Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
of the Amazon. Tens of thousands of gold miners were digging in the forest and dredging the
riverbanks. Construction was under way on the new Transoceanic Highway, linking Brazil
with the Pacific Ocean. Completed in 2010, it now connects southeastern Peru to the out-
side world—and it fragments what was one of the largest expanses of undisturbed rain forest.
Thousands of poor villagers from the high Andes had already settled along the way in search
of work, and more were arriving daily to seek their fortunes in the Amazon lowlands, as had
the forty-niners in California 150 years before. The human migration is ongoing, despite the
history of nearby Rondônia, Brazil, where in the past few decades thousands of settlers have
staked their dreams on a piece of Amazon geography only to find livelihood unsustainable
on its poor soils.
Map of the southeastern Peruvian Amazon
The shrinking of the rain forests because of human settlements introduced a new set of
research questions for the husband-and-wife team. How had loss and fragmentation of rain
forest and new levels of human influence, especially hunting, affected answers to the initial
questions of how much is enough, for jaguars, for pumas, and for sakis? Given the pace of
forest degradation, finding answers to these questions is urgent.
For the past four years, George had contracted with a locally run air taxi company to help
him track the animals he and his field team captured and fitted with radiotelemetry devices.
It was time for the near-monthly flight to pinpoint the animals' locations, and George had
offered to take me along. At the grassy field that served as an airstrip, George greeted his
pilot, Jonathan Schmidt, and quickly attached his tracking gear to the plane.
