Action | Student News
The Spinetail and the Antbird
Mariana Vale Studies Birds to Understand Deforestation
in the Amazon p.3
As we head up river, we pass indigenous people in dugouts. For almost every native we see, however, we also spot the signs of modern agriculture—huge pipes and large pumps that carry water to flooded rice paddies just beyond the river's edge. Most of these farms are trespassing on indigenous property. According to Vale, "They get away with it because the rice farmers are often businessmen,mayors and state politicians."
On our trip we spot osprey, little blue herons,wood storks, capped herons, toucans, snowy egrets, Amazon kingfishers, and red and green Macaws. A group of gray dolphins breaks the surface and watches us speed by.
The day's journey takes us all the way to the Guiana border. We camp for the night, tying hammocks to trees in a clearing by the river, wrapping the hammocks in mosquito nets and covering them with black plastic to protect us from the rain.Mariana shows me the large footprints of a capybara, the largest rodent in the world, in the mud along the bank. That night the screams from a group of howler monkeys awaken us around midnight.
Over the next several days, we hunt for the spinetail and the antbird, testing the limits of their boundaries. We move up the Maú River, stopping every three kilometers to play recordings of the birds' territorial calls into the gallery forest, but no birds answer the challenge.
The next day we head up the Parimé River, an area where neither the antbird nor the spinetail previously has been reported. Mariana continues to play the calls. Finally a little after noon, one of the calls is returned. Mariana and Claudio follow the sound into the thick vines by the river. Suddenly Mariana points at the bush, "There it is. Do you see it?"
The bird comes out and shows itself. It is a beautiful bird, with a rust colored body, a black throat, light blue beard, and mottled crown. This is the first sighting of this bird on this river.
A few days later we are back in Boa Vista, sunburned and mosquito bitten. We drive out to boat driver Claudio's home, a four-room adobe house with no plumbing or electricity but a million-dollar view of the river. Vale introduces me to Claudiomino, one of Claudio's two sons, a 12-year-old boy who leads me through the streamside trees playing Vale's birdcall recording.
Another hoary-throated spinetail answers the call. It perches near us and challenges the recorded intruder with an aggressive yet regal air. Claudiomino smiles proudly. Getting native Brazilians to appreciate moments like these is an important part of Vale's challenge.
Even as her work to test the boundaries of the birds' ranges winds down, Vale is already talking about her next challenge: To examine the deforestation along BR174 and document its effects on the Amazon Basin. The basin covers 7 percent of the earth's surface and contains 40 percent of its tropical forests.Yet it's being cleared at the rate of about 10 to 30 thousand square kilometers a year.
The situation is dire, says Vale's advisor, Stuart Pimm."This figure represents only the land that has been cleared, what you can see from space. When you add in what's been damaged by fire, illegal logging, and oil and gas development, the damage could be as high as 100 thousand square kilometers a year. With about 3 to 4 million square kilometers left, in 30 to 40 years, it's all going to be damaged," he says.
But there are some positive signs. Recently the Waimiri-Atroari people celebrated the birth of their 1000th citizen—back from a low of 300. Says Vale, "Twenty years ago biodiversity and sustainability weren't even part of the vocabulary. Now a lot of people are working hard for them. Eighty percent of the Amazon forest still stands. It is not a lost cause."
Freelancer Michael Tennesen of California was a Nicholas Environmental Media Fellow.
photo captions: Mariana Vale; Stuart Pimm; Hoary-throated Spinetail; Rio Branco Antbird.