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The Spinetail and the Antbird
Mariana Vale Studies Birds to Understand Deforestation
in the Amazon p.2
We get in the boat, Claudio throttles the motor on high, and we head up the river under a scorching equatorial sun. The tropical forest that flanks the rivers is lush with foliage and dotted with brightly colored fruit and flowers. The array of plant species on display is staggering.
The gallery forest, as this riverside greenery is called, is home to the hoary-throated spinetail and the Rio Branco antbird, Vale says. Both of the small but significant birds are listed on the World Conservation Union (IUCN) Red List as vulnerable.
While working on her master's thesis at Columbia University, Vale used a computer model to determine which of the Amazon's bird species would be most affected by deforestation and development. The model identified the antbird and the spinetail. But when Vale looked at the literature on the birds' home ranges, she realized many of the boundaries had been described by as few as five sightings and couldn't be trusted. "I knew I had to get on the ground and see for myself," she says.
Both birds are found principally on indigenous reserves—areas set aside by the government for native peoples. These people have lived in the Amazon for more than 10,000 years and have learned to coexist with its other species, Vale says. It is the newer, more impatient arrivals who seem to do the most damage to the birds' habitat.
In the 1970s, Brazil opened BR174, a new highway, into the state of Roraima.The road was paved in 1997. Indigenous people suffered some of the worst effects of the assault that followed. The road began in Manaus, a city at the junction of the Rio Negro and the Amazon River, and headed north through the land of the Waimiri-Atroari people.
Deaths through conflict and diseases that spread following the opening of the road reduced the Waimiri-Atroari population from about 1,500 to less than 300. Farther north, in the forests around Boa Vista, farmers, ranchers, and gold miners pushed deep into native lands, leaving a trail of environmental degradation in their wake, Vale says.
On April 15, 2005, however, Brazil's president, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, ratified a bill that created the Indigenous Territory Raposa Serra do Sol. The reserve gives more than 14,000 indigenous people from several different groups control over 1,747,464 hectares of land, which all non-native people must leave. Rice farmers have vowed to fight the decree to the death.
When Vale first contacted the Indigenous Council of Roraima about her interest in studying the antbird and spinetail, the reaction of its members was indifference. "They said, what do we care about little birds, we have more important things to do? But when they realized that rice farms were the enemy of the birds and the indigenous people, they grew more interested," Vale relates.
photo captions: Mariana Vale; Stuart Pimm; Hoary-throated Spinetail; Rio Branco Antbird.