By: Nico Hochanadel, University of Vermont
So, you want to see some guanacos, do you? Oh, and you also like participating in research? Well then, I have quite the day planned for you! But first, a little background information.
Guanacos (wuh-NAW-co) (Lama guanicoe) are one of two large cervids that live in Patagonia. They are closely related to the llama, as their scientific name suggests. Guanacos are social creatures that live in the Patagonian steppe, or “pampas”. They are well adapted to this arid region and do not mind the dry air and high winds. We are tasked with measuring the population levels of guanacos in the Chacabuco sector of the Patagonia National Park in Aysén, Chile. To do this, we will be walking a “transect”, a straight line that we follow as closely as possible while we look for guanacos.
Now for our day. We wake up in the Camping Westwinds campground at 6:30 to prepare our breakfast, lunch, and pack our bags for the day. At 8:30 we meet as a group to discuss the day, partner up, and collect our research equipment.
At 9:00, we load up into the van and trucks and drive out to our transect start point. Look out your window! There are the guanacos laying in the grass, still not ready to start their day. We get dropped off at our transect a little early and need to wait until our 10:00 am start time. While we wait, we can record our GPS location and double check that we have everything.
Now that it’s 10:00 am, we can start walking. You are in charge of the compass and your job is to ensure that we continue to walk due north. A few minutes later we see our first guanaco! It seems to be just one, likely a bachelor male, yet to have a harem (large group of females and juveniles with one male) to guard. You mark the waypoint on the GPS and read out to me the distance and orientation of the guanaco while I record everything on the data sheet. A few minutes later it is time to walk again.
It is a long time before our next sighting, but this time we find a large group of guanacos. We see 10, with an 11th standing a couple dozen meters away. This one is likely the male on watch for pumas while the others are females, grazing. Again, you take the measurements, and I record the data. We notice that two of the guanacos are smaller than the rest in the group and determine that they are chulengos, juveniles about 1 year of age and not yet ready to leave the group.
Although they are our goal, the guanacos are not the only organisms we interact with on this transect. We are constantly walking around neneo (Azorella prolifera), a stout “cushion plant” with short, spiky leaves. Neneo is related to celery, and has a rather pleasant taste, but be careful because the spike on the end of the leaves isn’t the easiest to eat. We also must occasionally navigate around calafate (Berberis microphylla), a shrub that is found all over Patagonia. This time of the year we can enjoy the small yellow flowers that droop down from the stems, but the spines growing on the branches and twigs prevent easy inspection. Later in the season a blue berry will grow from the calafate plants.
Oh shoot! Upon cresting a small hill, we see that up ahead is a stream with a crossing point in sight. As we get closer, we find (to our chagrin) that the area around the stream is quite muddy. Guanaco transects are always eventful! The water isn’t too high, however, which means that we are able to survive the mud and stream with water only reaching up to our knees. This stream likely grew as a result of the heavy rains last month, and the flooding has yet to subside.
Aside from a second lone male that we see soon after the stream, our transect is quiet after the large group. We again stop for a few minutes to take the necessary measurements before continuing on. 20 minutes later the clock strikes 1 pm, marking the end of our transect. Time for lunch, and then a walk back to our starting point to wait for pick-up.
At the end of our four days of transects, we and our classmates have experienced all that Chacabuco has to offer from pampa to gravel slopes to waist deep rivers to muddy wetlands. The flora and fauna here are spectacular and our time in this place is deeply valued.