Where I am going and what I am doing
I am doing 2 projects whilst I am away. At the end of September I travel to Costa Rica to a place on the Pacific coast called Ostional. There I will work with the local community to promote turtle conservation as well as working hands-on with turtles both in the ocean and in the nesting sights. In the middle of November I fly down to the east of Peru (via a few days in Lima where I intend to live it up in a swanky hotel!) where I travel by motorised canoe to the middle of the Amazon rainforest. There I am joining a scientific expedition which will map some of the last remaining unspoilt rainforest, monitoring different species but particularly jaguars. During this second project I will not be able to communicate but hope to be able to take lots of photos to post here when I get back to Lima in the middle of December.
Costa Rica
My first project is based on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica (if you go west from San Jose on the above map, when you hit the coast I am about there!). I will be staying with a local family and working with a local conservation charity which specialises in turtle conservation. It is the height of teh egg-laying season so I will be monitoring and protecting nesting sites, releasing hatchlings as well as working with the local community to improve the protection of endangered species such as Olive Ridley and Green turtles.
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Expedition in Peru
The expedition base camp is within the department of Madre de Dios (it is the point on the map where Peru, Brazil and Bolivia borders meet), internationally known as “the Biodiversity Capital of the World”. The department already contains two large national
parks covering over half of its 78,000 km² area – Manu and the vast Bahuaja-Sonene
(Tambopata) area. The Rio Piedras is located between the two.
In terms of biological diversity, the research area is amongst the richest in the world. The
area’s ecosystems hold several world records in flora and fauna species numbers and are
recognised as one of the planet’s biodiversity hotspots. Research conducted over the last
20 years in the Bahuaja-Sonene National Park has shown that it harbours more species of
birds (587), butterflies (1,230) and many other animal taxa than any other location of
comparable size. It has recently also been identified as the largest uninhabited and
untouched rainforest wilderness on Earth, covering about 1 million hectares (2.5 million
acres) of undisturbed and unhunted habitat (the nearest rival, the island of New Guinea
has about 100,000 hectares of uninhabited tropical forest habitat). The area is also home
to a number of landmark animals listed in the IUCN's Red Data Book. Amongst them the
giant river otter, giant armadillo, giant anteater, ocelot, jaguarundi, jaguar, harpy eagle,
crested eagle, spectacled caiman, and black caiman. Over 150 different species of tree
can be found within 100 m2 alone, and the WWF and IUCN have identified the area as a
'Centre of Plant Diversity'.
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