Ok, so it's not birding and it's not related to cp but, since we were on the
subject of Peru....

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Subject: Amazon.com Delivers Sy Montgomery



Greetings from Amazon.com Delivers Outdoors & Nature and Science

Sy Montgomery has a thing for the world's mysterious river
dolphins--particularly the oddly humanlike "bufeo colorado,"
or pink dolphin, that is believed to come ashore in the
guise of a stranger and lure the unsuspecting to a fantastic
watery underworld. While traveling through the Amazon rain
forest to feed this fascination and research what would
become "Journey of the Pink Dolphins," Montgomery visited a
number of so-called nature reserves. She discovered that
such reserves, charged with the responsibility of conserving
the Amazon basin's staggering yet imperiled biodiversity,
are frequently refuges on paper only. Peru's Tamshiyacu-Tahuayo
Reserve is different, however, and it just might be the
model for the future that ensures the survival of the
basin's habitat, its life forms, and the local cultures
that hunt and fish in the region.

The book featured in this e-mail is "Journey of the Pink
Dolphins: An Amazon Quest," by Sy Montgomery. You can find
more information about it at
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/068484558X/ref=ad_b_sn_2


                        ******

                   Amazon Forever:
On a quest for meaningful conservation in the last great
                  tropical forests


At the edge of the Tamshiyacu-Tahuayo Reserve in
northeastern Peru, as the waters narrow, the forest
quickens. The air, hot as breath, shudders with the calls of
parakeets and the glittering wings of dragonflies.
Partially submerged trees trail curtains of vines. Strangler
figs flow over their hosts like melting candles; ferns
uncoil, curling and twisting like dancers. Trees hang heavy
with the nests of ants, wasps, termites, birds.

Unlike most of the Amazon, the Tamshiyacu-Tahuayo area has
been a rain forest since before the river itself was born.
Based on fossil evidence, paleogeographers believe that
during the last 50,000 years the Amazon basin became cooler
and drier at least four times, changing most of its rain
forests to savannas. Fewer than a dozen small patches in the
entire Amazon basin have remained warm and wet enough to
preserve the ancient lineages that thrived in the lush,
steamy world of the Eocene.

This is one of them.

The reserve and its surroundings are astonishingly rich in
wildlife, with more species of primates (14) and rodents
(26) than any other area in South America. Its creatures
include the rare red uakari, an auburn-coated monkey whose
bright-red face looks like a sunburned tourist; the hoatzin,
a bird with a loose crest of orange feathers above a blue
face, whose young, like the first dinosaur-birds, grow claws
on the wings; catfish clad in plates of bony armor, like the
giant fish of Devonian seas; and the primitive, melon-headed,
long-snouted pink whales here called "bufeo colorado," or
the ruddy dolphin--the elusive pink dolphins of the Amazon
who are said to change into human form and seduce both men
and women at the dances the river people hold--the subject
of the book whose research brought me to this place.

"There's never been a botanist in here," Greg Neise, the
charismatic young president of Rainforest Conservation Fund,
yelled at me over the noise of our canoe's motor. The
Chicago-based Fund has supported the reserve since its
inception in 1991. "Who knows how many new species we're
looking at!" Greg called. Actually, he told me later, Al
Gentry, the leading expert on Latin American botany, had
come here shortly before he was killed in a 1993 plane crash
in Ecuador, and found the place extraordinary: there were
plants here not known in Peru. Ornithologist Ted Parker had
the same reaction about the birds; more than 700 species
have been recorded on these 800,000 acres, and many of them
are found nowhere else in Peru.

Though there are larger reserves in Peru, none is more
pristine. Unfortunately, many South American reserves are
protected on paper only. When it comes to conservation,
developing-country governments often do not obey, much less
enforce, their own laws. Cattle ranching, oil drilling,
clear-cut logging, commercial fishing, and coca farming are
not unusual inside the borders of so-called nature reserves.
But not at Tamshiyacu-Tahuayo, because it is protected by
the very people who depend on its resources.  The local
people are key elements, and to a large extent the very
authors, of its maverick management plan. "Where is the
reserve? Are we in the reserve?" I kept yelling to Greg over
the motor. He laughed. And then he yelled back, "Someone
else who came here said 'I went to your reserve and didn't
see any conservation work going on--it's just pure forest.'
And I said, 'Exactly!'" No sign announced the boundaries of
the reserve. No guard stood watch as we entered--just a
pygmy marmoset, a tiny primate clinging with orange hands to
a spine-covered chambira palm, its ringed, tawny tail
hanging down like a lizard's.

Rainforest Conservation Fund does not finance forest guards,
nor does it staff an office in Chicago. And that, according
to Jim Penn, who has worked, with dogged dedication, as an
agroforester for more than 10 years in this reserve, and who
first proposed financing the Reserve to RCF, is a good thing.
"What you think conservation is in the States doesn't work
here," he said.

In fact, most conservation schemes in South America backfire
horrendously. Park guards often turn to poaching themselves.
Ecotourism seldom protects land--unlike the sole lodge at
the edge of this reserve, operated by Amazonia Expeditions,
where the staff is full-time and paid year-round. At most
lodges, the support staff are paid only during the busy
season. The rest of the time, to supplement their income,
they often work for logging operations and poach game to eat
and sell at the market.

To the local people at Tamshiyacu-Tahuayo, Penn said,
conservation is almost a dirty word--one that means gringo
scientists and bureaucrats telling local people what they
can and can't do, for reasons that make no sense.

And that's why, instead of implementing a conventional
conservation scheme, Penn asked the Rainforest Conservation
Fund to secure this land's protection by supporting the
people's old ways of guarding it. And, like so many of the
miracles I witnessed on my dolphin-led odyssey through the
Amazon Rainforest, these ways don't look or sound like
anything you would normally expect.

To learn more about Rainforest Conservation Fund, you can
visit their Web site:
http://www.rainforestconservation.org

--Sy Montgomery writes a nature column for "The Boston Globe,"
is a commentator for National Public Radio's "Living on
Earth," and is the author of five books, including "Walking
with the Great Apes: Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, Birute
Galdikas."

                         ******

You'll find more great titles on Conservation at
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse-books/-/290062/ref=ad_b_sn_2

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