Russ is studying wild Andean (or spectacled) bears in the Lambayeque region of Peru and sharing his adventures with us. Read his previous post, Finally, a Little Bit of Rain.

Wow, what a difference a little rain makes in the dry forest! When I woke up this morning, I walked away from the base camp to look at the clouds and fog rolling through the valleys. It was just before dawn, and at first I thought it was still raining. Then I realized that what I thought were raindrops falling on me were actually flying ants!
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Russ is studying wild Andean (or spectacled) bears in the Lambayeque region of Peru and sharing his adventures with us. Read his previous post, Another Day Older, Another Day Wiser?

Well, we have to be creative and persistent in our quest to collar Andean bears in the dry forest. The last few weeks have shown us that although we have learned more about the bears here than we have elsewhere, we still have a lot to learn!
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This year is starting out to be quite busy for the San Diego Zoo’s Desert Tortoise Conservation Center (DTCC), located in Las Vegas. We are now operating the DTCC Pet Desert Tortoise Hotline/Pickup Service that complements Clark County’s Wild Desert Tortoise Pickup Service. Clark County operated both services until December 31, 2009, picking up desert tortoises that people found on development sites, tortoises in harm’s way (such as along a highway), or unwanted or found pet desert tortoises wandering in developed areas. Starting January 1, 2010, Clark County continues to pick up wild tortoises found on development sites, but the DTCC now picks up surrendered pet tortoises and tortoises found in already developed areas.
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Russ is studying wild Andean (or spectacled) bears in the Lambayeque region of Peru and sharing his adventures with us. Read his previous post, To Smell a Bear.

The sky last night was clear, so the stars were bright overhead as we cooled off and settled into a new campsite. The moon was just past full, so we could easily have stayed up later, but we were all tired from hiking in the afternoon sun with full backpacks, and we went to sleep early.
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Russ is studying wild Andean (or spectacled) bears in Peru and sharing his adventures with us. Read his previous post, 20 Liters Down, 5 Hours to Go.

I’m sometimes jealous of people who can describe how things smell, or taste. I know the same words that they do, but they truly understand how to use the words. If I could, I would describe for you what a wild Andean bear smells like. Instead, all I can say is that “Chris” smelled like a bear.

I’ve been familiar with the general smell of “bear” since I was a child, growing up in black bear country. Since then, I’ve been fortunate enough to smell black bears and brown bears across the mid-western and western United States, but this is the first time I’ve ever sniffed a wild Andean bear. Yep, Chris definitely smells like a bear!
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Families participating in our Green Family Challenge were asked to monitor their home’s electricity use and share their attempts to “hibernate” for Challenge #4: In the Dark? Each family received a watt meter, home electrical monitor, and low watt bulbs. When they actually took stock of how much electricity their homes used, they were amazed!
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Russ is studying wild Andean bears in Peru and sharing his adventures with us. Read his previous post, From San Diego to Dry Forest in 36 Hours.

There are serious logistical constraints involved in Andean bear fieldwork, whether in the cloud forests of Cusco or the dry forests of Lambayeque. In the dry forest, the critical constraint for we humans is water. For those of us waiting to collar bears, it’s WATER, in jugs of 20 liters (5.28 gallons), carried in backpacks from the flat lowlands into the rugged hills.

Although we’re camped near a waterhole, we don’t actually have access to any of the water in it; that water is for the wildlife to use. Based on what they’ve observed, Robyn and her team from the Spectacled Bear Conservation Society (SBCS) believe that bears travel down trails higher on the canyon walls to feed on sapote fruits at lower elevations, and return up this canyon to drink and swim in the waterhole.
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In some ways, it’s a long trip from San Diego to the dry forest of Lambayeque, where I’m going to work in the field with Robyn Appleton and the field team from the Spectacled Bear Conservation Society or SBCS (see post The Bear Goes over the Mountain). Yet in other ways, it’s only a few hours away.

The goal of my trip to the dry forest of northern Peru is to work with Robyn and SBC’s team to capture several Andean (also called spectacled) bears, and fit them with satellite GPS collars. Dr. Meg Sutherland-Smith, a veterinarian with the San Diego Zoo, will provide top-notch veterinarian care for any bears we immobilize during her stay and give Robyn and I additional training and advice in these procedures (see Meg’s post, Peru: Room with a View). The data we obtain from these collars will give us insight into the amount of space that bears need in this tropical dry forest, which is a threatened habitat.
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We wanted to see if the families participating in our Green Family Challenge #3 could come up with a creative way to make a climate-change-reduction dinner, from store to table. Each family took on the challenge with gusto, resulting in some tasty meals!

With cloth San Diego Zoo bags in hand, the families turned to farmer’s markets and co-ops to obtain the freshest produce and discovered that prices were similar to those found at supermarkets. (more…)

I’ll never forget the first time I saw a real giant panda—it was 1987, and the San Diego Zoo was hosting the famous Fuzhou Zoo pandas, Basi and Yuan Yuan, that were here on a 200-day loan from China. These were the first giant pandas ever exhibited at our Zoo, and it was truly “panda-monium” around the city! I was elated the first time I saw these amazing black-and-white furry friends and continually thought of work-related reasons I needed to go into the canyon to see them! So, you can only imagine my exhilaration—as well as the depth of my emotions—when I had the incredible opportunity to hold a panda cub in my arms, touch its fur, feel its strength, and look into its eyes! It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I had to keep pinching myself to make sure I was really experiencing it!
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