Amazon Adventures

Peru

The Tahuayo River Amazon Research Center

In 2007 the new Tahuayo River Amazon Research Center (TRARC) was launched. This is a long-term conservation initiative undertaken in consultation with government offices in Iquitos (Loreto, Peru) and in collaboration with Chicago’s Rainforest Conservation Fund (RCF; www.rainforestconservation.org), Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, the Missouri Botanical Garden, and the Chicago Botanic Garden. Tahuayo River villages’ Comite de Gestion approved the TRARC undertaking at its March 2007 meeting in return for the facility’s sharing of project findings with the region’s indigenous villages.

The TRARC initiative is being developed to promote new collaborative projects in conservation biology, environmental studies, cultural anthropology, and more at the Reserva Comunal de Tamshiyacu-Tahuayo (RCTT). Auxiliary support is provided by TRARC projects that bear particular promise toward helping promote sustainable developments among ribereños culture in this large and precious portion of western Amazonia. Work with TRARC scientific board members, for example, will augment villagers’ knowledge of their rainforest plants, while progressively illuminating the spectacularly diverse plant communities of RCTT for modern science. Simultaneously, TRARC’s major collaborator, RCF, has launched new work with Planned Parenthood South America along the Tahuayo while continuing to grow ongoing programs in agroforestry, environmental education, and more along the Tahuayo.

Primate Research

Noted primatologist Dr. Michael E. Pereira will direct the TRARC over its first five years. Pereira’s expertise in research on primates will help to safeguard Tamshiyacu-Tahuayo’s spectacular primate fauna: 16 species representing every South American primate family and spanning the continent’s range of body size. Recent observations suggest that the new approaches to conservation at ACRCTT will be important for area primates. Reserve-wide primate census was initiated in 2007. Students and tourists can choose to assist in the habituation for eventual study particular social groups of each of six large-bodied species of monkeys: Cebus apella, C. albifrons, Saimiri sciureus, Lagothrix lagothricha, Alouatta seniculus, and Cacajao calvus. This work is occuring on a research trail grid located behind the TRARC. During all-day follows of particular social groups, volunteers’ work will grow to include progressively more systematic and detailed records of data for contribution to cumulative TRARC databases.

The trail grid behind the research center lodge offers the best hike known in the Amazon for viewing primates in their natural environment. Twelve species of primates have significant populations on the grid:
95 squirrel monkeys
170 tamarins (2 species)
90 titi monkeys (2 species)
25 brown capuchins
15 white-fronted capuchins
25 pygmy marmosets
25 night monkeys (2 species)
35 saki monkeys (2 species)
Other mammals living on the grid include: coati, tamandua, giant anteater, tapir, peccary (2 species), deer (2 species), ocelot, jaguar, paca, agouti, agouchi, armadillo, pygmy tree squirrel, Amazon tree squirrel, opossum (many species), rat (many species), sloth (2 species), kinkajou, tayra, and bat (approx 70 species).

Other Projects

Students and tourists may also assist TRARC in other projects, such as an effort to begin documenting long-term trends in village demography around RCTT. Other projects likely to be initiated this summer include a collaboration among TRARC board-member Dr. Cynthia Gerstner (Columbia College), village fishermen, and RCF to evaluate Tahuayo and Blanco River fish populations, contrasting impacts of legal fishing by local villagers with effects of poaching by outsiders to the region. Another project initiated in 2007, by Dr. Pati Vitt of the Chicago Botanic Garden, will investigate the geographic distributions, dependencies, and vulnerabilities of canopy orchids and other epiphytic flora in the RCTT.