Argh/Fail!!!

So apparently my previous post got cut off at the bottom, due to an error in my coding, that will teach me to do my own HTML. Here is the rest of the post that got cut off, it isn't very much.

[...]While we were down there the group Yaguará was selling T-shirts whose proceeds went to them so they could purchase more equipment.

As I mentioned earlier this is the last post in this series so I hope that you enjoyed it. If you didn't I'm sorry, I guess, but we will get back to normal posts, YouTube science videos and random comics with some actual though involving posts thrown in randomly, here shortly. As always feel free to leave comments in the comments below or send me a message!

I fixed the problem on the previous post if you want to see it in context, hopefully I can avoid doing this again.

Costa Rican Big Cats

So this will be the last post in this series but it is also the one I was looking forward to the most, but before I get into the meat of the post I want to add something to primarily the previous post in this series but it could also be added to the one before that.

How do I forget about fossils?
Well to put it simply it is because there aren't any. As I discussed in the previous post there is very little soil and if it isn't secured by roots it washes away quickly but I also mentioned that anything that dies in forest gets reused very quickly. For these reasons fossils are rare to nonexistent. You need to have sediment being laid down in order to preserve fossils and there are just too few areas in Costa Rica where this is occurring, although there are probably some I just don't know of any. This means that the fossil record for animals that lived and evolved in Costa Rica tends to be pretty sparse. That is not to say there isn't the potential for fossils to be found, after all the crew at the University of Florida have several sites in neighboring Panama where work is being done to widen the canal so who knows what the future holds.

Back on topic!
The presence of big cats in Costa Rica should come as no surprise after all the Jaguar ranges from Mexico, rarely the U.S. Southwest, through most of South America. What actually surprised me was the presence of Pumas, or Mountain Lions/Cougars/etc, in Costa Rica because when I think of them I think of the Western U.S. My surprise aside, I was sad to hear that our second night there there was going to be a talk at the hotel about the big cats [photo at left of most likely Ocelot footprints, by author] in the region but we were already scheduled for another tour. After confirming that the people giving the talk would be back later we were relieved and so a few nights later my wife and I sat down for what would be a very interesting talk.

The talk was given by Aida Bustamante from the conservation group Yaguará. The group is trying to make sure that the big cats in Costa Rica continue to be protected and can flourish. The research that the group has done is impressive and Aida gave an interesting talk, my wife and I were glad to have gone and told her so afterward.

The group has been working to try to change people's minds about the big cats. They have approached this in a couple of ways. The first way is by putting out camera traps around the national park as well as at many of the ecolodges. The ecolodges protect their forests because they know that is what brings tourists to them when a big group of these are located near each other, like on the Osa Peninsula they allow for animals to cross vast expanses of land like they would have before humans started cutting down the forests. The Osa Peninsula has plentiful forests and the big cats love it this allows for the presence of ocelots and pumas as well as other large cats and hopefully the jaguars. Giving talks like the one I attended is a way to reach these tourists to help protect these areas.

Another way they are trying to protect the cat is through community outreach. This is done in two main ways the first is giving talks, like the one I saw, to the community and let them know the cats are out there but they are not very likely to hurt people [Photo to right of footprints potentially of a Puma I am actually unsure but based on size and shape that is what my wife and I decided, by author]. This includes not just going to schools but going to people's homes an places of work to give the talks. The other way is by paying ranchers the cost of any livestock that is killed by the big cats. This prevents the ranchers from going out to kill the animal that killed their livestock in a hope to recoup some of the loss, something that ranchers even here in the U.S. do.

Evidence of big cats is everywhere on the Osa, as noted by the two photographs on this post, and the camera traps have captured evidence of all of the big cats including jaguars. The jaguars need vast expanses of territory to roam, however, so they cannot just be confined to the Osa. Evidence from camera traps suggest that they have traveled to another national park across the bay from where we were. This is a good sign but the possibility remains that they could eventually get cut off. Prior to the 2008 economic downturn there were plans in the work the keep the areas connected by forest and allow this forest to be part of a larger transnational forest that runs most of Central America down to South America. When everyone's economy crashed in 2008 this was put on hold. Now there is talk of the President of Costa Rica opening up forest land to mining and farming, this would obviously hurt the ranges of the big cats.

But there is hope! As I mentioned the big cats are traveling and this wasn't heard of until recently so this is good news. The number of cats seems to be increasing and their prey items so to also be seeing a rise which means there are likely to be more cats to prey on these animals.

I hope that by raising attention to this issue here someone outside will notice. I went to Costa Rica because of the rain forest. This area represents a wild that we don't get to see here in the U.S. or Europe and I would hate to see that changed. Dollars often speak louder than words and my dollars were spent on things that allowed me to see the wildlife while down there. Enough about me is there anything you can do to help? Well you can write the government down there and let them know if you have been, are going to, plan to, or just want to go to Costa Rica and let them know how you feel about this topic. You can also donate to Yaguará, also see here, or other organizations that are working on preserving the Costa Rican environments. While we were down there the group Yaguará was selling T-shirts whose proceeds went to them so they could purchase more equipment.

As I mentioned earlier this is the last post in this series so I hope that you enjoyed it. If you didn't I'm sorry, I guess, but we will get back to normal posts, YouTube science videos and random comics with some actual though involving posts thrown in randomly, here shortly. As always feel free to leave comments in the comments below or send me a message!

Conservation in Costa Rica

This post is going to pick up where the previous Costa Rica post left off because it is important to understand. When most people think of rain forests like the ones that exist in Costa Rica they think of plentiful large plant life and lots of exotic animals. This often leads to the association of plants in more temperate areas that have extensive amounts of soil under them. Well what you should notice based on the picture to the left [photo of a root ball on a tree in Costa Rica by author, I could not find a more temperate forest root ball to compare it to so if you know of one feel free to post the link below] is that this is not true. The actual soil in most rain forests is typically very thin but why is this and what does this have to do with conservation?

Well the reason for this is due directly to the large amount of plants and animals along with the large amount of rain that occur in rain forests. When a dead organisms falls to the ground in a more temperate forest decay begins immediately but is slowed by a lower amount of rain and as one goes further north colder winter temperatures. In the rain forest you have warm humid climatic conditions year round, these are ideal conditions for decomposers so decomposition takes place very quickly. This means in order for plants and animals to get nutrients from decomposing organisms they must be able to do so quickly so this leads to a huge competition for these nutrients and with so many organisms competing for these nutrients the soil very quickly depletes the soil.

Rain also effects the soil in any given environment. If a farmer clears land then it proceeds to rain the rain will wash away some of the soil. The same thing occurs in nature in forests as well. In a temperate forest the rain may wash away some of the soil but typically plants grow up in the thicker soil before the rain has a chance to wash it away and the plants help lock down the soil. In rain forests we have a perfect storm we have already thin soil and we have plentiful pretty much daily rain so before plants have a chance to start growing a lot of the soil is lost [photo at right of a dead crab, you can ignore this for this post on very depleted soil by author]. This leads to areas where the soil remains exposed we end up with typically iron and felsic rich soils. These soils do not have the nutrients that are needed to support plant life and do to the large amount of rain it is hard to get plants to regrow in these areas. So what does this mean?

This basically means that if we cut and burn and start trying to farm is these types of environments we lose most of the soil very quickly so we need more land. The land that had been farm land does not grow any plants anymore and continues to become more and more enriched in iron etc and gets more and more depleted in nutrients. This land eventually becomes almost rock like and will not grow plants so the farmers need more land so they slash and burn more land in the forest to be able to grow more crops, this is a big problem in places like Brazil.

Humans need food, however, so we need to do something. Well there are a couple ways to address this the first is that these countries could import food from countries that do not have similar problems. This is expensive, however, and leaves that country open to manipulation by foreign countries in exchange for food and as such is not preferable. The other main option is a crop rotation pattern. You could allow native plants to grow for a little while develop a more native soil pattern then cut it back and farm it for a couple of years then allow the forest to come back. This idea in and of itself isn't perfect and in the long run could prevent a country from growing enough food to support itself.

So which is best? I can't say and in fact their could be other options that I did not list here, feel free to put some in the comments section. It is important to note that in many parts of Costa Rica the locals have, however, taken advantage of the more natural way of growing food in many areas and if you stay try to stay at a ecolodge. These ecolodges typically produce their power and get food from sustainable sources which is good for Costa Rica and the world in general. The next post will also partially deal with conservation but in a slightly different way, as always I more than welcome your questions or comments below.

A Future for Bats

So yesterday I had a post about Mammoth Cave National Park and I focused primarily on the geology of the park as I have with most of my National Park posts. Well shortly after I posted it I read a post over at Darren Naish's wonderful blog Tetrapod Zoology in his 20 part (holy crap 20) series on vesper bats, the link to the post will include links to the other 19 if you want. This was the last post in series and it is about the potential future for vesper bats and it included a pretty good summary of all of the troubles that the vesper bats are currently facing. This post won't focus on vesper bats in particular but bats in the more general sense

Now to tie the previous paragraph together. When I visited Mammoth Cave much of the discussion by the tour guides was not about the geologic history, although there was plenty of that, it was about the animals that live in the caves especially the bats. Bats seem to have some hold on people that seems to interest them greatly. They discussed two of the problems that Darren talks about in his post and how the National Park Service is trying to prevent the loss of bats. I will follow the two of them in the same order that Darren did and for simplicities sake I will be using the same section titles.

Disturbance and roost destruction
Many bats hibernate for the winter in caves and in hollow trees among other similar things. One of the things that can cause them not to come back or to leave their hibernation place too early is being disturbed while they hibernating. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS homepage) had this to say on the Indiana Bat, Myotis sodalis.

Indiana bats, because they hibernate in large numbers in only a few caves, are extremely vulnerable to disturbance. During hibernation, they cluster in groups of up to 500 per square foot. Since the largest hibernation caves support from 20,000 to 50,000 bats, it is easy to see how a large part of the total population can be affected by a single event. Episodes of large numbers of Indiana bat deaths have occurred due to human disturbance during hibernation.

It is obviously one thing to admit you have a problem and something else completely to do something about it. Well while at the park I was told that many of the other entrances, even the ones outside of the park, had gates put on them that would allow bats and other animals in and out but not allow humans in. The FWS page said this:

Public lands like National Wildlife Refuges, military areas, and U.S. Forest Service lands are managed for Indiana bats by protecting forests. This means ensuring that there are the size and species of trees needed by Indiana bats for roosting; and providing a supply of dead and dying trees that can be used as roost sites. In addition, caves used for hibernation are managed to maintain suitable conditions for hibernation and eliminate disturbance.

The National Park Service itself also talks about protection of the bats on page 12 of this report on the biological assessment for fiscal year 2007 prescribed fire plan says this:

There is a preference for standing dead trees and species that have loose bark, but Indiana bats may roost in any tree greater than six inches in diameter (they have occasionally been seen in smaller trees). The cave hibernacula are gated to prevent human disturbance during hibernation

Also in the report they mention not cutting down dead hollowed out trees and just trimming off some of the lower branches to keep the fire from spreading up the tree.

White-nose syndrome
While the previous section focused primarily on the Indiana bat this section applies more to bats in general. White nose syndrome (WNS) is a deadly disease that is described very well on Darren's post, but I have included the Wikipedia link just in case. WNS is devastating to bat populations and as such the NPS is greatly concerned with it hitting the bat populations within the park on a webpage with a lot of information on WNS:

The potential exists for the loss of hundreds of thousands more bats—and perhaps entire species—bad news for us as bats devour millions of insect pests and play a role in pollination.

The park, however, is being proactive and on that website they talk about what you should try to do to avoid spreading it. They also include a little check list explaining what you should try to avoid, as well as a small application that allows for a quick, you are good to go or you should see us about this. There were plenty of signs all over the visitors center about the harm white nose syndrome can do and a booth to go visit if you may have come in contact with it. They even have a plan in case your tour group happens across a potential exposure to WNS.

On the remote chance that you might come into contact with Geomyces destructans spores during your tour of Mammoth Cave, all participants in Mammoth Cave National Park cave tours will be required to walk on bio security mats after exiting the Cave. This will require each individual in your party to walk the length of a nylon mat saturated in a Lysol™ solution comparable to that used in home cleaning. Specific information on the active ingredients of Lysol IC™ and the concentration being used are available at the White-Nose Station at the Visitor Center. We also ask for your cooperation by washing your hands and changing clothes and footwear before visiting any other caves or mines.

I hope that between the efforts of the NPS in parks such as Mammoth Cave National Park and the efforts of the PWS throughout the United States could slow the spread of WNS and prevent many deaths from people disturbing colonies as possible.