SCIENTISTS BURNING SOME JUNGLE
By Bob Van Leer

  (MANAUS, BRAZIL, OCT. 12, 1990) - Last night I slept in a hammock in the Amazon rain forest. Yesterday 16 of our party of 19 on the National Newspaper Association study mission boarded a bus to take advantage of an opportunity to spend a day at a research camp operated by the Smithsonian Institution, in cooperation with the World Wildlife Fund, in the jungle north of Manaus.

  The camp is on the DiMona Ranch 43 miles, and a two hour drive, north of Manaus. Three of the party, including Betty, who is still taking it easy because of an operation, stayed in Manaus. The rest of us boarded a bus and headed north.

  Paving on the road stopped almost at the city limits. From there the unpaved road runs 1000 kilometers north to Venezuela with almost no services available. (A kilometer is .621 miles).

  Our guide told us that few residents of Manaus go into the jungle. To do so requires a car or boat ad most people here to do not have that kind of money.

  At the ranch we shifted form a bus to four wheel drive vehicles for the balance of the trip, about a half hour drive over jeep tracks to the camp. The camp itself was little more than two tin roofs at the edge of the jungle.

  The purpose of the Smithsonian project is to study forest fragmentation. On this ranch the project began in 1977 with two one hectare plots, one 10 hectare and on 100 hectare plot. A hectare is about 2.5 acres. These are set aside in voluntary cooperation with the rancher who is only permitted to clear half of his 10,000 hectare concession. Our guides are both from England and both do research on the project. Nigel Sizer does forest research and Andrew Whittaker does bird research.

Jungle Tour

  We had time for a tour of a one hectare reserve before dinner. Nigel said that clearing of jungle for ranching is declining. Ranching was encouraged by the government that wanted to develop the land. A procedure vaguely similar to the U.S. Homestead Act was set up with ranchers able to get title to state land after clearing and developing the land. He said government incentive payments based on the number of hectares cleared have stopped because of intense international pressure.

  The land has little value but is a hedge against inflation which is about 20 percent a month but down from the 80-90 percent per month of a year ago. Land is worth up to $2.00-2.50 per acre. Nigel said clearing and burning the land puts a one-time infusion of nutrients in the soil and grass grows well for a dozen years before falling off.

  The DiMona Ranch has 600 cattle on 5000 hectares. Not all soils are poor. Some are good agricultural land. But, from what he said, most are poor. The ranch is too distant from markets for logs to have any value and clearing is slash and burn.

  The forest at the DiMona ranch has a canopy ranging from 20 to 30 meters with occasional taller trees. (A meter is a little more than a yard, 39.37 inches.) He said tropical hardwoods take 50-60 years to grow although it is difficult to say because the trees do not have growth rings. Growth is continuous. The weather is what you would expect in a rain forest. The temperatures must be in the 90s and the humidity is 100 percent. Clothes are soaked in minutes.

  Nigel pointed out how the edge effect of the one hectare tract went all through the small tract. Trees were blown down on all edges and, even in the center, there was more light than in unbroken jungle. This changed plant and animal species and he said any change leads to other changes.

  Nearby are pastures left to grow back by the ranch and in just 10-16 years it is going back to forest again. But Nigel said the composition of plants is changed. However, he said it was his opinion that these tracts, with unbroken jungle nearby, would approximately represent the original jungle in 200 years if left alone.

  Brazil speaks Portuguese and the Portuguese word for ranch is fazenda. We dined on an Amazon fish, a tambaqui, which is excellent. The fish weigh from 25-40 pounds and are highly prized.

Jungle Bath

  But before dinner it was time for bathing in the camp's facilities, a jungle stream on a steep slope below the camp. We bathed in two shifts, women first and then men. The water in the small creek was surprisingly cool and the creek had a sandy bottom but was only a foot or two deep. Later, Nigel told one of our party he had several times seen a caiman (an alligator-like reptile) 2.5 meters long on the creek below where we were bathing.

  After dinner it was only 7:30 p.m. but we were going to be up early the following day to see the jungle in the early morning so we retired early. Sleeping accommodations were hammocks under a tin roof. Our 16 plus a half dozen camp personnel were all in one line of hammocks only a foot or two from the next one. The amount of snoring probably chased all the wildlife out of the area. We rolled out about 5:30 a.m. and, after breakfast, headed for the 100 hectare reserve. All of us are consuming huge quantities of liquids. None of the local water, including in Manaus, is safe to drink, and large quantities of bottled water were brought along.

  We hiked two or three miles through the large reserve. Trails were cut through for research purposes. This part of the jungle is rolling hills, rather than being flat, but the scientists were able to make trails in straight lines so it was nothing like Curry county. The heat and humidity was so high that standing still after a rest my glasses fogged up. Sweat ran down us like rivers.

  Andrew had bird nets up o n the trail, a fine kind of net he called a mist net. He had captured a couple of dozen low-flying birds, his nets were set 2 meters high. Birds were extricated from the net, measured, inspected, banded and released. Many of the birds had been banded before. Andrew said these recatches were important in determining the ranges of the birds. Earlier we had seen toucans and green and red parrots flying.

  We were privileged to see a procession of army ants. These are not very big insects, but devastate anything edible in the path of the army. Such is the symbiosis in the jungle that Andrew said there are several species of birds that follow the ant armies and have no way to sustain themselves except to eat army ants.

  Nigel said the Amazon forest is different from the northern forests. He was more familiar with the United Kingdom than the U.S. and he said around Manaus there are 3000 species of large trees. He said in the UK there only 10 species total. Counting all woody plants, there are 6000-7000 species around Manaus but only 35 in the UK. Nigel said in 150 acres there would be 1000 species of big trees (over 10 cm.). There might be 160 species in one hectare and in the next 160 more different species. He said the values of forests in the U.S. do not compare to the jungle. In the jungle there were a lot of bird sounds but we saw no mammals. Nigel said this area was not rich in fauna and also the size of our party would have an effect.

  The density of vegetation was really no more than a brushy second-growth patch in Curry county, however the plants were completely different. There were a lot of palms, including one kind that had spines an inch or two long all the way up its trunk. There were a lot of plants with huge leaves including some sold at home in florist shops as foliage plants. We measured one leaf over three feet long. Bird of paradise plants blooming lent an occasional touch of color. Tarzan-like vines hung from many of the trees.

Scientists Burn Jungle

  On the far edge of the reserve we saw a slashed and burned area still smoking. But this was not to clear the jungle for cattle, this was done by the Smithsonian project itself. Ranchers have stopped clearing and Nigel said the results of the research would not be valid unless the reserve was isolated so the project slashed and burned 50 acres to complete the isolation. He said the idea was not universally popular.

  The area looked like a local clearcut except there was more wood on the ground. No logs were removed as Nigel said there was no market. The only thing from Oregon I have so far seen in Brazil was an empty carton of Oregon saw chain by the clear cut.

  Returning from the hike, and by now soggy with sweat, we returned to the camp for lunch. Since we were headed back to town we did not again use the stream which was a long climb down from the camp.

  We reversed our path and returned to Manaus over the same road, indeed the only one in the area. In town we had only time for a shower and change of clothes before a meeting with industrialists arranged by the U.S. counsel. In the evening we dined at the Bufalo, a restaurant where waiters kept bringing different cuts of broiled meets on large skewers and slicing servings off on request. We could identify beef and pork but did not know what kind of animal it was that had a hump that they served. Anyway, it was all excellent.

  Tomorrow we are to attend sessions of Forest 90, the first international conference on tropical rain forests. We are told 1000 are attending the conference.