Fauna Forever meets Lifeworks to Improve Ecotourism for Local Amazon Community, by James Mailer and Dave Johnston

Asociación Fauna Forever, together with Lifeworks, an organisation which creates opportunities for teenagers from around the world to volunteer abroad, teamed up at the end of July (2010) with two main aims: to help young students experience the beauty and at times harsh reality of life in the Amazon and also, to help one particular local community on the Tambopata river, Baltimore, rebuild the ceiling of their school/community centre, as well as a rundown bird-hide managed by one of the community families, the Ramirez’s, located at one of the most vibrant parrot and macaw clay-licks in Tambopata – an attractive activity for visiting ecotourists. Ecotourism can provide a good income for anyone living in accessible parts of the Amazon rainforest, and if built with the right set of guidelines and ethical approach can become a sustainable practice for a community. This is also great news for the local environment because a job (or an entire family’s living in this case) in ecotourism will have far less of an impact on the environment than a job in gold mining, logging or hunting. Using land for ecotourism also means that the surrounding forest is expected to have a healthy abundance of wildlife and thus good ecotourism depends on a good level of forest protection.

Final piece of the Trans-Amazonica Highway

With these goals in mind Lifeworks met Fauna Forever (FF) in Puerto Maldonaldo (PEM); home to the FF team, capital of the Madre de Dios region of Peru, and just a short 30 minute flight from Cusco. More about the location: http://www.faunaforever.org/location.html

Dave and James, the FF representatives, welcomed Lifeworks coordinators Dan, Hilary and Willem, with their group of 18 students from the US, to the tiny jungle town. The students were between 13 and 17 years old.

Up the Tambopata River

The journey began with a whistle-stop tour of PEM including a supermarket stop, forest fruit ice-creams and a few interesting sights, the most poignant being the bridge that is currently being constructed over the Madre de Dios river. The bridge is the final piece of the new Trans-amazonica highway (http://www.bicusa.org/en/index.aspx) connecting the east coast of Brazil with the west coast of Peru and more so providing overland trade between Brazil and China. The traffic expected when this bridge is completed will create a wave of activity along the entire stretch of the highway with projections indicating that over a 30 year period 30 miles (50 kilometers) of rainforest will be destroyed each side of the highway as it cuts through pristine rainforest during the large majority of its stretch.

Rustic Bathrooms

The group then set off from the Tambopata River port on a boat to Baltimore (http://www.baltimoreperu.org.pe/ingles/principal.htm) and after a breathtaking 4 hour journey upriver arrived at the El Gato guest house, pleasantly situated up the top of a tall river bank on the confluence of the El Gato and Tambopata rivers. The entire community is comprised of 22 inhabitants although the group was located at the home of the Ramirez family of 5.  This was a long way from home for the students, without any luxuries such as hot water, windows, electricity or modern toilets. It was impressive to see how well most of them adopted their new environment with intrigue, while slowly submersing their mindset into ‘the wild’.

Juvenile Amazon Tree Boa

The most amazing part of the trip for many of the students was ‘the night walk’. Each evening the group filed slowly through the darkness behind Dave, with their flashlights swooping in all directions, encountering an array of creatures including an amazon tree boa, a tree runner, a southern tamandua, whiptail-scorpion spiders, caiman, dung beetles, owls, stick insects, bullet ants, leaf cutter ants, scorpions, tarantulas and much more. Holding a blunt-headed tree snake was a highlight, especially for those who had not wanted see a snake at all during their time in the jungle.

Building the Bird Hide

During the two full days at the community the students worked hard to ensure that the bird-hide was well constructed and that the ceiling of the school was completed. The group split into two which encouraged some friendly rivalry, mainly among the coordinators. Everyone did extremely well on both projects as they alternated day to day, especially considering the hot, humid, and mosquito ridden conditions!  The difficulties all washed away very quickly with a swim in the El Gato waterfall at the end of each day, a perfect reward for everyone after much hard work. While washing and relaxation were the priorities of our daily swims, mud fights made staying clean difficult. When you can’t beat them though, you simply have to join in!

Putting Up the New School Ceiling

On the fourth day the group woke before light and said a sad farewell to delicious home-cooked meals by Mama Teresa, the sound of the waterfall, the star drenched nights, the fruit trees, our friend the Trumpeter bird, and all the sandflies! Off we travelled to Explorer’s Inn (www.explorersinn.com) which is situated downriver at the confluence of the La Torre and Tambapota. The trip was a fresh three hour ride through the new day’s tranquil sunrays breaking through the trees. Explorers Inn was built in 1975 and was the first ecolodge built within the Tambapota region. The students enjoyed the improved comfort and were able to relax after working at Baltimore. After an interesting butterfly talk by FF’s insect team coordinator, Ashley Anne Wick, there was a long walk to Lake Cocacocha, paddling around on two catamaran-style boats and getting up close and personal with some hefty black caiman which provided a fun-filled afternoon for all. The day was finished with a final night walk lead by FF’s herpetofauna team coordinator, Brian Crnobrna, and his ‘mad herper’ FF volunteer, Madison Wise, who both pointed out a couple of very pretty tree frogs.

It's Been a Hard Day's Work!

The next day, after another early rise and a visit to the Explorer’s Inn parrot clay-lick, the group headed back to Puerto Maldonado to catch their flight to Cusco.  There was just one final surprise waiting on the river bank.  Some people (Dave) live years in the rainforest without seeing a big cat, but the group was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a Puma on their final boat ride to town. Dave, unfortunately, was fast asleep and sat up too late to see it!

It had been a jam-packed few days of adventure, excitement and learning. Perhaps it will help to inspire some of the students to continue on, to learn more about the areas that interested them on the trip such as photography, anthropology, science or ecology. The curiosity and desire to learn about the rainforest shown by the students was the real beauty of this trip, and was a pleasure to witness. Time will tell how much the journey influenced the students and if they will perhaps choose to follow a path inline with our very own here in the Amazon, but we think one thing is for sure, that the hard work they put in to helping the local community, coupled with long walks and boat rides in the depths of the mighty Amazon rainforest, will stay with them forever.

The Group

Newly shed Cicada

Capybara

Ceiling's Up!

Chilling Out at El Gato.

The Inambari Dam Project: Nature vs. Power

By Chris Kirkby –  Principal Investigator, Fauna Forever

International media is once again turning its attention to the Amazon rainforests of south-eastern Peru, a spectacular wilderness area and biodiversity hotspot dominated by world famous national parks such as Manu and Bahuaja-Sonene where jaguars and giant otters still roam free and unaffected. What is drawing their interest? Yet another large-scale development project. First was the paving of the Interoceanica Highway, a westerly extension of the Trans Amazon Highway that crosses Brazil and which will facilitate cross-border trade. Now the Peruvian government plans to bring in a Brazilian consortium of companies (Ebasur) to build at a cost of US$4 Billion a 2,200-megawatt dam on the Inambari River, drowning 378 km2of life-rich tropical pre-montane forest located a stone’s throw from the Bahuaja-Sonene National Park (see map below). The benefits and impacts of this reservoir project are still being calculated, but most people in Peru already hold a strong opinion about it, one way or the other.

With regards to the benefits of the dam, the economic value is pretty easy to tot up as it would be dominated by the electricity produced, 80% of which would be exported to Brazil during the first decade to feed the growing industries in states such as Acre, Rondonia and Mato Grosso with the rest flowing into the Peruvian national grid to power the south of the country (details will be hammered out between the countries soon apparently). There are still no good published estimates of this benefit, at least not that we’ve been able to find, but it’s certain that someone will release it soon. There are also some additional benefits in terms of the tourism and recreational potential that a large reservoir would create, a reservoir that would be within 4-5 hours of Cusco (the tourist capital of Peru), within sight and easy access of snowcapped mountains (i.e. the Ausangate range) lined with azure-blue lakes and hotsprings at every turn, and one or two Cock-of-the-Rock (Rupicola peruviana) leks to boot. The building of dams also generates jobs of course, at least for the relatively short period it takes to build them, although in truth the value that one should consider is the premium in wages that workers would perceive above and beyond what they would normally be paid if they stayed in their existing jobs.

It is quite another matter putting monetary figures on the impacts, general upheaval and cost of headache pills that the building, flooding and subsequent operations will generate. And figures are what are needed as soon as possible, because local people, politicians and Peruvian society as a whole need to start taking decisions as money/value issues underpin strong arguments in this part of the world. Due to poor methodology in the past (or a simple lack of any method at all) the negative economic impacts of such mega-projects have largely been undervalued. Happily, some eager beavers have been developing tools to help calculate the costs of dams around the world (e.g. http://conservation-strategy.org/en/news/csf-launches-hydrocalculatortool).

Some of the more notable impacts include the forced movement of local people to higher ground and induced changes on farming practices. Ebasur and local district mayors estimate the number of people that will be directly and indirectly affected will be between 3,000-15,000. Some of these people welcome the prospect of being moved, others are not so inclined (and have already begun to protest in the streets), even though there is already talk about compensation, new schools and other government services. Not trivial are also the potential carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) emissions that the reservoir could generate over time from the decomposition of soil, sunken trees and other vegetation, each molecule of which would add to the climate change problem (particularly the methane) and so carries local, national and international costs (i.e. the dam may affect you too!). New or additional deforestation in areas near the reservoir, as a consequence of moving people to higher ground and as people from other areas migrate into the area to squat and clear land, will exacerbate this emissions impact. The water, sediment deposition, and flood regimes downstream of the dam (i.e. in Madre de Dios, Peru; Pando, Bolivia) will be severely affected, especially during the process of dam filling, which may take 2-3 years, not to mention the physical barrier to migrating fish that a 220m high wall of reinforced concrete will mean. Fish, fishermen, floodplain farmers (who rely on new, fertile sediment deposits on their lands each year, delivered to them by the annual floods during the rainy season) and other waterway users will all be affected in one way or another. Ethically controversial but significant none-the-less is that the restriction of sediment-flow will also leave thousands of miners downriver with a considerable deficit of gold to extract from riverbeds.

We hear a cost-benefit analysis, with values for all the above (and more hopefully) is still in the making, but will be published soon. As and when we get our hands on it, we will surely share some of its content here on the FFT blog.
So, Chris, which side of the fence do you stand at present? Good question Sir, where do I stand? Well, (i) if local people in the affected area can be moved to new housing in an orderly and planned fashion and sufficiently recompensed financially (for the headaches caused by moving house) and with good quality, organised housing and improved health and educational services; (ii) if sufficient research is undertaken well in advance to survey and translocate threatened wildlife species, and to estimate what the minimum discharges down-stream should be, during reservoir filling, in order to reduce impacts on say migratory fish and other aquatic animals in the Inambari river in Madre de Dios ; (iii) if the timber on hillsides and valleys that will lie below the future waterline can be extracted in as environmentally friendly a manner as possible (to reduce future CO2 and CH4 emissions from decomposition); (iv) if the Ministry of the Environment (that means you Antonio B.) can negotiate with (or force) both the companies that build the dam and those that will eventually operate it to regularly pay into an Inambari Forest Conservation and Development Fund (just made that name up on the spot) and simultaneously establish both the Ausangate-Inambari National Park and the Inambari Communal Reserve Network (just made those names up as well) to be situated upriver of the dam (which would together act to conserve the water quality and species rich parts of the catchment, would form a protected forest corridor between the Bahuaja Sonene National Park and the Amarakaeri Comunal Reserve [and hence to the Manu National Park], and would allow managed access by local people to certain natural resources); (v) if gold mining and coca growing activities further upriver on the Inambari River can be thoroughly regulated and brought under control (to reduce and one day eliminate the water pollution and deforestation that these activities generate); (vi) if a network of well manned park guard stations can be built on potential access routes leading from the roads, dam, rivers to the border of the Bahuaja Sonene National Park and the new protected areas to be established (to reduce illegal incursions into these areas); (vii) if only native species of fish are eventually allowed to be introduced into the resulting reservoir for fish farming or sport fishing (i.e. a BIG no-no to tilapia and carp); (viii) and if only quiet sailing boats (no speedboats and jet skis please) with yellow, green, or pink sails is the only type of pleasure craft allowed on the reservoir (maybe the colour code would be asking too much?); then I might at least toss a coin with a 50% chance of saying yes.