Tag: Volontariat

Picture an office in the middle of the jungle: meshing instead of windows, solar panels quietly providing electricity to run the inevitable computers. Green is the colour you see all around, sounds from the rainforest is all you hear. All of a sudden the quiet solitude is broken by the roar of at thunderstorm.

A brief lesson on rainforest seasons: As per Alfredo, our local scientist born in the Amazon, there is no dry season in the rainforest. More appropriately, seasons should be described as heavy rain season and light rain season. When preparing for the boat ride, please bear this in mind and make sure you have your rain gear or poncho handy. It’ll be a good idea to pack your mobiles, cameras and other such items into a waterproof (plastic) bag. There will be no shelter on the small boats taking us from the Tahuayo Lodge to the Research Centre (about one and a half hours).

Yesterday Alfredo and I created a detailed work plan for the first week, especially the first expedition day when we are aiming to bring out and set up all the camera and track traps, some of them a day’s walk away from base.

Alfredo and I will spend the time before you arrive with preparing base, setting up the computer for you entering data and uploading the finished maps the GPSs.

See you soon.

Malika

Continue reading “From our conservation holiday volunteering with jaguars, pumas, ocelots, primates and other species in the Peru Amazon jungle (http://www.biosphere-expeditions.org/peru).”

It is partly cloudy & warm in Iquitos – the dry season is just about to start. The water levels in the Amazon are still pretty high, so the boat ride up to our research centre should be interesting. Writing this I am sitting in the lobby of A&E Tours waiting for my boat to depart. I have just been told that my boat will wait for two more people whose flights from Lima were cancelled, so I have another three hour to wait.

After having been delayed myself by lovely Iberia Airlines, over the last one and a half days I’ve retrieved our research equipment from storage, checked it all through and made it ready for use. The printer and laminator (!) – one of the most important pieces of equipment – are working well again. I’ve put more hours into THE MAP, which you will help me to add more detail to by exploring the jungle around the research centre. THE FINAL MAP will be uploaded to the brand new GPSs I have brought with me.

More news when I am up at the research centre.

Malika

Continue reading “From our conservation holiday volunteering with jaguars, pumas, ocelots, primates and other species in the Peru Amazon jungle (http://www.biosphere-expeditions.org/peru).”

Just a quick update on the expedition preparations while I am still in Europe. Have a look below for the map we’ve created for us trailblazers and be prepared for intensive GPS & mapping training.

The map is still quite blank for us to fill with lots of waypoints and tracks of trails on land and on water. We will be talking a lot about quadrants and how to access remote parts of the study area to place camera and track traps and to conduct our visual encounter surveys. I am looking forward to entering the jaguar’s realm, encounting & recording primates and other wildlife species together with you.

I am off later today and will be in touch again from Iquitos with the latest on-the-ground information.

See you soon

Malika Fettak
Expedtion leader

Continue reading “From our conservation holiday volunteering with jaguars, pumas, ocelots, primates and other species in the Peru Amazon jungle (http://www.biosphere-expeditions.org/peru).”

Two weeks to go until the start of our Amazon biodiversity expedition to Peru. Next week, Malika Fettak, your expedition leader will be off a few days ahead of you to set things up.

The weather in Iquitos at the moment is damp and hovering around the twenties (Centigrade). High twenties during the day, low twenties at night. Your scientist Alfredo Dosantos is at base already, preparing the research and maps for you.

Where we will work is shown below.

Group 1’s task will be opening and exploring more trails so that we can increase our sampling area and cover as many of the big squares (quadrats) around base as possible with camera and track traps, and visual encounter surveys on foot in the jungle and in wobbly canoes along the waterways, recording species as we come across them and hoping to catch the very illusive ones in our low-tech track traps and our high-tech camera versions. All in an effort to show with hard data how biodiverse this place is, and therefore worth protecting.

But beware! Monkeys and jaguars will not be falling into your lap, despite what TV may want you to believe (and what took months to film). The forest is full of life, true, but it is also full of leaves that swallow almost everything a few paces away and reduce encounters to fleeting glimpses of monkeys in the canopy and black shadows streaking across dark green canvas. You’ll hear things before you see them – if you see them – and there will be a cacophony of unfamiliar sounds, and smells and sights, dulled by the constant assault of green on your eyes.

If you come with the expectation of entering into a zoo full of animals on silver plates, you will be disappointed. If you come to soak up the wonders you will hear yet not see and to just be amongst life in one of the most biodiverse spots in this green sea of our blue planet, you won’t be. Come with all your senses open (and perhaps even leave your cameras at base unless you are a lens hunter of the small wonders the jungle has to offer). And come in the spirit of David Henry Thoreau who said “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Malika and Alfredo will be in touch from base a few days before the off. The forest of hidden wonders awaits!

Continue reading “From our conservation holiday volunteering with jaguars, pumas, ocelots, primates and other species in the Peru Amazon jungle (http://www.biosphere-expeditions.org/peru).”