Community involvement and tourism as conservation aids in Paraguay (and a long list of birds!)

Guest blog by WLT's web manager, Helena Akerlund, who spent some time in Paraguay last year volunteering with Guyra Paraguay.

John will shortly return from a World Land Trust staff and supporter trip to Paraguay and will no doubt report on the journey here in Green Issues, perhaps including an account of having finally seen in the wild that most elusive of animals: The jaguar. I hope so, but if he still hasn't been lucky enough to spot one, let's hope none of the first-time visitors in the group did when John was looking the other way, or there will be no end to his grumbles!

In the meantime I thought I'd squeeze in the last and long overdue account of my visit to Paraguay - now a distant six months ago.

The Eco Club: Ensuring the future of the Pantanal is in safe hands

"Los Exploradores" performing a song they had written themselves, complete with synchronised arm movements, which not everybody had mastered!

The Three Giants Lodge, the visitor facility at the Chaco-Pantanal Reserve in the north of Paraguay, was brand new when I was there, so our visit coincided with a dinner celebrating its opening. The local Eco Club and rangers attended and Guyra staff gave thanks to all who had helped realise the vision. (The work on the lodge is now completed and John and the others took part in its official grand opening last week.)

The Eco Club members are children and teenagers from the nearby community Bahía Negra, who, thanks to Guyra's involvement, are learning about reserve management and species identification. The idea is that responsibility for the management of the Chaco-Pantanal Reserve will soon lie completely with the local community, without the need for Guyra staff to travel quite so often between the capital and the reserve. For this to be achieved long-term it's essential to involve the younger generation. (Find out how you can support Guyra's community work in Bahía Negra here.)

Generally speaking not many local children stay in Bahía Negra when they grow up - there's simply not much there for them to do, and being located in a really isolated part of the country, the temptation to move south to the cities is great. The Eco Club provides some of the training needed to equip future reserve staff with key skills for managing the reserve and visitor facilities.

Most of my time in Paraguay was spent in the company of only a few people, so it was great to be able to meet with all the children of the Eco Club (who were very keen to practice their English) and witness their apparently endless enthusiasm for the club and the reserve.

Why visit Paraguay?

This image, taken from a plane by Pepe Cartes of Guyra Paraguay, shows just how isolated the Three Giants Lodge is. The lodge is the small white square on the riverside, and it's completely surrounded by the vastness of the Pantanal wetland, forest and palm savannah.

A few weeks ago I watched a TV programme about the (Brazilian) Pantanal and the giant otters living there. Seeing the floating lily leaves, the otters' heads bobbing up and down in the water and hearing the call of a Great Kiskadee and grunting of herons and jabirus, I was transported right back to the Chaco-Pantanal Reserve. If it wasn't for the distance and cost involved, I would not hesitate to make it my annual holiday destination!

The Pantanal is quite simply a fantastic place to go for a complete wilderness experience. The relatively high chance of seeing jaguars is a clear bonus! It's a heaven for birdwatchers too - as is the rest of the country. As John pointed out in an earlier blog post about visiting Paraguay: "Paraguay is at the cross-roads of several very important biogeographical regions. This makes it a very good place to go and see a huge range of species."

San Rafael, with its combination of forest and grassland, makes a perfect location for watching butterflies and birds - with the added bonus that it's relatively close to cities and airports. With a track running through the reserve it also makes it a tad more accessible to visitors who may not want to walk for miles along narrow forest trails.

Going to Paraguay also makes for a great conversation starter! If I had a penny for every person who asked me "Why Paraguay?"... Well, why not? The wildlife, the people, the cheap cost of getting around - and the fact that there weren't thousands of other tourists, made my trip thoroughly enjoyable.

For conservation projects to be successful in the long run, reducing the need for continuous donations and grants is an important factor. Tourism plays one part in the vision for making the Guyra reserves sustainable. This is a project still in its infancy, but I have no doubt that better facilities and services will be developed in the future, to make the reserves more attractive to the high-end of the market. (People like me, used to camping and bringing my own food to cut costs, just don't bring in that much money!)

In the meantime, adventurous travellers can get the best of two worlds: Intimate contact with nature, whilst sleeping in a comfortable bed!

More information about Paraguay and WLT's work there

• Conservation projects updates from Paraguay
• Project information and background
  
• See the Chaco-Pantanal Reserve on Google Earth (Click on the blue dots to see images from the reserve)

See also the previous blog posts about my stay in Paraguay and some wildlife videos I made whilst in Paraguay, which can be seen on WLT's new multimedia website Wildlife Focus.

Jaguars in the Pantanl on TV

Jaguar in the Brazilian Pantanal © Bill Markham

WLT supporter Bill Markham kindly informed us of a project he has been working on, recording a series about the Pantanal (in Brazil) for Channel Five. Entitled Jaguar Adventure, the series starts 8th April at 7.30pm and from the synopsis it looks like it could be very interesting:

"The Pantanal - the world's biggest wetland, the size of Britain... and home to the planet's largest population of Jaguars. These big cats are notoriously hard to find, let alone film. But when Tigress Productions heard of a location where they were being sighted regularly, Nigel Marven couldn't wait to get there."

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Becoming a birder... (Birds in Paraguay)

I knew very little about birds before going to Paraguay - not because I wasn't interested, but because I never had anyone to teach me, and always had a slight fear of binoculars (don't ask). Now, on the other hand, I feel as if I know more about birds in South America than I do about European birds, and have also managed to identify some species here in the UK that were previously unknown to me, based on their similarities to their South American cousins.

This list is in no way complete. Although my knowledge improved exponentially, thanks to the help from Guyra staff and knowledgeable rangers, I have a notebook full of scribbles and questionmarks that I have am unable to add. Still, I hope it will give some sort of idea of the birds that can be seen in the Pantanal, Chaco and Atlantic Forest. (I will gradually edit the list to include links to the photos I took of some of these birds, so if you are interested in seeing these, check back in a couple of weeks.)

Latin name	English name
Tapera naevia	Striped Cuckoo
Mita jaryi	Great Kiskadee
Colaptes campestris	Field Flicker
Milvago chimachima	Yellow-headed Caracara
Pseudoleistes guirahuro	Yellow-rumped Marshbird
Vanellus chilensis	Southern Lapwing
Tyrannus savana	Fork-tailed Flycatcher
Coragyps atratus	Black Vulture
Progne chalybea	Gray-breasted Martin
Falco sparvenius	American kestrel
Pardirallus nigricanus	Blackish Rail
Buteogallus meridionalis	Savannah Hawk
Barypthengus ruficapillus	Roufus-capped Motmot
Synallaxis ruficapilla	Roufus-capped Spinetail
Chlorostilbon aureoventris	Glittering-bellied Emerald
Hylocharis sapphirina	Roufus-throated Sapphire
Pionopsitta pileata	Red-capped Parrot
Milvago chimango	Chimango Caracara
Ceryle torquata	Ringed Kingfisher
Trogon surrucura	Surucura Trogon
Rhea americana	Greater Rhea
Rhynchotus rufescens	Red-winged Tinamou
Nothura maculosa	Spotted Nothura
Sturnella superciliaris	White-browned Blackbird
Xanthopsar flavus	Saffron-cowled Blackbird
Buteo albicaudatus	White-tailed Hawk
Polystrictus pectoralis	Bearded tachuri
Ammodramus humeralis	Grassland Sparrow
Glaucidium brasilianum	Ferruginous Pygmy Owl
Donacospiza albifons	Long-tailed Reed-finch
Coryphaspiza melanolis	Black-masked Finch
Elothoeptus anomalus	Sickle-winged Nightjar
Athene cunicularia	Burrowing Owl
Circus buffoni	Long-winged Harrier
Pyrocephalus rubinus	Vermilion Flycatcher
Jacana jacana	Wattled jacana
Phalacrocorax brasilicus	Neotropical Cormorant
Anhinga anhinga	Anhinga
Arunolinicola leucocephala	White-headed marsh-tyrant
Amblyramphus holosericeus	Scarlet-headed Blackbird
Stelgidopteryx ruficollis	Southern Rough-winged Swallow
Platalea ajaja	Roseate Spoonbill
Himantopus melanurus	South American Stilt
Asio clamator	Striped Owl
Busarellus nigricollis	Black-collared Hawk
Sorophilia collaris	Rushy-collared Seedeater
Hydropsalis torquata	Scissor-tailed Nightjar
Nyctibius griseus	Common Potoo
Otus choliba	Tropical Screech-owl
Synalaxis albescens	Pale-breasted Spinetail
Gubernetes yetapa	Streamer-tailed Tyrant
Geothlypis aequinoctialis	Masked Yellow-throat
Agelaius cyanopus	Unicoloured Blackbird
Elaenia flavogaster	Yellow-bellied Elaenia
Coryphospingus cucullatus	Red-breasted Finch
Rynchops niger	Black Skimmer
Phaetusa simplex	Large-billed Tern
Sterna superciliaris	Yellow-billed Tern
Caracara plancus	Southern Crested-caracara
Cranioleuca obsoleta	Olive Spinetail
Sittasomus griseicapillus	Olivaceous Woodcreeper
Cacicus chrysopterus	Golden-winged cacique
Synallaxis albescens	Pale-breasted Spinetail
Cranioleuca obsoleta	Olive Spinetail
Syndactyla rufosuperciliata	Buff-browned Foliage-gleaner
Thamnophilus caerulescens	Variable Antshrike
Caicus solitaris	Solitary Black Cacique
Piaya cayana	Squirrel Cuckoo
Dromococcyx phasiarellus	Pheasant Cuckoo
Platyrinchus mystaceus	White-throated Spadebill
Cyanocompsa brissonii	Cyanocompsa brissonii
Tachycineta albiventer	White-winged Swallow
Guira guita	Guira Cuckoo
Ardea alba	Great Egret
Ergetta thula	Snowy Egret
Botaurus pinnatus	Pinnated Bittern
Ardea cocoi	White-necked Heron
Tigresoma lineatum	Rufescent Tiger-heron
Nycticorax nycticorax	Black-crowned Night-heron
Mycteria americana	American Woodstork
Ciconia maguari	Maguari Stork
Jabiru mycteria	Jabiru
Theristicus caerulescens	Plumbeous Ibis
Phimosus infuscatus	Bare-faced Ibis
Dendrocygna autumnalis	Black-bellied Whistling-duck
Butorides striatus	Striated heron
Calindris melanotos	Pectorial Sandpiper
Aramus juarauna	Limkin
Chloroceyle amazona	Amazon Kingfisher
Verniliornis passerinus	Little Woodpecker
Lepidocolaptes angustostris	Narrow-billed Woodcreeper
Melanerpes candidus	White Woodpecker
Paroaria capilata	Yellow-billed Cardinal
Fluvicola albiventer	Black-backed Water-tyreant
Buteo gallus	Great Black-hawk
Picoides mixtus	Checkered Woodpecker
Colaptes melanochloros	Green-barred Woodpecker
Piculus chrysochloros	Golden-green Woodpecker
Ramphastos toco	Toco Toucan
Heliomaster furicifer	Blue-tufted Starthroat

(Many thanks to Pepe, Roberto, Rionaldo, Juan, Arne and Silvia for help with identification. Any errors in this list are entirely my own and most likely due to difficult to interpret handwriting and clumsy typing. Please do let me know if you spot any!)

Finally, a massive thank you to everybody at Guyra for having me, showing me around and making me speak Spanish (mostly), despite not being very good at it!

The really wild side of Paraguay: A visit to the Chaco-Pantanal reserve

Guest blog by WLT's web manager, Helena Akerlund, who recently returned from Paraguay, where she did some volunteering with Guyra Paraguay.

The Chaco: Vast and harsh, but inhabited landscape

When we reached the Humid Chaco, the dry scrubland gave way to a series of ponds and bogs, and suddenly there were birds everywhere - these are Jabirus (Jabiru mycteria). Note the state of the road - it was like this for the full 400km journey!

If the San Rafael Reserve is relatively accessible, the Chaco-Pantanal Reserve certainly isn't. To get there is the opposite of straight forward! Located in the north-east of Paraguay, the reserve is accessible by boat (a one week journey on cargo boat from Concepción), plane (when the weather isn't too stormy) or car (when the roads don't become impassable due to rain.) We travelled in 4x4 trucks, a 900km journey that started with a five hour drive from Asunción on the Trans-Chaco route towards Bolivia. After a stop-over at a hotel in Los Pioneras, we turned off the tarmac road onto an unpaved track crossing more of the vast Chaco region until, after about nine hours (400km) of bumping around on the pot-hole ridden track, we finally reached Bahía Negra (The Black Bay), a small settlement neighbouring the reserve.

The long journey gave us the chance to really get a feel for the Chaco landscape, despite not actually stopping to experience it. In short, the Dry Chaco consists of scrubs, cacti and occasional trees, while in the Humid Chaco you'll see bogs and wetlands, surrounded by palm savannahs and forests. During the rainy season the road turns into little more than a pool of mud, and getting through is virtually impossible. Even outside of the rainy season a sudden downpour can make the journey hazardous, the road becoming more like a newly harrowed crop field: Once, Guyra Paraguay's Rodrigo Zárate with his then eight month pregnant wife Elizabeth Cabrera got stuck here en route to the reserve - for five days! Not an experience they would want to repeat...

Despite the harsh conditions in the Chaco, with temperatures in summer often reaching 45 degrees centigrade or more, there are people living here, and the road passes through several ranches and small settlements. At night the extensive fires lit up the dark sky and during the day we could see the many hundreds of cows grazing the barren fields. In contrast, the area north of Bahía Negra is truly wild, with virtually no settlements and only a few nomadic indigenous communities.

The Pantanal - true wilderness

Caimans (Caiman yacare) line the river edges and are fairly unfussed about the occasional boat going past.

From Bahía Negra, we reached the Chaco-Pantanal Reserve by a small motorboat; an hour-long journey up two rivers. First Río Paraguay, with Brazil to the east and then Río Negro, so named because of its silty, black water, surrounded by impenetrable jungle, with Paraguay on one side of the river and Bolivia on the other. With no official crossings, this is not a place you would come if you didn't have a good reason. The nearest doctor is in Bahía Negra and the nearest hospital more than 300km away in Concepción and if planes can't land to pick you up (which is often the case), you are pretty much on your own. Here I finally found real wilderness!

A sight for sore eyes! After a 15 hour journey, we finally arrived at the Three Giants Lodge.

This is the Pantanal, an area very different from the Chaco, and from any other ecoregion I had so far seen in Paraguay. Dry palm savannahs rub shoulders with incredibly dense forests, where the stunted trees are completely covered in parasitic climbers, clinging to and wrapping themselves around any stem or trunk available, in their search for light. Here, you don't get very far without a machete! When the Three Giants Lodge was built earlier this year, the workers also cleared the area surrounding the lodge. In fact, arriving to the reserve by boat, the first thing you notice is the clearing, with the dark, wooden lodge visible through the palm trees that line the river edge. This was the first significant gap in the vegetation for the entire boat trip! Luckily for visitors to the reserve, the workers have also cleared vegetation to form a network of nature trails. I felt very spoiled walking these trails, knowing how laborious they must have been to create - and maintain.

The Pantanal is also a vast wetland. Naturally the reserve is located on dry ground, but gazing up the river, you can see a smaller scale version of the wetland: The river sides are in places boggy, with large sheets of lilies, which occasionally come loose and float downstream like small islands. Here the caimans hide, only their eyes and nostrils visible above the water. And on top of and around the lily leaves are thousands of birds, each one with a territory seemingly less than a square metre large.

Wildlife in the Pantanal

Giant Otters (Pteronura brasiliensis) in the Chaco-Pantanal Reserve.

During our three days stay we didn't see a single boat go past, but we did spot the neighbours: A family of giant otters (Pteronura brasiliensis). We couldn't believe our luck when we saw the heads of two otters bobbing up and down in the river, but the following day we saw the whole family: eight adults and four cubs. The otters swim past the lodge at least twice a day on their journey between their holt (den) and feeding grounds, so if you keep your eyes on the river you're pretty much guaranteed to see them.

Then there was the resident jaguar (Panthera onca). Two of the Guyra staff, who travelled up the evening before the rest of the party, spotted the big cat wandering right past the Three Giants at midnight, and with its favourite claw-sharpening trees situated in the middle of the trails, no more than a few hundred yards from the lodge, we were hopeful of a sighting. But no such luck. Perhaps it was the cheer number of people that put it off (a group of teenagers from Bahía Negra were also visiting the lodge at the time), perhaps we were just unlucky. But it did make its presence known to us...

Walking along one of the trails, we suddenly heard a muffled growl, and stopped dead in our tracks. Not sure whether it was what we thought it was we listened, too alarmed to breathe. Then we heard it again, but this time from the other side of the trail! We now thought we were surrounded by two angry jaguars, and suddenly we weren't so sure we wanted to come face to face with the cat after all. We waited, hearts beating so hard we were sure the animals could hear them, but there were no more growls. Eventually we carried on, slightly more hesitantly than before, and made it back to the lodge safe. One of the guards ensured us that if the growl had sounded at all quiet it meant that the animal had been far away. I'm not so sure... Suffice to say that there are jaguars here, and that the guards built their hut on stilts just in case. (And we slept with the shutters facing the veranda closed, as we didn't fancy being woken up by a jaguar jumping in through the window...)

Staying in the Chaco-Pantanal Reserve is very much on nature's terms - but we wouldn't have wanted it any other way!

In my next and final post I'll talk about the enthusiastic, young explorers we met in the Chaco-Pantanal (which there wasn't enough space for here) and I'll outline why you should go visit the reserves in Paraguay too. (And perhaps I'll include the full list of birds I saw, for those serious birders who may be reading this!)

Yacyretá: One reserve, lots of different habitats!

Guest blog by WLT's web manager, Helena Akerlund, who has just returned from Paraguay, where she was volunteering with Guyra Paraguay.

Now that I am back in the UK, the whole Paraguay experience is already starting to feel vaguely unreal, but there are still lots to tell, so here goes:

The darker side of Paraguay

Silvia Centron and Arne Lesterhuis of Guyra Paraguay putting up a mistnet in Yacyretá Reserve.

Prior to my second field trip with Guyra Pararguay I managed to nearly electrocute myself, met a money-hungry policeman and had to pretend to be American. I would love to tell all, but this is probably not the right place. Instead, let's just say that I have experienced a slightly darker side of Paraguay, with bureaucracy, corruption and somewhat dodgy wiring...

Yacyretá: Almost all the habitats of Paraguay in one location!

All troubles sorted, I went off to help with bird ringing in Yacyretá, a private nature reserve in south of Paraguay located on the border with Argentina. The Yacyretá reserve is owned by the company of the same name and situated around the dam built and managed by the company.

The area is a bit surreal: The whole town, or suburb rather, was built by the company to house its workers, so has a slightly artificial feel to it. While the construction of the dam invariably had an impact on the environment and local community, the company is now investigating in conservation and Guyra Paraguay is helping with among other things the monitoring of bird species in the reserve. And there are a lot of birds! The reserve features everything from dunes and wetlands, through scrub, grassland and palm savannahs to Atlantic forest, each habitat type with its own specific bird species.

Look for the red eyes...

Sickle-winged Nightjar (Eleothieptus anomalus) resting on the road side after having been measured and weighted.

We arrived at sunset after a five hour drive from Asunción and had no time to rest: Although our primary aim was to do some mist net trapping of two target species (more on this later), we were also going to undertake another bird monitoring project: Mark-release-recapture studies of the rare Sickle-winged Nightjar (Eleothieptus anomalus), which occurs as a small population at Yacyretá, and is active at dusk.

If mistnet trapping is the bird monitoring version of a beach holiday, with plenty of sitting around in the sun and the occasional stroll to coax birds towards the net, searching for the Sickle-winged Nightjar was more like an action-adventure trip for offroad junkies: In the light of the full moon, one person drove the 4x4 truck across the incredibly bumpy, sandy tracks of the savannah grasslands, with the other two standing on the back, holding on for dear life with one hand (well, I was anyway) and scanning the pitch-black fields with a torch in the other, hoping to catch the reflection of the birds' red eyes in the light. Not the easiest thing in the world, and I'm sure the health and safety obsessed UK volunteering organisations would disapprove, but it was great fun and very good exercise for both arms and legs. And since I was holding the binoculars at face height every day and the torch every night for five days consecutively, I'm convinced I ended up with toned biceps!

I'm not a real birdwatcher after all

Bearded Tachuri (Polystrictus pectoralis) being photographed before its release.

Apart from the Nightjar, we were on the lookout for two other rare birds: The Bearded Tachuri (Polystrictus pectoralis) and the Ochre-breasted Pipit (Anthus nattereri). Although we managed to coax a couple of the former into the mistnet, the latter was completely absent, and when we went for a walk across a field trying to find one, I proved that I'm not a proper birdwatcher after all: When we spotted some Howler monkeys (Alouatta caraya) in a nearby tree, I defected and ran off to take photographs of the monkeys instead...

I was completely overwhelmed with the number of birds we saw and the species list I was making was beginning to be so incomplete as to be completely worthless, but I carried on regardless - I wanted to get an idea of how many species you can expect to see without going into enormous trouble. Apart from birds and Howler monkeys we also saw otters, capivara, caimans, iguanas, deer, rabbit and what I would like to think was a Maned Wolf, but was probably a smaller fox or racoon.

Too close for comfort?

Howler monkey feeding on the flowers and shoots of a tree.

On our last day in the Reserve, we stumbled upon a whole family of Howler monkeys in the forest, right next to the trail, where we had previously just seen the odd individual and heard the howling of the rest of the group in the distance (which sounds just like the howling of the wind between the trees!). Amazed, we stopped to watch and photograph them as they moved effortlessly from tree to tree, grunting quietly and munching on petals and shoots. As we finally decided we'd seen enough and continued walking along the trail, the monkeys apparently decided that they too had had enough, and proceeded to throw faeces at us from the tree tops! Luckily we were out of range, but it was an interesting way to finish off our visit, and a reminder of who is in charge in the Atlantic Forest.

Next: In my final field trip, we spent an evening being entertained by enthusiastic explorers, found out who's in charge in the Pantanal and experienced a moment of pure, primal fear...

Environmental education and ecological restoration in the San Rafael reserve

Guest blog by WLT's web manager, Helena Akerlund, who is currently visiting Paraguay, volunteering with Guyra Paraguay.

The last day of my stay at San Rafael had a spectacular sunset - this alone made the visit worthwhile!

In a previous post about San Rafael Reserve I mentioned that Guyra Paraguay works very closely with local communities in the management of the land. Generally speaking, there is not much awareness of, or interest in environmental issues and conservation in the country, but hopefully this is changing with the help of Gurya and others: Various campaigns highlighting the plight of endangered species or the threats to the natural environment in general are advertised on big billboards in cities and along the roads, and TV adverts (albeit on special-interest channels) for Greenpeace encourage individuals to help protect jaguars and other threatened species in South America.

Guyra Paraguay, together with other non-governmental organisations, form the San Rafael Conservation Alliance, the goals of which is to by land to create a centre of conservation in the National Park. The surrounding, privately owned areas, will be offered incentives (including certification for the growth of organic crops) so that the land can be managed sustainably under various conservation schemes. For instance, Guyra is working with local farmers growing organic Yerba máte, the economically important tree that is used to make máte tea and "national drink" tereré (cold máte with ice). Yerba máte is a forest species and can therefore be sustainably harvested wild, or planted together with other native trees as part of a restoration scheme. (The organic yerba grown by the farmers in San Rafael is exported to the US and is said to have a milder, less sharp taste than the conventionally grown yerba.)

Education is vitally important in changing attitudes and Guyra are working with both young and old to spark an interest in conservation and wildlife. In San Rafael, this includes school trips to the reserve (which has a brilliant education room with books, games and posters) as well as visits to local schools by Guyra staff.

WLT's Mark Gruin and Guyra's Reinaldo Sánchez looking over the field where nature is being given a helping hand. (The larger trees/saplings are self-seeded, the smaller ones were planted last year as part of WLT's restoration ecology/carbon balancing programme.)

The local communities are directly involved in the practical conservation work, with training courses in how to manage the land, use GIS for monitoring and opportunities to assist with for example tree planting. In San Rafael we visited an open area where the forest was in the process of regenerating. Some trees have already established, including fruit trees grown from the seeds discarded by previous settlers. To help speed up the process of forest re-generation, Guyra is organising the planting of native species - and this is where WLT's Carbon Balanced programme is involved: Carbon offset funds are invested in this restoration ecology project, and it was great to se first hand how the area looks, and visualise the forest that will eventually be established.

Next: Bird monitoring & random animal encounters in Yacyreta - a nature reserve with a great variety of wildlife habitats, including forest, grassland, wetland and sand dunes.

Part II: San Rafael - Birds, butterflies and coatis in the Atlantic Forest

Guest blog by WLT's web manager, Helena Akerlund, who is currently visiting Paraguay, volunteering with Guyra Paraguay.

Human impact in the National Park

Kanguery, the centre of administration at San Rafael, is named after this river, which flows through the reserve.

In my previous post about my visit to Paraguay, I mentioned the long drive to get to the San Rafael Reserve. The length of time it takes to get there is misleading in several ways: Firstly because the road conditions make it impossible to drive at normal speeds, making the distance from the capital seem greater than it actually is and secondly because the reserve location, although in the centre of the National Park, is surrounded by privately owned properties, where land owners continue to use the land for cattle, timber extraction or agriculture. Also nearby is a wedge of land which is not part of the National Park, but cuts right into the centre, making the protected area vulnerable to illegal logging and poaching. I knew this already, but for some reason I had imagined Kanguery, the reserve's centre of administration and visitor accommodation, to be in the middle of nowhere, a sanctury for wildlife away from human influence. This couldn't be further from the truth; the reserve is worryingly accessible. The road to it may be nothing more than a dirt track, but it goes right through the reserve and is still sometimes used as a route to the communities on the other side of the reserve, despite the existence of a newer road around the Park. I could see and hear human activities everywhere, from the fires burning on the neighbouring land and the white dots of the cows grazing in the distance, to the sound of motorbikes on the track and the litter left behind by those travelling through (drink and food cans, used nappies, discarded clothing etc.).

On our first day at the reserve, Mark Gruin, Head of Operations for WLT and Rodrigo Zárate, Reserves Manager for Guyra Paraguay, and I set off early in search of birds. There were regular interruptions from motorbikes and horses on the track but despite this there were plenty of birds to be seen - or heard at least, including some rarities: Whilst I was off taking photos of the forest Mark and Rodrigo spotted a woodpecker species not previously seen in San Rafael. Typical! Butterflies fluttered around in their hundreds and crickets (or whatever they were) turned the volume up and down as if on cue, but the continuous sounds of human activity kept reminding me that we weren't far from civilisation.

Kanguery is prefect for the lazy birdwatcher: It's possible to see lots of birds without even leaving the guest house, both around the centre itself and in the grasslands surrounding it. These are Field Flickers (Colaptes campestris).

Wildlife in the Atlantic Forest

Although the reserve isn't as remote as I imagined, it does a good job of protecting what is left of the forest, which is still big enough that it would be easy to lose oneself if venturing away from the tracks. The vegetation around Kanguery (like much of the rest of the park) is secondary forest: it was abandoned by the previous land owner after all the good wood had been removed and the land grazed by cattle for a while, but in 20 or so years the forest has recovered quite well. There are few really tall trees, but there is enough cover for it to "feel" like a forest and there is no shortage of wildlife: Apart from all the birds, mammals such as tapir, maned wolf, deer and monkeys are all found here - even jaguars, although you'd have to work hard to spot one.

Butterflies in masses, flocking to drink from the soil on the track.

On our first day of bird watching, we went for a late afternoon walk through a different part of the forest, away from the road. Nearly dusk, there wasn't much light under the canopy, and birds were hard to see. But the subtle waving of reserve guard Reinaldo Sánchez alterted us to something else moving amongst the trees: A group of coatis (Nasua nasua) making a hasty retreat. I would love to say that I'd seen them, but to be honest all I saw was some blurry shadows moving down the tree trunks at great speed before disappearing into the dark of the forest. But still - I hadn't expected to see any mammals at all, so was very pleased indeed.

With Guyra Paraguay in the process of securing more properties within the park, the future looks promising for the wildlife still surviving in the Atlantic Forest, and with their restoration ecology initiatives, the re-generation of the forest is being given a helping hand. More about this in my next post...

San Rafael - Birds, butterflies and coatis in the Atlantic Forest

Guest blog by WLT's web manager, Helena Akerlund, who is currently visiting Paraguay, volunteering with Guyra Paraguay.

San Rafael: Protecting the Atlantic Forest in Paraguay

Atlantic Forest in San Rafael.

San Rafael is a 6,200 ha reserve owned and protected by Guyra Paraguay, located within San Rafael National Park in the south east of the country. The area is identified by WWF as a hotspot for conservation and was designated an Important Bird Area (IBA) in 1997 - the first such area in Paraguay. I have just returned from spending five days at Kanguery, the field station and centre of administration for the reserve. I was there to help look for rare birds and eggs, but due to unforseen circumestances it turned into a bit of a holiday instead, which I honestly didn't mind much!

The National Park is about 6 hours drive from Asunción, capital of Paraguay, and covers 60,000 ha of forest in more or less good condition (the forest to the east is generally in better shape than in the west, where the cover is much more patchy). 11 globally threatened birds and 17 near threatened species rely on the Park for their survival and 7 indigenous communities also have their home within the Park boundaries. However, the Paraguayan government doesn't currently have the capacity or resources to purchase the land within the National Park, and most of it is therefore still in private ownership, making it difficult to protect. Enter Guyra Paraguay, which together with other conservation organisations is working to purchase all the central properties within the park (15,000 ha) and manage them for conservation, as well as implementing incentives for sustainable use of the land in the surrounding properties, working with local land owners, campesinos (farmers who don't own their own land) and indigenous people. Kanguery is located in one of the properties that Guyra currently own.

Getting to the reserve

Vast fields cover the land that was previously forest.

After a looong drive through endless fields of wheat, rice, eucalyptus (for paper manufacture in Chile), soya and other crops, most of which would have been originally covered by forest, we turned off the main road on to a smaller road that soon turned into an unpaved track, consisting of deep-red soil. At this point I though we were getting near the forest, but I couldn't have been more wrong! The journey continued through yet more fields, this time passing only a few villages and towns, but many small, scattered, homes of the campesinos looking after the fields on behalf of the land owners.

At the beginning of the last century this was all part of the interior Atlantic Forest. However, the Paraguayan government in the 1970s decided that this was land "used for nothing" and encouraged settlers from all over the world to come and utilise this untapped resource. As a result there are now colonies from Japan, Ukrain, Germany, the US and other countries making a living from the rich soil, which - in contrast to some other forest soils - converts very well to agricultural land without loss of nutrients and erosion. The '80s and '90s saw the worst deforestation rates the country had experienced and what is left of the Atlantic Forest today is just fragments, almost entirely made up of secondary forest: The primary (virgin) forest is long since gone.

The rough track leading through the forest to Kanguery.

Another few hours on an increasingly bumpy track and we finally reached the National Park, and edge of Guyra's reserve. The border couldn't have been more clearly marked if they had put up a fence: A razor sharp line divided the outside area from the reserve, the line being the edge of the forest, surrounded by crop fields. The track continued through the forest for another few miles before it suddenly ended as abruptly as it had started, and we entered an open area - but this time the transition was a natural one; the forest here is too sandy and poor for trees to establish successfully and instead a vast natural grassland (the designated IBA) stretched out before us. By now it was pitch black, but we did indeed see birds, including several nightjars resting on the path requiring a beep of the horn before they reluctantly flew off.

Rafaela, resident dog at Kanguery, with the grasslands and forest in the background.

A few minutes later the track started climbing and when we reached the top of the hill a dog appeared from the darkness, trying very hard to get run over. We had finally reached Kanguery and were being greeted by Rafaela, one of the resident dogs.

Situated on top of the expansive grassland, Kanguery (named after the nearby river) offers spectacular views over the area, with great opportunities to see birds, which is what we set out to do next - but we ended up getting more than we bargained for, getting a brief glimpse of some coatis as well! More in my next post...

Wildlife watching in Paraguay

Guest blog by WLT´s web manager, Helena Akerlund, who is currently visiting Paraguay, volunteering with Guyra Paraguay.

I have been "ordered" by John to write a blog for the next month, so here we go: I'm in Paraguay, volunteering with GUYRA, WLT's partner organisation, which will involve visiting at least two of their reserves: San Rafael and Chaco-Pantanal.

Paraguay is a great destination for anyone intrested in seeing wildlife, as despite its relatively small area (roughly the size of Germany), the country provides several vastly different wildlife habitats, offering those on a limited budget - or those stretched for time - fantastic opportunities to see a lot without having to travel long distances.

Paraguay is still recovering from its many years of dictatorship and there is still relatively litte tourism (backpackers are virtually absent). Hopefully I'll inspire at least some people to come and volunteer or travel here!

The first destination: San Rafael. Leaving tomorrow morning, we'll be spending a few days recording rare birds. I'm very excited although slightly worried as I know nothing of Paraguayan birds (or any other birds for that matter!). Time to do some intensive studying of the bird guides! I'll report back when I return to the Guyra office in Asunción.