by Micaela Roy, of Middlebury College
Photo by Gordon Coates
This morning I awoke to a crowing rooster and a loose piece of tin roofing banging about in the wind. My tent swirled around me, buffered by the strong gales that seemingly never stopped—I was honestly surprised that I hadn’t been blown away in the middle of the night. After toying with thoughts of tornadoes and the Wizard of Oz, I sat up and prepared myself for the day.
We are staying on the farm of Juan Felix, a Tico (or Costa Rican), that has spent the entirety of his life on this property, in the tropical dry forests of northern Costa Rica. We arrived yesterday, and were greeted by about ten dogs and Juan Felix, waiting out the sweltering heat on his porch. Thus far, Juan Felix has struck me as a man not of words, but of action. When he took us for a hike around his property, the vast majority of the group struggled to keep up. He walked briskly, traipsing over dusty rocks that rolled when you stepped on them and dodging spiny acacia trees that harbor stinging red ants. Seventy never looked so good.
Today we headed out at 6:30 to survey birds by a small creek in the middle of the property. For the next several weeks we will be conducting these surveys on request of the “Fondo Biodiversidad Sostenible,” or the Fund for Sustainable Biodiversity (FBS). FBS is a program that awards money to farmers for preserving biodiverse land. It is an important component of a payment for environmental services (PES) program established by the Costa Rican government to encourage sustainable land use practices. Although the PES program was implemented over 20 years ago, its effects on conservation have not been thoroughly assessed. That’s where we come in—the Costa Rican government has asked Round River to conduct biodiversity surveys on several of these properties with hopes of better understanding the program’s effects on the environment. We will be going to six different “fincas” or farms, and surveying birds, trees, mammals, reptiles and amphibians to try and establish a baseline inventory of species present on each property.
In the dry forest, the biodiversity doesn’t exactly jump out at you. At first blush, it’s a hot, dry, windy, and hostile environment. The rolling hills are covered with hundreds of naked trees that have shed their leaves to conserve the little water they can during the dry season. The leaves pile up in a crisp layer that carpets the dusty ground. The wind whips over the hills, ripping off branches and threatening to blow the few birds that dare to fly above tree-line into the skeletal plants waiting below. However, upon further inspection, life is everywhere. This morning, as we walked past a pool of water, we saw a boa constrictor peering out from the scum. Howler monkeys roared in the distance, and a toucan flew into view. At the creek hundreds of wasps and bees swarmed around the water. Damselflies alighted on the rocks, glinting sapphire against the muddy brown runnel, and water bugs skimmed around in stagnant alcoves. A group of white spider monkeys swung quietly through the trees above us, warily watching us as we gazed up at them through binoculars. By the end of the walk we had identified around 20 different bird species—a mere fraction of the total species we had encountered over the course of the day.
After the survey we retreated into the shade to escape the searing noonday sun. The remainder of the day passed quickly, and I filled it working, reading, and cooking dinner. Around 5:30, the sun winked through the trees in sideways rays and finally dipped languidly beneath the horizon. I rattled out a few songs on my mandolin. Contentedly filled with rice and beans, I ambled towards my tent in the darkness. The stars glittered and the wind whipped around me, bringing everything to life in the inky darkness. I turned off my light, crawled into my tent, and bedded down alongside the brahma cattle and donkeys that slept just feet from away. And so another day came to a close.
Photo by Megan McKeown
Photo by Elizabeth Brunner
Photo by Elizabeth Brunner