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.