s r a u g Ja t s i m e in th
getty images; wikimedia; jacqui hayes
travelogue
The dense, high-altitude rainforest of Brazil is constantly shrouded in a cold mist. Somewhere within, jaguars and pumas are stalking. Jacqui Hayes joins a Brazilian scientist in a desperate bid to protect them.
E
xtinction seems easy to define: it occurs when the last individual of a species dies. In practice, a species is doomed long before its last member perishes: the struggle to count and maintain enough breeding pairs, with enough genetic diversity, in a threatened species is one of the most difficult, error-prone and heartwrenching processes in science. It’s exactly what Marcelo Mazzolli is trying to achieve with Brazil’s big cats – jaguars (Panthera onca) and pumas (Puma concolor) – in the Mata Atlântica, or Atlantic Forest, a stretch of tropical and subtropical moist and dry forest, savannas and mangroves, which extends along the Atlantic coast of Brazil and inland as far as Paraguay. “I’m caught by it, dragged by it. Sometimes you have a wild dream and then,” he pauses, shrugs and raises his hands in a gesture of surrender, “That’s it.” Mazzolli, kitted up with solid-looking boots, a widebrimmed hat, a machete and a cheeky smirk, looks not unlike
Far left: jaguar Above: Marcelo Mazzolli points out features of the Atlantic rainforest. Left: puma Below: base camp is a wooden cabin surrounded by tents.
the fabled explorer Indiana Jones. And, sitting in the kitchen of a dilapidated wooden cabin deep inside the SaintHilaire/Lange National Park, we’re just about as remote as that fictional movie character too. This area is the fourth most biodiverse site on our planet (see “Biodiversity hotspots” Cosmos 33, p13). And somewhere nearby is – Mazzolli hopes – Brazil’s southernmost population of rainforest jaguars. “This project is about the jaguar because it is going extinct fast – very fast in the Atlantic Rainforest,” Mazzolli says. “We are really aiming to find out where is the jaguars’ core areas.” It’s late May 2010, and I’ve been invited by Biosphere Expeditions, a British nonprofit ecotourism organisation, to join Mazzolli and a team of 12 international volunteers. For two weeks they’ve called the cabin and their surrounding tents home. The dilapidated wooden cabin is in the middle of an isolated valley, surrounded by the precipitous Serra do Mar mountain range. Dense rainforest stretches up the slopes, and then disappears – the tops of the mountains are almost always hidden, shrouded in mist. Far from human >>
Rio de Janeiro São Paulo
picture CREDIT in here
Study site
86
www.cosmosmagazine.com
Cosmos 37
>>
Cosmos 37
www.cosmosmagazine.com
87