C'mon and take a free ride.

As some of you know, Philippe (the Technical Director of Nouragues) would like me to do some work at the two Nouragues stations. He asked if I would like to stay for a year and at a minimum he'd like me to remove the 20 year old canopy walkway that looks like some janky rig pulled from the set of an Indiana Jones movie.

Eddie on the canopy walkway and a less-than-stellar anchor at about 80 feet above ground.















I am very much interested in dismantling the walkway and so Philippe and I are in agreement that I will stay on for a bit. The catch is a bureaucratic one.I have not been provided with a contract and Philippe has left the country for a month. Philippe doesn't want me to head back to the States but he also doesn't want me to start work until I am officially on payroll. To keep me around he offered that I can stay at the stations free of charge. So, for the next month I will officially have a free ride. This is akin to ecotourism with none of the tourists. What's more, a steady stream of specialists come through with fresh stories and the ability to identify and explain a staggering array of things.

Mael and company during a bat study Pararé

I spent the past couple of days at the Pararé station getting a feel for the place, conducting a little bit of Cullen's research and helping a German moss and lichen specialist with some canopy work. The Pararé station is not as charming as Inselberg but the camp manager, Mathias, is a great guy. He's friendly and enthusiastic enough that I am giving more thought to the idea of staying for a year. If I were to stay I would be stationed primarily at Pararé so Mathias and I would be on each other like white on rice.

Mathias is in his early 20's and not quite accustomed to the idea of being an adult. He'll stand at the kitchen sink big-spooning peaches from a tin can into his maw. Occasionally he'll cast a sideways glance to see if anyone is watching, trying to gage if what he's doing is ok. I crack up and think, "Don't you know that being an adult is all about being a kid?"

He is interested in making Pararé more sustainable and tastier by planting edibles and using compost. Those are things that I thought about from my first day at Nouragues. Having grown up here, Mathias has lots of friends "nearby" who grow crops organically and could pass plant material off to him. He talks about taking a pirogue (small motorboat) downriver and bringing it back packed to the gills with Rambutan saplings and the like. Long story short, he and I have similar visions and would have a good time.

Mathias tasting Eperua collected during
the ancillary pollination study at Pararé

The moss researcher, Alex, has been conducting abundance and biomass surveys of moss, lichen and vascular plant communities in an effort to demonstrate that the Pararé area is a lowland fog forest. She has taken a course in canopy access which includes getting into and down from a tree, but she has no training in standard tree climbing techniques that are used to move about the canopy once you are up there. This is standard for researchers and mind boggling to me. The majority of researchers are limited to a little zone along the trunk and miss out on a good deal of the action. For two days Alex and I trained each other, her in climbing and me in mosses and lichens and we had a great time. I will probably head back to Pararé on Tuesday and continue working with her. So, my free ride will be more of a working vacation.


Back at the Inselberg Station I was up at 4:30 this morning with Cullen and her friends to net nectar bats. I'd never seen bat netting before so it was a treat. Once netted, the bats were identified, weighed, measured and if sufficiently large, radio tags were inserted so that an antenna at the "bat cave" can monitor their comings and goings.