Remember the good old days of secondary school biology? You used to just grab a quadrat, throw it on the floor and count how many ladybirds were inside. A lot of conservation research isn’t all that different from this. Simple is good. Quadrats are pretty. But when your study organism lives up trees, you have to get a little more sophisticated. When your study organism lives up trees, you need to get yourself a tree climber.
Currently, I’m in Madagascar on a project led by Brett Scheffers, exploring how amphibians stratify themselves in the rainforest. Are they found on the ground, in the canopy, or midway up the trunk? Knowing this is important, because previous work by Brett et al. has shown that where species live in the forest has implications for how they might respond to climate change.
I haven’t been up a tree yet (tomorrow’s the day!). Truth be told, I’m a mixture of extremely excited and slightly worried I might die. But one of the other research assistants here, Gilles Bernard, seems to have carved himself out as a bit of specialist in climbing trees in the name of species conservation. He takes phenomenal photographs too, which is always a sexy thing to a blogger like me who can’t tell a zoom lens from a mug of chamomile tea.
From climbing rainforest giants in the Peruvian Amazon to catch and translocate underfed chicks of one of the most iconic birds in the world, the Scarlet Macaw, to scaling trunks in the tropical dry forests of Kenya to look at how human-created forest edges impact geckos and chameleons (see research), to scrambling up the adorably named Big Mama tree here on Madagascar in search of a particularly meaty tree-hole dwelling froggy.
This guy has done it all.
The stories of a tree climbing conservationist are certainly something to behold. Unlike nice and safe quadrats there are some dangers for sure. Being attacked by an angry swarm of Amazonian bees so interested in a nice warm ear-hole that he was deafened for four days would be one of them. Having the rope drop several metres and narrowly avoiding being brained by a falling chunk of tree would be another.
But mainly, Gilles loves himself a good old tree climb. Experiences like being up in the canopy whilst a troop of spider monkey launch themselves just overhead must have been one of those never-forget moments. And when you get this guy romanticising about watching the Milky Way from way up on high, he looks like he might cry with joy.
Conservation needs more tree climbers. It’s a rare breed that are willing to go months at a time dangling from branches. But someone needs to do it. We can’t just let hard to monitor species go unnoticed. And besides, the great thing about wildlife conservation is the adventurous component that comes hand in hand.
So if this is my last post, and I suddenly find my mushy entrails fertilising the growth of some Madagascan understorey seedlings following a nice tumble, I’m glad to have got a glimpse into the crazy world of tree-climbing conservationists.
To check out more fantastic wildlife photos, and adventurous tree-climbing and diving fieldwork, go to Gilles’ National Geographic page.
To read more research stories from canopy scientists, visit Brett Scheffer’s lab page.
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