By Kyle Miller from Montana State University
November 20-27, 2023
We were off to Lago Brown! I was looking forward to returning to the area, I had a wonderful time in that area during my homestay. I couldn’t wait to see the soaring mountain that is San Lorenzo and the deep blues of Lago Brown. We were going to be based out of Campo Lago Brown, right next to the lake! I also couldn’t wait to see what we had in store conservation-wise. We were planning on doing a rapid biodiversity inventory (RBI) of the surrounding lands, all owned by Atilio. A great big thanks to Atilio, for hosting us at Campo Aquasol in Cochrane, hosting me during my homestay, and allowing us to do these in-depth studies of his land west of Lago Brown.
Oh my, it was just as beautiful as I remembered it. There was a lovely grove of ñirre trees that surrounded our campsite. To the east was the lake. To the west was an open field of ground hugging shrubs and flowers. We had an opportunity to study those flowers the next day for my flora project. I got to peer into the little worlds of flowers that I would not have noticed if I were to walk by. One of the flowers was a speedwell species that barely reached ankle height and had a flower so small, it wouldn’t cover the eraser end of a pencil. I hope that I will be able to share my curiosity and joy of learning about these little wonders by way of a field guide to which my descriptions of these flowers are contributing.
To round out the day, we reviewed the protocol for the RBI so we could set off early the next day on our backpacking trips! We split into four groups to survey four areas of Atilio’s land and replace the batteries in four camera traps. We were surveying plants, animals, fungi, and lichen at sites located in varying habitats.
The first expedition lasted two days, one night in the field. My group headed straight up a mountain directly north of Campo Lago Brown. Halfway up the mountain, we found the camera trap. It was steep terrain, I was surprised to see sheep poop, trails, and even two
carcasses, picked clean of meat. The carcasses couldn’t have been more than a month old. Sure enough: on the game camera, there were dozens of pictures of sheep. Sheep. Sheep. Grass blowing. Sheep… Puma! Over the 9 months that it was up, the camera took two good photos of puma, four or so photos of fox, and one great photo of an owl. No huemul deer.
Bummer.
Huemul deer are stout deer species only found in Chile and Argentina. They are shown on the Chilean crest along with the Andean Condor. Their populations are decreasing and they are rare and endangered. At this point, any information about the distribution of huemul deer is valuable. On the other hand, there are puma that are also rare and secretive, actively killed by the locals, but are more or less well off. Well, they are far from at risk of becoming extinct that is. Puma, like all cats, are finely tuned killers. They are good at killing all sorts of big herbivores, from sheep to deer to guanaco (think of llama before it was domesticated). This has allowed them to live all over the Americas, North and South, plains, mountains, and jungles. It is so interesting to see this stark difference of extinction risk between these megafauna in the same habitat with similar population densities. Through this time, I have grown to understand how complex species population dynamics are. I’ll never take the work of population ecologists for granted again.
We were able to do a couple thorough RBI’s and climb 4/5ths the way up the mountain we were on in the couple days that made up our first expedition. We made it back to home base at a decent time, leaving plenty of time to cook up a proper Thanksgiving feast. And by golly did I feel grateful. I was feeling grateful for many things, but notably I was grateful to be where I was getting to make the most of the opportunities that I was given. What opportunities I was given! The next day, I went to a stunning vista of the rapidly disappearing Cayuqueo Glacier. Then, I went on another 3 day expedition through the rolling hills south of Lago Brown. We did another five RBI’s, allowing me to do an exploratory dive into the world of lichen that I knew little to none about. We also ran across huemul and puma footprints! Tired and happy, we returned to Cochrane after nearly 8 full days of once-in-a-lifetime adventure. What a time to be alive.
