Projects in the Field

Projects in the Field

9

The Bears Thank You

By
Suzanne Hall
– May 17, 2012Posted in: Animal Stories, Animals and Plants, Bears, Conservation, Conservation at the Zoo, Pandas, Projects in the Field, Uncategorized

Enrichment toys are vital for a recovering sun bear's health. Photo courtesy of BSBCC

Several months ago, we put out a call via our Animal Care Wish List asking for donations to provide enrichment items for the sun bears housed with our new collaborative partner, the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre (BSBCC). You responded generously, and I am pleased to say we were able to send six new toys to the bears at the BSBCC. Thank you so much for your generosity!

The sun bear is a rare bear whose habitat is dwindling rapidly under pressure from deforestation. Primary causes of forest loss include illegal timber extraction and the development of palm oil plantations. Very few studies of wild sun bears have been conducted, and a population census of this species, or the Bornean subspecies, has never been conducted. However, their numbers must surely be on the decline as their habitat steadily shrinks.

One of my objectives is to find more opportunities to conduct research with sun bears, to learn more about them and facilitate conservation of this species. We have had the opportunity to observe the growth and development of four sun bear cubs born to our resident female, Marcella, but a larger sample size of animals was needed to conduct any statistically meaningful research into various aspects of their biology. Enter the BSBCC.

Siew Te Wong founded the BSBCC in Sabah, Borneo, to serve as a rescue and rehabilitation facility for orphaned and injured sun bears. “Wong,” as he is called, had conducted field work on these animals but recognized the need to provide care for bears impacted by forest loss and the illegal pet trade. In only 4 years of operation, the BSBCC has accumulated more than 20 sun bears. Some are destined for Wong’s developing reintroduction program, which will see them repatriated to the wild in time. Others are not good candidates for release and will likely live out their years at the BSBCC.

Thankfully, the BSBCC goes the extra mile to ensure a good home for its sun bears. It has several large outdoor pens that are essentially areas of enclosed natural habitat: giant trees, heavy canopy, soft forest soil, and a multitude of plants and bugs for the bears to enjoy. The enclosures are so natural that wild monkeys and birds often cruise in and perch in the canopy of their trees. The bears are carefully managed so that agreeable animals can be housed together as playmates when possible. Even so, there are so many of these animals that on any given day a few of the bears will be rotated inside so others can enjoy the outside spaces.

The BSBCC likes to provide enrichment for their indoor animals to ensure that their environment remains as stimulating as possible. And that’s where you come in. Your donations helped to aid in maintaining a quality of life for these bears that ensures their physical and emotional well-being. The photos here demonstrate that the bears are enjoying the toys immensely!

We are excited about developing our partnership with the BSBCC into a research opportunity. This will aid in the conservation of the smallest bear on Earth and could lend insight into the bear family tree. We know from our past work, for example, that sun bear mothers and panda mothers are very similar in their attentive maternal-care styles, and both pandas and sun bears differ from the less active hibernating bears like brown and black bears. What other similarities and differences between the bear species will we find?

Your gifts of enrichment were the first step in what I hope will be a long and informative road that leads to new discoveries about sun bears. Thank you again.

Suzanne Hall is a senior research technician for the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research. Read her previous post, Monday: Black, White, and the Blues.

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1

Raising Maui Parrotbills

By
Amy Kilshaw
– May 17, 2012Posted in: Animal Stories, Animals and Plants, Birds, Conservation, Hawaiian Birds, Projects in the Field, Uncategorized

A newly hatched Maui parrotbill

The Hawaii Endangered Bird Conservation Program is pleased to announce our current success in raising the critically endangered Maui parrotbill (Hawaiian name: kiwikiu). This year, two chicks have hatched at the Maui Bird Conservation Center (MBCC), and one chick hatched at the Keauhou Bird Conservation Center (KBCC) on the Big Island. Our previous chick was raised in 2009, so adding three birds to the managed-care population over the course of one month is fantastic!

A newly hatched Maui parrotbill weighs only 1.5 grams (about the weight of a large paperclip!) and needs to be fed every hour between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. for the first 13 days, with additional midnight feeds for the first 3 nights, which keep us very busy. Being intelligent and slow to become independent, Maui parrotbill chicks are susceptible to imprinting, so when their eyes begin to open, chicks are fed with a sock puppet created to look like the adult bird. When MBCC’s two chicks were old enough, we transferred them to KBCC so that they could all be together, helping them to develop the correct species identity.

A Maui parrotbill youngster

In the wild, Maui parrotbills form monogamous pairs that produce a clutch comprising a single egg. If raised successfully, the fledgling can remain with its parents for up to 17 months, so the species naturally has a low reproductive output. Here, we increase egg production by removing eggs from parental nests for artificial incubation, which can trigger the females to lay more eggs.

The Maui parrotbill is a member of the unique Hawaiian honeycreeper family. Currently, the Maui parrotbill’s range is extremely restricted to high elevation ohi`alehua forests on the eastern slopes of the Haleakala volcano on Maui. The wild population is estimated to be only around 500 birds. Although the population is currently considered to be stable, its distribution is limited primarily to one location, making it susceptible to extinction.

Growing chicks with a puppet "parent" watching over them

The Maui parrotbill is an insectivore that uses its strong, parrot-like beak to remove insect larvae from tree bark and fruit. Providing them with an extensive range of insects for their diet is a challenge, which we try to overcome by providing alternative nutritious foods and plenty of native branches for them to forage. In the last few weeks, we have started experimentally adding silkworms to the flock’s diet. We are hoping the bright yellow pigments contained in the green leaves eaten by the silkworms will ultimately be deposited in the birds’ plumage and enhance the yellow color of the males, making them more attractive to the females. With continuing effort and good fortune, we hope for another successful breeding season next year.

Amy Kilshaw is a research associate at the Maui Bird Conservation Center, part of the San Diego Zoo Hawaii Endangered Bird Conservation Program. Read her previous post, Nene Propagation: End of an Era.

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0

Promoting Desert Tortoise Care

By
Angie Covert
– May 15, 2012Posted in: Animals and Plants, Conservation, Projects in the Field, Reptiles and Amphibians, Uncategorized

Angie (in middle) and other DTCC staff help promote desert tortoise care at the Plant Sale.

Spring is here, and the San Diego Zoo Desert Tortoise Conservation Center (DTCC) is gearing up for the 2012 season. Tortoises are emerging from hibernation, and local custodians of tortoises have lots of questions for the DTCC staff!

One of our roles is to help educate Las Vegas residents about wild and pet desert tortoises. Attending local events such as the Springs Preserve Plant Sale is one way to reach people. The plant sale sells native Mojave Desert plants, which are more water efficient for yards in Las Vegas. It’s also a great opportunity to work with a local partner and educate the public on proper plants for pet tortoise habitats. The event gives us the opportunity to talk to people one on one and answer questions. We can also hand out important information to desert tortoise custodians, such as a list of native foods and plants they can add to their backyards.

It’s very important for people to know how to properly care for their pet tortoise! This year, we had a number of interested people who wanted to know what we do for desert tortoises and how they can help. We were able to explain our efforts in recovering the wild desert tortoise and the research projects we are working on. Our goal is to relocate tortoises back into the desert; the DTCC is the only legally authorized organization allowed to do this.

We also encouraged Springs Preserve Plant Sale attendees to volunteer at the DTCC, which is a great way to learn more about what we do. We had a sign-up sheet and information about the type of volunteer work they could do to help the desert tortoise!

If you are interested in volunteering, please email us at DTCC@sandiegozoo.org.

Angie Covert is a research coordinator at the San Diego Zoo Desert Tortoise Conservation Center. Read her previous post, Desert Tortoises Get Great Care.

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0

The Last Ones?

By
Allan Pessier
– May 15, 2012Posted in: Animal Stories, Animals and Plants, Conservation, Conservation at the Zoo, Projects in the Field, Reptiles and Amphibians, Uncategorized

Panamanian golden frog

If you sat next to me on the plane traveling home from Panama this past February, you probably thought that my tote bag was full of souvenirs from a grand, tropical vacation. Instead, I was carrying the carefully preserved and packaged bodies of endangered frogs from captive survival-assurance populations. This was a trip that required months of careful planning and lots of red tape in obtaining and using the complicated permits needed to transport wildlife samples. Far from being morbid, icky, or gross, these specimens were extremely valuable for scientific efforts to save amphibian species from extinction. So why would anyone willingly travel with dead frogs?

Does Allan's yellow tote bag hold hope for amphibian species?

To explain, I should tell you that I’m a veterinarian who specializes in pathology. Therefore, my day-to-day responsibilities are focused on using laboratory techniques, including necropsies (animal autopsies), to accurately diagnose disease in animals at the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park as well as our field conservation programs. Through these activities, our Wildlife Disease Laboratories have a mission to remove disease as a roadblock to wildlife conservation. By bringing these deceased frogs to our laboratory and sleuthing out their parasites and disease problems, we hope to make useful recommendations that can help improve things like animal diets or aid veterinarians in selecting the very best treatments. Ultimately, this helps to ensure that the captive populations can be sustained and thrive until they can someday return to the wild.

Promoting the success of amphibian survival assurance populations is no trivial matter: more than one third of the world’s approximately 6,000 amphibian species are in decline because of introduced disease, loss of habitat, environmental change, and human exploitation. Although sometimes I get wrapped up in dry scientific and technical details, this group of frogs from Panama now in my bag really reminded me of why I do what I do.

Allan holds some of the carefully preserved frog specimens for study.

Among these specimens were species like the Panamanian golden frog, which soon may survive only in captive survival assurance populations, and the fringe-limbed tree frog, for which only a single individual is still known to exist. It is difficult to describe the feeling of holding what may be the last individuals of an entire species in your hand, but I can tell you that it hit hard for me, and I know that it is worse for friends and colleagues on the front lines of the amphibian decline who don’t have the luxury of retreating into the laboratory.

I am privileged to work for a unique organization that recognizes the importance of what might seem like an unusual scholarly activity. Collaborating with colleagues nationally and internationally really makes amphibian conservation happen! I also have the support of an amazing team in the Wildlife Disease Laboratories who will move mountains if they think it will help animals in need.

If you’d like to know more about the amphibian extinction crisis and what you can do to help, please visit the Amphibian Ark® online at www.amphibianark.org. Some of the most important actions for saving amphibian species, like protecting the environment and raising awareness of the plight of animals, can happen from within our homes.

Allan Pessier is a senior scientist for the Wildlife Disease Laboratories, San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research.

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1

With a Little Help from Our Friends

By
Jennifer Germano
– May 4, 2012Posted in: Animals and Plants, Conservation, Desert Tortoises, Projects in the Field, Reptiles and Amphibians, Uncategorized

Boy Scouts Orlando Arnold, Jr. and Cory Chatterton are hard at work making artificial burrows for our tortoises.

I’ve spent over 10 years working in conservation, and no matter where in the world you end up, whether it’s here in the States, down in South America, or halfway around the world in New Zealand or Australia, one thing is painfully clear: there’s a lot of important conservation work that needs to be done and there never seems to be enough resources to get us to where we want to be. Though the budget shortfalls sometimes make the work a bit more difficult, one area in which I’ve been repeatedly amazed is the great support we often receive from members of the community and enthusiastic folks who come out and donate their time and a bit of sweat helping us get our work done. Conservation and the science behind it is not a solitary endeavor. Many people go into making every project succeed, and I just wanted to take this opportunity to remind all of you who may have helped with a conservation project (with San Diego Zoo Global or otherwise) or are thinking about volunteering that your time and enthusiasm really do make a huge difference!

Volunteer Simon Madill works on some fence repair for our on-site tortoise research.

Here at the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center in Las Vegas, spring is standing on our doorstep, and we’re all preparing for the start of a new field season. Our research team is getting ready to embark on some new projects here on site, one of which required us to fix up some old tortoise pens that had fallen into disrepair over the past 10 to 15 years. This was a HUGE undertaking and one that would have taken me months of digging artificial burrows and fencing ditches as well as updating and fixing the fences for over 20 100-foot-long pens. A couple of months ago I was beginning to wonder how I was ever going to get it all done and if we’d have anywhere to put our tortoises in the spring. But the world works in mysterious ways, and just in the last month we’ve had some amazing volunteers lend a hand.

Members of the Nevada Conservation Corps after two days of fixing fences in our experimental tortoise pens.

Troop 336 with the Boy Scouts of America, Las Vegas Area Council, led by Cory Chatterton, some members of the Nevada Conservation Corps, and one of our long-term volunteers, Simon Madill, came to my rescue. Nearly 40 people came out over several days, and after some long hours of swinging shovels and pick axes in the desert sun and hours of cutting and tying up fencing, we have finally finished 20 tortoise pens!

All the enthusiasm and hard work of our volunteers mean that this spring we are able to start our tortoise behavior study. I am hopeful that the things we learn will help to improve our future reintroductions of animals back into the wild.

Jennifer Germano is a postdoctoral researcher at the San Diego Zoo Desert Tortoise Conservation Center. Read her previous post, Tortoises and Their Amazing Feats.

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4

Tecate Cypress: Risky Reproduction

By
Lauren Anderson
– April 26, 2012Posted in: Animals and Plants, Conservation, Conservation at the Zoo, Plants, Projects in the Field, Uncategorized

Lauren and Sandra Mardonovich sow Tecate cypress seeds in long pots that provide spacious room for roots.

The Tecate cypress Hesperocyparis forbsiiis a tree found only in Southern California and northern Baja California, Mexico. It has a limited range and is fire dependent, which means the cypress needs fire to reproduce. The cones of this species are serotinous, which means the seeds are released by an ecological trigger (in this case, fire) instead of being released once they reach maturity. When the cones are exposed to heat, the resin that keeps them sealed is melted, the cone opens, and the seed is released. Without fire, the Tecate cypress keeps its seed bank within persistent cones in the tree canopy. When a fire burns a mature stand of Tecate cypress, new seedlings pop up in its place. If this second generation is burned before it reaches maturity, it could wipe out the entire population. There are only four stable populations remaining in California, three of which are in San Diego County. It is because of its limited range and risky reproduction technique that this tree is such a sensitive species.

Tecate cypress cones collected from Otay Mountain await processing.

The Applied Plant Ecology Division at the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research has partnered with the Nature Conservancy, the Bureau of Land Management, and the California Department of Fish and Game to preserve this unique species. The goal of the project is to provide a safe guard against high-frequency fires wiping out the population.

To do this, we collected enough seed from a mature population to have a portion for safe keeping in the Native Plant Seed Bank at the Safari Park and a portion that could be germinated and planted as a nursery stand. Cones were collected from Otay Mountain and processed at the State of California’s Lewis A. Morgan Reforestation Center. The processed cones resulted in thousands of seeds, and of those, a fraction was planted. From the planted seeds, we are hoping to get 400 to 500 seedlings.

Here's a close-up view of the seeds before being covered with soil.

Once the seedlings have grown to a suitable size, they will be planted at the Rancho Jamul Ecological Reserve. The planted cypress trees will be monitored over the next six months. These trees will be used as a sort of “plantation” where more seeds can be collected as needed in case the other stands burn before reaching sexual maturity.

Lauren Anderson is an intern at the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research through the Bureau of Land Management’s Seeds of Success Program. Read her previous post, The Desert: Blooms and Hail.

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3

Butterfly Watching

By
Barbara Boon
– April 26, 2012Posted in: Animal Stories, Animals and Plants, Conservation, Conservation at the Zoo, Insects, Projects in the Field

WOO HOO! Butterflies are back! Spring is in the air, plants are blooming, and I saw my first two monarchs in my courtyard last week!

As a zookeeper, I’ve worked with many species during my career. I’ve always been concerned about wildlife and habitats and how vitally important it is to conserve both, as each is dependent on the other for survival. But when I started working in the San Diego Zoo’s Entomology Department, it really hit me. Working with invertebrates up close opened my eyes to how important conservation, and education, is to our survival…and theirs.

The population of one of my favorite animals, the monarch butterfly, has seriously declined in the last few years. While they get food in the form of nectar from flowers, they perform the critical act of pollination and thus are important for the survival of plants and the potential production of fruits, nuts, and vegetables. The best effort to help this beautiful butterfly comes by planting native milkweed, their host plant, in our backyards and gardens. While it might seem like a small act, each of us really can make a difference.

Behind our Insect House in the Zoo’s Discovery Outpost is a small flower garden containing several plants for attracting butterflies. I had always wished I could do something similar in my own home, but I live in a very small condo with an even smaller garden space. What space I have is planted with a lot of succulents. But last year, I decided a small spot is better than none and planted six milkweed plants in the hope of attracting monarch butterflies. While I didn’t ask, or expect, help from my neighbors, I did let everyone know what I was doing and how important it was and asked all to help “monitor” the new plants.

Within a few days, we had a number of butterfly sightings. We saw females laying eggs on the plants and later on watched as the caterpillars started eating them. What joy at watching all the butterflies alighting on the plants, going from one plant to another! One of the unexpected perks was how excited my neighbors became when the monarchs started arriving. It was quite surprising! Interest really increased when we spotted the caterpillars. Then we started comparing notes on how many caterpillars we saw, and before we knew it we started having “happy hours” to compare notes on our new neighbors. What a blast! Our complex is small, and we all know each other, but having a new butterfly garden created a good reason to actually stop and visit each other. And that led to several happy hours and lots of laughter during the season. But not to be lost in all this excitement is the fact we started a new way station for our insect friends, and I hope this will help increase their numbers.

Regardless of how much space you have, you can help, too. It’s a great teaching tool for children about how important we all are and how important it is to save habitat for our animal friends. If you don’t have any children, you can always have a happy hour with your neighbors.

If you decide to plant a butterfly garden for monarchs, be sure to use native milkweed rather than tropical milkweed, which is lasting longer and longer in our warmer climate and is encouraging monarchs to “stay out too late.” They need to be on their way to an overwintering site by fall, and using a native species such as Asclepias fasicularis ensures the plant dies back after the first cold snap.

I will leave you with the story of the atala butterfly Eumaeus atala. On Key Biscayne in Florida, this endangered butterfly’s range was restricted to the northern end. There was suitable habitat in the southern region, but it was thought to be inaccessible to the butterfly due to development throughout the central portion. The host plant for this species, however, was a favored plant for backyard gardens; enough people planted it to create a bridge for the butterfly to reach the southern edge and new habitat, where it is now established. Thus, the beauty of citizen science and butterfly gardens!

Barbara Boon is a senior keeper at the San Diego Zoo.

Note: The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation provides native seed, including native milkweed, to interested parties.

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25

Children and Nature

By
Megan Owen
– April 20, 2012Posted in: Animal Stories, Animals and Plants, Conservation, Conservation at the Zoo, Pandas, Projects in the Field, Uncategorized

Back in 2000, I had the opportunity to take my family with me on a three-month research trip to the Wolong Giant Panda Center. At the time, my (then) three-year-old son was a handful, and our nanny had a hard time keeping up with him. While my husband and I were a bit panicked at first by his rambunctiousness, the keepers and staff at Wolong quickly took our son under their wing, and, as a result, he got to spend those cool winter days running around outside, with the steep mountains, bamboo forests, and Pitiao river providing the backdrop for his play and adventures. And, of course, there were many young panda cubs for him to call friends. Sometimes he had the opportunity to stand or sit eye to eye with a young panda, and I will never forget the look he would get on his face as he sized up his exotic comrades.

More than 10 years later, and in a far less exotic setting, I saw that same expression—pride, curiosity, and excitement—on the face of my (now) 3-year-old daughter as she picked a big fat grub out from under a planter box at our home near the Zoo. This plump invertebrate (whom she named Cornelia) was her best friend that morning, and for the rest of the day she made up stories about Cornelia’s life and family. Of course, during the course of her playtime with Cornelia, she got filthy dirty, scraped her knee, and wouldn’t eat lunch, but I couldn’t have been happier. The morning was well spent outdoors, investigating nature at a child’s pace.

Megan's son with some of Wolong's panda cubs

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I love my job. And while I feel lucky to work in proximity to some of the world’s most amazing animals, the best part of my job is sharing what I’ve learned with children. Whether it is speaking to students who visit the Zoo, talking to my own children at the end of the day, or visiting children in their classrooms, I love the curiosity and awe they express when we’re talking about wildlife. I am consistently impressed with the knowledge many children possess about animals and habitats and the important insights they often make about our role in changing the lives of wildlife. And when I am invariably asked, “What can kids do to help save wildlife?” I reply, “Go outside and play! Riding your bike is good for the environment! Playing tag is good for polar bears, but playing a video game is not.”

As I watch my own children grow up, I wonder what their connection to the outdoors will be. While we go camping often as a family, and I trundle the kids off to the beach at just about every opportunity, their outdoor play is structured very differently from mine. My family moved from Ann Arbor, Michigan, to San Diego when I was four years old, and I feel very lucky to have grown up where, and when, I did. Back then, parental supervision was often exemplified by a mother’s call of “Make sure you’re home before dark!” and the sound of a screen door swinging shut mid-sentence. This was, of course, especially true during the long summer months, but as a rule, every ounce of daylight after school was spent outside as well. The ocean cliffs and coastal canyons of southern California were my backyard, and while I admit that I did not spend any significant amount of time thoughtfully identifying the organisms and natural processes in my environment, I did acquire a lifelong love of being outside, getting dirty, and solving problems, all of which have served me well in life and especially in my professional experience as a biologist.

The goal of conservation is to protect biodiversity so that the natural world of the future is as rich, expansive, and varied as that of the past. Here at the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research, we all employ science toward that end. And what better way to secure that future than to connect children to nature so that they may grow up with a fundamental appreciation for being outside and an inherent understanding of the value of nature.

Megan Owen is a conservation program manager for the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research. Read her previous post, Panda Hearing Study.

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1

The Desert: Blooms and Hail

By
Lauren Anderson
– March 30, 2012Posted in: Animals and Plants, Conservation, Plants, Projects in the Field

Grape-soda lupine

San Diego County is the most botanically diverse area in the U.S., with nearly 2,000 species, many of which are endemic (unique to a defined geographic area, so many are found only in San Diego County). There are not many places where you can experience the ocean, the snow, and the desert within a couple hours. The desert transition habitat is found down the east side of the Peninsular Ranges, and this is the site of our recent seed collection trip. The weather forecast looked ominous, but we were optimistic. To get to our site, we had to drive up and over the Cuyamaca Mountains and out into the lower elevations beyond.

Apricot mallow

When we finally reached our site, we saw a mix of cacti, shrubs, and huge granite boulders. It was freezing cold and very windy. At certain points the wind became so strong it was difficult to open the truck doors to get out and identify plants. Despite the rough conditions, it was a beautiful place to explore. We saw desert apricot Prunus fremontii, golden gooseberry Ribes quercetorum, and grape-soda lupine Lupinus excubitus in bloom.

As the day wore on, the weather only got worse. When we tried to collect a sample of apricot mallow Sphaeralcea ambigua, the rain turned to hail, and we decided to admit defeat for the day.

McCain Valley overlook

On the drive back up and over the Cuyamacas, the hail turned to snow! It was so much fun to watch everything turn white throughout the course of our drive. We followed a snowplow most of the way down the mountain; I never would have imagined experiencing something like that in Southern California! As we dropped in elevation, the snow slowly changed back into rain and everything turned green again. It was odd to realize that we had only been a half an hour away from the ocean.

San Diego is truly a remarkable place, and I couldn’t ask for a better area to study plant diversity.

Lauren Anderson is an intern at the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research through the Bureau of Land Management’s Seeds of Success Program. Read her previous post, Wake Up, Seeds! Germination Testing.

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1

Are Wild Areas a Luxury?

By
Russ Van Horn
– March 27, 2012Posted in: Animals and Plants, Bears, Birds, Conservation, Projects in the Field, Uncategorized

A critically endangered white-winged guan in Peru's northwest

There was some disturbing news from northwest Peru, near where we’ve been working in the dry forest on Andean (spectacled) bear conservation research in collaboration with the Spectacled Bear Conservation Society: some local hunters had poached white-winged guans within a private, protected area. The white-winged guan, a bird somewhat similar to a wild turkey, was thought to be extinct until rediscovered by scientists in 1977. Efforts to breed it in captivity and reintroduce it to the wild have been ongoing for the last few decades, but although the population has increased, it is thought there are less than 300 adult white-winged guans in the wild. The species is listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world’s largest global environmental network.

It would be easy to simply condemn poaching of white-winged guans as a shortsighted, illegal act, but this wouldn’t address the question of why the guans were hunted. One of the long-standing threats to guans has been hunting, and now poaching, for their meat. Like turkeys in North America, guans are large birds that taste good to humans. I wonder, then, whether the guans were killed for food. If so, this should lead us to consider a contributing factor in poaching: poverty and the lack of options that go along with it.

A camera-trap photo shows several white-lipped pecarries in the humid transitional forest of Cusco, Peru.

Every year there are many instances around the world (including North America) of wildlife poaching for trophies, for the commercial trade in their body parts, and for the commercial trade in wildlife as bushmeat. But there are also many instances of poaching for consumption by local residents living next to protected areas. This type of poaching illustrates the need to engage local residents in conservation actions and the need to work toward the sustainable development of local economies. If local people are struggling to make ends meet, and they don’t see benefits from conservation, don’t you think they might consider it a luxury to set aside wild areas and wild animals for conservation?

A camera trap photo shows a collared peccary in the humid transitional forest of Cusco.

I’m not sure, but I suspect that past over-hunting of peccaries in the dry forest might explain why they’re rarely detected by our camera traps. Two species of peccaries, the white-lipped peccary and the collared peccary, have been frequently photographed by camera traps in humid forests of Cusco at the same elevation as the dry forest of Lambayeque, but it’s rare for camera traps in the dry forest to take photos of peccaries. Perhaps the dry forest is not good habitat for peccaries, but given that collared peccaries range across a wide variety of habitats, including other dry forests, I wonder whether their scarcity at our study site reflects past predation by hungry humans.

It’s nothing new to say that most conservation challenges arise from human actions, but it seems clear that we can’t address those conservation challenges without also considering the challenges facing the humans who live where we work. I don’t know much about how to manage the human component of conservation, so I’m glad that Samantha Young (see post Scientific Concepts for Non-scientists) and the rest of our Conservation Education Division are starting to work with us in the dry forest. We can use all the expert assistance we can get!

Russ Van Horn is a scientist in the Applied Animal Ecology Division of the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research. Read his previous post, The Bear Necessities.

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