we kind of disturbed their lunch to ask what they were doing. The manager explained that they were going to sprayed some fertilizers in this areas. The positive side of this story is that they gave us colas and cakes and even asked us to joined them for lunch. We had to decline this kind invitation because we still had many things in the agenda.

Burrowing owl (Athene cunicularia) [zoom in the picture to see it more clearly] 

Tuesday and Friday were more fun, at least for me. After all this time being drove around by Efi (which is really great and we thank you very much for your time and effort ;)) finally I can sit behind the steering wheel and have a taste of driving around the canes. For the first time it was a bit awkward, because I am not used to drive around a big pick-up truck and also because I haven't drove manual car in the last six months. The road was challenging because there are a lot of big mud pools due to the last rain. Also there were a lot of dead six-banded armadillos (Euphractus sexcinctus) on the road to avoid. After all it went well and I got the hang of it.

Another challenge was on Friday, when we went to replace a camera. Suddenly, the cloud have gathered and the rain poured from heaven. I was soaking wet in an instance and we still have to drove back to JCF.  On the main road to get out of the valley lot of water streamed  down and definitely a different kind of driving experience and one that I haven't experienced before.

After all it went well and we got back to JCF safely and thus I can inform you about my new experiences in and around the canes.

Adriano and family

Similar as the last week entry, I will write about other things besides field work. This week I like to dedicate this to Adriano and the family. Adriano builds house for occupation (like the office, all of the enclosures here in JCF and the house of Leando and Anah.). He and his family are frequent guests in our cottage. Two weeks ago they were also here. Now they are back to finish the works and so they stayed with us this week-end.

Similar as two weeks ago, Adriano and his family are really friendly and kind. Especially his mother is a doll and furthermore a great cook. If they made cakes, they always shared some of it with us. They even brought their own tank of gas to cook. Also, they cleaned the floor in the veranda and the kitchen. I feel quite embarrassed because they are so kind to us and we cannot give something in return.

Last night, I had a great chat with the guys. Just small talks about things that came across and It was a good fun to have some conversation in Portuguese (well, for me it was a good exercise to improve my Portuguese). They gave even a compliment for my Portuguese, which seems to be odd because I still used a lot of Spanish words if I talked with them. Nevertheless, we could communicate to some extent which made me really content. And its seems they too. I think people appreciate it if you try to speak their native language, even if you made a lot of mistakes.

Adriano has a lovely wife (Angela) and two kids (Adriely and Andre). The smallest one is almost two years old and really cute. He seems to like the peanut candy thing (which I also like, but the girls detested it :P). He works together with his brother, José Roberto. Because now it is a vacation time here in Brazil, Peterson the son of José Roberto is coming to help to finish the project. This family is a nice and hard working people and I am so glad to be able to know them even better.

To return the kindness of the family in some way, we gave them a postcard from Holland. I read about this postcard tip somewhere and it seems to be quite effective. I wrote down on the postcard "Muito obrigado, por voceis son afável, muito prazer..." Which translated means something like " Thank you very much, because you are so kind, really nice to meet you" I'm not very sure about the grammar, but it seems that they quite understand what I meant. He even said that I wrote it down like a Brasileiro, which made me a bit flushed, haha.

In the end, we made a group photo and the result you can see it here. On the foreground from left to right; Peterson, Adriely, Adriano, José Roberto, Dorith. In the middle, from left to right: Your sincerely, Lorena, Angela & André, Trindade, Aleimirio and Efi. In the back, from left to right: Taylisson and Rodrigo.

Happy anniversary!!

Last but not least I would like to say a few words for my parents, as today (December 17th) is their anniversary. Time seems to flew by really fast as you are already married for 15 years now. I wish you two a wonderful day, even if you are on two different parts of the world right now (Asia and Europe). All the best wishes of course for the many years to come. Sadly, I cannot prepare anything right now, and to be honest I just remembered this. Nevertheless, my thoughts are always with you guys and I'm really proud to be your son. A lot of cheers and hugs.

This is the end of my weekly update and I hope to write to you again someday next week. Ate a proxima semana!

Yuga 

Blog entry: Second week

Brazil, Emas National Park, 2 December - 9 December 2012

The last week was quite intense. We went to the field to put more cameras and to assessed the paths for the track surveys. Fieldwork wise we started the day around 7.30 and continue till something around 20.00. I still wonder how the Brazilians can survive with minimal amount of foods and rest. It's for sure not a "Banana Republic". Another reason we had to work hard is because Desiree will leave us alone in the end of this week (actually she already left this morning). So, any time that we could spent in the field with her is a bonus and in the end we had every camera set on Thursday and the transects evaluated on Friday.

We also had some bad luck this week. We were planning to put more of the analogue cameras to fill the gaps, however on several areas we found out that they are harvesting the sugarcanes. So we raced to retrieved all cameras already set on the fields where they suppose to be harvested. Back on the office there was another excitements because we could see if we had ay results from the cameras

Well we had! on one particular sugarcane path (between two fragments) there was a tapir passing by and even a jaguar! too bad that the sugarcane around the areas have been cut down. On another area we captured (on picture) crab-eating fox and on another one we captured armadillo, crab-eating fox and a rare specimens (black one/ melanic) of Pampas cat. Desiree thought at first sight that it was just a regular black cat, but apparently this is an endangered species and we are really lucky to captured it on picture.

A harvester

On the flip side, all of the sugarcanes in the areas have been harvested and we are not sure how it will impact the movement of the species. This is more or less also one of things that we try to answer in our research.

Despite the hard work we still have some free times. Yesterday we cleaned the house a bit and in the afternoon we went to the river with Leandro and the family, Bahiana and the family (employees of Leandro) and us the 4 gringos. The river is a part of rio Araguaia, which goes from ENP all the way to the Atlantic ocean. This is also a part of the natural corridor that connect ENP with the Amazon. One nice little fact is that on this place they have released a jaguar called Lenda (which means Legend). Furthermore, there are caymans swimming around in this river. In spite that fact the river is nice and clear (you need to see it by yourself) and really refreshing. And now we know how to get there, this will be a good hang out spot after a hard day in the field, haha.

View of the Araguaia river 

Our home for 4 months

Now I have update you a bit about the fieldwork, I like to guide you through the place we call "home" for the upcoming months. As you perhaps noticed, I already put a picture of the outside of the house on my previous entry. Now I'm going to go through the interior of the house. Where shall we begin ?? perhaps starting with my room? Okay, as you see on the next photo. there are two beds in my room (with one being a bunk bed). The picture after that is the bathroom. Each room in this house has its own bathroom. The water is heated by an electrical coil in the shower head (a common thing in brazil).

The next picture is the living room. We don't use this room that much. As you can see it is quite humble. So we can't sit with each other in this room anyway (plus we don't have the time because we go back from the field really late). 

This is the veranda of the house. In the morning and maybe in the afternoon we have a breakfast and lunch at this big table, with the view of the park.

The kitchen is perhaps the one place in the house where we spent a lot of time. We cooked our own foods and so after hard day of work we still have to cook dinner if we don't want to go to sleep with empty stomach. The kitchen is actually my domain. So far, I have whipped many dishes and my roomies are quite content with them. Because all of my roomies are vegetarian, I am more or less also a vegetarian at the moment ;).

soyballs / perkedel that I made today 

Well, last evening I broke my vegetarian streak, because last night we were invited by Leandro to join them for a churrasco, Brazilian style barbecue. After two weeks without meat it was a nice treat and also we got some caipirinhas... this was a nice way to end the week.

Até breve in my proximate entry,

Abraço,

Yuga 

¿Que pasa aqui...?

¿Que pasa aqui...?

Blog entry: First week

Brazil, Emas National Park, 23 November - 1 December 2012

This week was a week full of new impressions, new knowledge, new friendship but most definitely full of hard works. We started quite messy because we missed our flight in Sao Paulo, caused by variety of  bad lucks (e.g. slight delay in Paris, long immigration queue). Luckily we could redirect our flight and thus we flew to our next destination later on the day. perhaps you have noticed that I always refer to "we". Well, I'm not alone in this trip because I have my dear colleague Dorith Vermunt as a company during this trip. After all, we two are going to do the field work together. Our next destination is Goiania. A moderate large city in Central Brazil. Desiree, our supervisor , and Efi which will also conduct a field work in Emas waited for us on the airport of Goiania. After the long trip, we decided to spent one night in Goiania and we will continue our trip in the morning.

The trip to Mineiros took about 9 hours. Mineiros is the largest town in the vicinity of Emas National Park (I reffered is as Emas). Which is considerably clean city. I really thought that Mineiros is full of dust and shanty (kind of wild west). To go to Emas we still need to take a cab ride of one hour. During the ride, but also in the bus, I could already notice the vastness of the agricultural industry in this area. Acres and acres of soy and sugarcane as far as can be seen. It is literally sea of green and with solid asphalt as the separator. I have a mix feeling of awe and sadness. I really amazed by how big the bioethanol industry really is, though I'm also sad because there must have been a significant loss of  natural areas the last 100 years or something.

Soy and sugarcane fields

However, as a researcher I need to keep my cool and approach this thing objectively. So, to continue my story after one hour drive we arrived at the headquarter of Jaguar conservation Fund (JCF). JCF is run by Leandro Silveira, a scientist with 20 years experience in the area. The headquarter is also his own private property, which means that he has his house built adjacent to the office and also another cottage, with four rooms to harbour scientists and volunteers.

Our home for 4 months

In this cottage we will live for the upcoming four months (Dorith, Efi and myself). The Property is really nice as they have plenty of space designated as pen for animal shelters. The animals that roam in the area are four adult jaguars (with one black jaguar), a juvenile jaguar called Yuma, lot of rheas or emas (ostrich like birds), two tapirs, white lipped peccaries (swines) and deers. Other domestic animals are cattle for meat and milk, goats and dogs.

So on Monday, we already had the first meeting with Leandro to discuss our project design. In the end we decided to go for track census and camera trapping. In short, within these four months we will place cameras inside the sugar cane plantation to estimate the amount of animals passing through the plantations. Also, we will count tracks around various plantations. Further detail is secret and I don't want to bother you with plenty of scientific stuffs.

Okay, so move on. In the afternoon, we (Leandro, Desiree and us)went to retrieved cameras in the field. We had a straight hands on reading tracks. It was really nice to see tapir, maned wolf, deer directly on the field. However, the learning curve was quite fast. During this afternoon, we saw two tapirs. We even saw one tapir in the middle of soy field (around 18.00). and what even cooler was we saw jaguar tracks(!). In the end, We even went to collect cow head from a soy fazenda. They were butchering a cow and the head was given to Leandro for the jaguars.

Jaguar tracks

After these days we learned how to prepare camera traps, both analogue and digital. How to set up the cameras in the field. So far, we already placed 14 cameras (digital). We also look for possoble paths to do the transect for the track census and learned plenty of mammals tracks and ecology of the mammals in the area.

We also went to a fragment (forest patches) to retrieve cameras. it was really beautiful but difficult walk through a piece of natural forest. However, we had the luck to see a tapir swimming in the stream and an armadillo(!) close by.

Forest fragment

Overall, this last weeks have been really educative. But it drained quite of my energy. Two days ago we had a workday from 8.00 till 20.00. So, I guess my blog entry can be updated on regular base. I really hope to do so, but I'm afraid it is quite difficult. I really want to write plenty of stuffs about being here in cerrado, but maybe I need to cut the amount of text in half the next time. I hope You enjoy this entry/ the start of my field work.

Muito obrigado & till the next entry

Yuga

PS: As I'm writing this entry, I noticed that now is already December 1st and thus I'm officially 27 years old. Therefore, I would like to dedicate this entry to my parents which have always supported me. Even in my decision for these field work. Thank you very much! Also a congratulation for Liselotte van den Berg (if you read this entry), as she has also her birthday on this day.