Guyana expedition finds biodiversity trove in area slated for oil and gas development

An expedition deep into Guyana's rainforest interior to find the endangered giant river otter—and collect their scat for genetic analysis—uncovered much more than even this endangered charismatic species.

"Visiting the Rewa Head felt like we were walking in the footsteps of Wallace and Bates, seeing South America with its natural density of wild animals as it would have appeared 150 years ago," expedition member Robert Pickles said to Mongabay.com.

A PhD student with the University of Kent and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), Pickles is currently studying the genetics of the giant river otter in hopes to save this species from habitat loss. While the expedition, which also included tapir expert Niall McCann and local naturalist and tour operator Ashley Holland, found the necessary scat-samples that Pickles sought, they also took data on the biodiversity of one of the Guyana's Shield's most untouched regions hoping to draw attention to a little-known area threatened by big logging and oil companies.

Robert Pickles holding a red fire snake (Chironius scurrulus). Photo courtesy of Robert Pickles.

In just six weeks the expedition recorded an astounding variety of life: 158 species of birds, 22 species of medium to large mammals, and half of Guyana's known endangered species. "Including," Pickles says, "all the felids with several captures of puma in the camera traps, the presence of the mighty Harpy and crested eagles, the extremely elusive bush dog, abundant tapir and then just below the Falls is an important breeding ground for the giant South American river turtle."

Due to the difficulty of reaching Rewa Head, the ecosystem was been little touched by past or present hunters, leaving the animals largely unafraid of Pickles and other expedition members.

"It was quite remarkable the number of game species such as paca and currassow that could be seen and approached with ease. We also encountered four tapir during the expedition […] they were entirely nonchalant about our presence and would quite placidly paddle just next to the boat as we drifted downstream," he says.

Most surprising, according to Pickles, was the number—and size—of the world's largest snake found by the expedition in Rewa Head.

Location of the Rewa Head and extent surveyed by this expedition in red. Map courtesy of Robert Pickles.

"I really have to say something about the anacondas up there though. We encountered 6 during our expedition, four of which were estimated as being over 16 feet. To verify our size estimates we caught a large snake basking on the river bank and measured her length with a rope. She turned out to be 18 feet 2 inches in length with a maximum girth of 27 inches. It was quite incredible to see so many very large snakes. Why do they get so large here whereas in the Venezuelan Llanos they rarely record them over 16 feet?" Pickles said, perhaps describing a future research project for an intrepid herpetologist.

This pristine wilderness—still free from the impacts of the modern world—may not remain so for long. Both a massive logging concession and an even larger oil drilling concession overlap the wilderness.

US-owned company, Simon and Shock International, currently has a license to extract timber from 400,000 hectares.

"The company has stated its environmental principles and has listed a range of measures to mitigate degradation of the concession," Pickles says. "But the unfortunate fact is that no matter how green your intentions are, it can be very difficult to prevent the creep of hunting into a forest once you’ve put a road in there."

The oil-drilling concession, covering an astounding 78 million hectares, poses similar threats according to Pickles.

"Drilling has yet to begin though the company has been prospecting around the village of Rewa. The concern with this is that environmental safeguards are put in place and stringently adhered to. Oil extraction can be achieved with minimal environmental impact provided the company is diligent, but there is also concern as to whether the development of roads will lead to hunting encroachment above Corona Falls," he says, adding that indigenous groups in the area see these future developments as a mixed blessing, providing possible jobs on the one hand but encroachment on their lands on the other.

Camera trap photos from the expedition caught a large number of species, including the tayra Eira Barbara from the weasel family (above) and the ocelot Leopardus pardalis (below). Photos by: Rob Pickles, Niall McCann, Ashley Holland.

Pickles says that the situation facing Rewa Head provides a perfect example of why the REDD program (Reducing Emissions through Deforestation and Forest Degradation) should be employed even in countries where currently deforestation rates are relatively low and forest cover remains high.

"While it is obviously extremely important to tackle deforestation in the frontline countries where this threat is occurring, which is what REDD initially set out to do, it is equally as important that nations with large tracts of pristine forest and a less severe deforestation threat do not get marginalized, but receive due recompense for not taking the ‘economically rational’ path and fully exploiting those natural resources," explains Pickles. "Guyana is in an incredibly fortunate position in that it still retains 76 percent of its forest cover which constitutes some of the most carbon-rich forests of South America. As such, and with a president keen to offer his nation’s forests as part of the world’s carbon sink, Guyana should be embraced by the international community."

If the Guyana forests are not valued by the wider-world they will likely be lost, and Rewa Head, an ecosystem that time forgot, will vanish along with all of its richness.

Employing the concept of 'shifting baselines'—where humans lose their knowledge of a healthy ecosystem through generations of degradation and destruction—Pickles says that Rewa Head, with its abundant wildlife and incredible biodiversity, has the capacity to teach us what all of the Amazon was once like, if only we make the effort to save it.

"We forget what 'natural' and 'pristine' really mean and now think of places like the Rewa Head as being exceptional," Pickles explains. "Whereas in reality this would have been the state of much of tropical South America, but the degradation has been going on for so long now that we are in danger of forgetting what it is supposed to be like."

In a November 2009 interview Mongabay spoke with Robert Pickles about his six-week expedition to Rewa Head in Guyana, including the status of the giant river otter in the area, the abundance and diversity of other species, the threat of development to Rewa Head, and the possibility of saving this pristine place.

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How rainforest shamans treat disease

Ethnobotanists, people who study the relationship between plants and people, have long documented the extensive use of medicinal plants by indigenous shamans in places around the world, including the Amazon. But few have reported on the actual process by which traditional healers diagnose and treat disease. A new paper, published in the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, moves beyond the cataloging of plant use to examine the diseases and conditions treated in two indigenous villages deep in the rainforests of Suriname.

The research, which based on data on more than 20,000 patient visits to traditional clinics over a four-year period, finds that shamans in the Trio tribe have a complex understanding of disease concepts, one that is comparable to Western medical science. Trio medicine men recognize at least 75 distinct disease conditions—ranging from common ailments like fever [këike] to specific and rare medical conditions like Bell's palsy [ehpijanejan] and distinguish between old (endemic) and new (introduced since contact with the outside world) illnesses. In an interview with mongabay.com, Lead author Christopher Herndon, currently a reproductive medicine physician at the University of California, San Francisco, says the findings are a testament to the under-appreciated healing prowess of indigenous shaman.

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