Studying to stay with — and love — bears and eagles in Colombia’s cloud forest

Mayra Parra presses play on her laptop computer, and the video on the display involves life for the Perez household within the city of Abriaquí, Colombia. As a spectacled bear ambles into view, scratching its again in opposition to a towering roble tree, the grins on the faces of three generations of the household shortly burst into laughter.

The digicam entice footage was taken a mere 10 minutes’ stroll away, within the dense cloud forest that surrounds the household’s modest house. However three years in the past, the notion of them reacting with such heat to the sight of a bear would have been unimaginable. Spectacled bears (Tremarctos ornatus) had lengthy been their sworn enemies, to be hunted and killed with barely a second thought.

The Perez household’s change of coronary heart is testomony to the transformation in attitudes towards wildlife on this cluster of rural communities within the Western Cordillera mountains of Colombia’s Antioquia division. Because of a small however devoted group of conservationists, native individuals have begun to reconcile with the wildlife on their doorstep and forge a brand new relationship based mostly on coexistence and conservation.

Social employees of the cloud forests

A world biodiversity hotspot, the cloud forests of Colombia’s northern Andes home a rare array of plant and animal species discovered nowhere else. However the area can also be a hotspot for human-wildlife battle. Speedy expansion of agriculture has destroyed round 75% of the forest, with the remaining ecosystem closely fragmented. The destruction of forests has thrust rural communities and wildlife into an uneasy relationship that simply spirals into violence at any time when subsistence livelihoods are threatened by wildlife.

Issues acquired so dangerous within the mid-2010s, says native conservationist Juan Quiroz, {that a} answer “appeared unimaginable.”

On the similar time, Mayra Parra was conducting analysis within the space as a social science Ph.D. scholar. Parra reached out to the native authorities repeatedly about human-wildlife battle however was met with silence. Throughout many Colombian departments, authorities entities chargeable for pure useful resource administration, often called Regional Autonomous Companies (RACs), typically flip a blind eye to human-wildlife battle because of limited coordination, inadequate budgets and poor oversight.

“I couldn’t simply ignore the issue, so I made a decision to do one thing myself,” Parra says. She started working immediately with the communities to search out methods to cut back the battle.

She gathered a bunch of like-minded scholar volunteers from Medellín, the Antioquia departmental capital, they usually started making frequent and sometimes dangerous journeys into the mountains to go to the villages on the fringes of the cloud forests. Their major aim was to begin a dialogue with the communities and develop methods to deal with the battle. In the end, their efforts led to the creation of the NGO Techo de Agua, or “Roof of Water,” a collective effort between the communities and Parra’s staff, to search for a sustainable answer.

The staff wasted no time find its first goal: the black-and-chestnut eagle (Spizaetus isidori).

A raptor’s redemption

The black-and-chestnut eagle is native to Andean montane forests and is listed as endangered by the IUCN, the worldwide wildlife conservation authority. Fewer than 1,000 individuals are thought to stay within the wild. The plight of the species is especially dire in Colombia, the place solely 160 to 360 eagles survive.

An apex predator, the eagle preys on a wide range of birds and small to medium-sized mammals reminiscent of agoutis, coatis, monkeys and opossums. Nonetheless, the raptor’s reign has been usurped by an ever-expanding agricultural frontier that continues to decrease the forest it depends upon for survival. Scientists estimate the eagle has misplaced roughly 60% of its natural habitat in Colombia. In the meantime, a viable breeding pair requires a minimal area of 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) of mature cloud forest. Human overhunting of the eagle’s prey has additionally diminished its potential to outlive, inflicting it to show to farmland and prey on chickens.

The conflict between communities and the black-and-chestnut eagle normally intensifies in the course of the raptor’s breeding season, from Might to August. Throughout this time, male eagles could hunt chickens to supply for his or her mates and one to 2 voracious nestlings. Later within the yr, younger and inexperienced eagles which have lately flown the nest might also take to plundering poultry.

“There’s numerous concern of eagles in our area,” Quiroz says. “Aged individuals say that one of many causes that these birds have been shot up to now was because of beliefs that they snatched away young children. However these days, the primary purpose rural individuals hate and kill eagles is because of them taking chickens.”

The conservationists’ first problem arose within the city of Cañasgordas, the place a younger eagle had taken up residence and develop into a routine hen hunter, amid different quarry.

“It carried off most of my chickens, the combating roosters that I had tied up within the yard, many of the trout from the fish pond, and the chickens and pet of the neighbors,” says native farmer Heriberto Usaga. “It was inflicting us a lot harm that we deliberate to shoot it.”

To stop this, Techo de Agua introduced a compelling case for a truce: give us a little bit extra time and we’ll remedy this.

They constructed a number of “cell” hen coops to supply an alternative choice to free-roaming chickens and put in shade material over fish ponds to stop trout theft. To maintain the eagle from lingering across the farms, they handed out air horns like these utilized by spectators at soccer video games — an enormous enchancment over the normal methodology of clanging saucepans. Because of their efforts, the eagle ceased its raiding, and the locals spared its life.

Phrase unfold shortly, and shortly neighboring communities reached out to Techo de Agua to assist them cope with their very own “drawback eagles.” Throughout weekly visits, the staff listened to the communities’ issues and devised options that have been typically so simple as constructing hen coops — which locals lacked the assets to do themselves — or distributing air horns. Because of this, battle with the eagles has fallen from a weekly incidence to a sporadic occasion each few months throughout the six communities.

Constructing on their success, the staff started touring native faculties and neighborhood facilities. Via workshops and shows, they emphasised the significance of the eagle within the delicate meals chain of the cloud forest ecosystem.

Environmental training of communities is an integral part in conserving birds of prey, as they’re typically misunderstood and negatively perceived, says Marta Curti of U.S.-based nonprofit The Peregrine Fund, which is unaffiliated with Techo de Agua. “It isn’t actually about getting into there and telling individuals how and what to suppose however offering them with factual data and permitting individuals to type a reference to the species.”

Nonetheless, the best technique stands out as the significant inclusion of native individuals as conservation contributors.

“Right here in Antioquia and in numerous areas of Colombia, native individuals’s expertise of conservation is {that a} researcher arrives, hires some native subject assistants, does the analysis after which leaves and isn’t seen once more,” Quiroz says. To fight this notion, the staff works throughout the communities and emphasizes the function communities play in conservation and analysis.

Not too long ago the NGO has develop into a key associate in Custodios de la Aguila (“Custodians of the Eagle”), a coalition of organizations gathering baseline information on black-and-chestnut eagle populations all through Colombia. Via the partnership, the NGOs are coaching native individuals to watch eagle populations within the Western Cordilleras, determine and shield nesting websites, and deal with and deal with injured birds.

“The work they’re doing with the black-and-chestnut eagle is a very good instance of giving native individuals a voice in decision-making and involving them, which is the best method of doing conservation,” Curti says.

Villagers now watch the eagle via binoculars as a substitute of the barrels of loaded shotguns. In Cañasgordas, the place Techo de Agua’s efforts first started, the once-reviled raptor is quick changing into a logo of native delight. This transformation was on full show in 2022 when an enormous papier-mâché eagle with outstretched talons and wings was paraded via the city to the sounds of salsa for the annual carnival.

From foe to good friend

“They’d come at daybreak and destroy my maize subject. To me, these animals have been dangerous; they have been my enemies,” Tulio Perez says of the spectacled bear, the one bear species native to South America and the biggest land carnivore on the continent.

Annoyed by crop-raiding bears that impacted his subsistence and livelihood, Perez says he would shoot the bears that strayed close to his property, killing many through the years.

Though a carnivore, spectacled bears eat little or no meat. Within the wild, they browse primarily on bromeliads, bamboo hearts, palm nuts, and fruits. Nonetheless, the rampant deforestation and fragmentation of the cloud forests — mixed with climate change altering the seasonal distribution of the bear’s typical meals sources — has pressured the bear to forage perilously near human communities.

Listed by the IUCN as vulnerable, the species is believed to be at best threat of extinction in Colombia as a result of rapid expansion of agriculture into the cloud forests. Colombia has a national plan to save lots of the spectacled bear, together with measures to mitigate human-wildlife battle, however its implementation has frequently fallen short. After its success with eagles, Techo de Agua determined to interact locals on bears as effectively.

Natalia Delgado Velez, the NGO’s bear coordinator, says there must be an empathetic strategy to native individuals in such conditions. “These are normally subsistence farmers, so when crops are raided, it doesn’t simply have an effect on individuals’s earnings but in addition their potential to feed their households,” she says.

These embody households just like the Perez family, who, after speaking with the conservationists and taking part in a number of workshops, started to have a change in perspective towards the spectacled bear.

“I began to suppose extra about it and tried actually laborious to cease seeing them negatively. It took me a very long time, however my concepts modified,” Tulio Perez says. Though such conversations have confirmed fruitful, Techo de Agua says extra concrete efforts are essential to completely tackle the foundation supply of the battle.

Numerous makes an attempt are being made to deal with the issue, starting from easy strategies like encouraging villagers to keep away from planting crops close to the forest, to extra artistic approaches like utilizing sweaty T-shirts as scarecrows or spreading a concoction of camphor, creolin and urine across the fields to repel the bears. One other methodology being examined entails putting in rat-repelling gadgets that emit a high-pitched sound upon detecting motion.

“Stopping crop-raiding bears isn’t going to be straightforward, as a result of no single methodology has a 100% success charge,” Velez says. “We simply must maintain experimenting via trial and error.”

Techo de Agua has additionally put in digicam traps within the surrounding forest to watch the bear inhabitants. And with little persuasion, the Perez household has joined the conservation effort. The movies have confirmed to be probably the most helpful instruments in altering native perceptions of the spectacled bears, by revealing their particular person quirks and personalities.

“I didn’t care about them earlier than; they didn’t appear so vital. However after observing them, I understood that they’re vital for the stability of the ecosystem and that every animal is a person with a narrative,” says Daniel Perez, Tulio’s son.

That is an instance of “eco-sensibilization,” based on Parra, an strategy that “encourages cultivating empathy towards wildlife and the surroundings.”

Nonetheless, coexistence isn’t all the time straightforward. The village’s dedication was lately put to the take a look at when a bear killed a pet canine. In that case, happily, peace prevailed.

“I couldn’t ever hurt or kill a bear once more as a result of now after monitoring them and attending to know them, I consider them as previous mates,” says Tulio Perez, a testomony to a newfound affection for the animals he as soon as despised.

Rhianna Hohbein, a researcher who has studied the challenges of spectacled bear conservation in Colombia, says locals NGOs can play an enormous function in stopping battle.

“They normally have a greater understanding of the issues of native individuals, permitting them to determine and implement applications that match the native context,” she says. “This implies they’ll reply shortly to issues as they occur and specialise in resolving conflicts in a method that advantages each individuals and the species.”

Whereas completely eliminating human-bear battle within the Western Cordilleras could show unimaginable, the staff’s efforts could lay the groundwork for considerably lowering such conflicts sooner or later.

Nonetheless, with regards to addressing battle with one other “drawback” species, issues haven’t gone so effectively.

Pumas and other people

Regardless of the successes achieved in lowering battle with bears and eagles, Techo de Agua has confronted its most formidable problem but with the puma (Puma concolor). The large cat, listed as near threatened in Colombia, is despised in lots of rural communities and persecuted because of perceptions concerning the dangers it poses to human life and its behavior of preying on livestock reminiscent of cattle and poultry.

Workshops and outreach campaigns have to date met with gradual progress in shifting long-held detrimental views of the feline.

Many native individuals who have develop into passionate concerning the conservation of the eagle and the bear nonetheless hate pumas, Velez says.

Ongoing discussions on discovering options to the battle have additionally confirmed tough.

Based on Velez, there isn’t a silver bullet for lowering puma battle, which entails a expensive mixture of many strategies, from enhancements in livestock administration to sustaining habitat corridors.

However regardless of these formidable challenges, Parra stays each unflappable and hopeful. “What we’ve discovered with our work right here is that when there’s an open dialogue and the inclusion of communities in conservation, all the things else naturally falls into place.”

Banner picture: A spectacled bear. Picture by Denis Alexander Torres. 

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