Andrew Morace

Hey y’all! So I just got home the other day and have finally unpacked everything so now I’m chilling and relaxing for a bit until the semester starts up again. But in the meantime I want to tell everyone about my last few days in Belize! I’ll pick up right where I left off in my last post.

After our day at the baboon sanctuary we went back to the zoo for one last big visit. That day we got to implement enrichment projects that we had been preparing for most of this program. The term enrichment when being used in the context of animals in captivity means to provide an animal with unique stimulus that helps reflect their natural habits and stimulate is physically and physiologically. I paired up with my friend Rebecca for our project and we chose to work with the kinkajous at the zoo. Kinkajous are a relatively small arboreal species that is native to Central America and South America, since they have prehensile tails and little grabby hands many people think they’re a primate but they’re actually more closely related to raccoons. Since they live in trees and often forage for food by picking things from the bark with their fingers and long tongue, we decided to try and make a structure that could help reflect that. So our project was a piece of bamboo that we drilled holes into and hid food inside the holes so the kinkajou could climb it and search for food and pick it out like it would in the wild. When we stuck our project in the enclosure it was still daytime and because the kinkajou is nocturnal we didn’t get to see if the project worked out. I like the think it worked and the kinkajous used it but even if it didn’t that’s alright because when you work with animals you have to have some trial and error to find out what works best. As the entire CELA group we all picked different animals and got to try out our projects all across the zoo so it was a great experience for us as well as the animals!

During the day at the zoo when we were finished up with our enrichment projects we were in the medical area in the back of the zoo performing more necropsies. Necropsy is just another name for an autopsy and we got the opportunity to do these to try and find out the cause of death for those animals as well as get a try as using surgical instruments and getting to learn that animal’s anatomy in a hands on way. We were actually donated a lot of animals that had passed away at local sanctuaries as well as some that were found dead on the road or in the wild. And just as a disclaimer when it comes to the animals dying in the sanctuaries it isn’t because they were in bad care it’s because they’re often rescued in bad shape from being captured or injured or even surrendered by someone who shouldn’t have owned them. So most animals in sanctuaries are well taken care of, rehabilitated and released but it’s still not uncommon to see animals pass away. But in order to make the most of sad circumstances like those they are used for educational reasons so one day we can take that knowledge to help other animals.

So we got the opportunity to perform necropsies on some really cool animals like a pelican, a barn owl, an agouti, a laughing falcon, a porcupine, a margay and even a howler monkey! It was a lot of really great experience for all of us in getting to apply our knowledge.

The next day was our last real day of work in Belize. We each had to create a presentation about something that interested you involving wildlife in Belize, so we all presented these that day. My presentation was about the territorial dispute between Belize and Guatemala. I talked about this because for a long time Guatemala has been trying to claim they own land that covers a large portion of Belize but have been unsuccessful in getting it. However in recent years some Guatemalans have resorted to crossing Belizean borders and doing slash and burn agriculture and starting illegal plantations and livestock ranches and taking resources. As you could see by all the other things I’ve talked about in my blog so far, Belize has a lot of conservation efforts going on in the country and have been doing their best to preserve their wildlife. So it’s very important for these issues to be resolved in order for Belize to keep up its conservation efforts. It is also a very current event because there is a referendum happening in April of this year to bring this issue to the International Court of Justice to settle this land dispute once and for all. It was really interesting to hear all the other presentations because they were all about issues we cared about so they were well done and were all relevant to our trip. We had all sorts of presentations like “How leaf cutter ant societies work” all the way to “How rising water levels threaten Belize” so it was great to hear about all of these topics.

After we finished our presentations we got to take a look at the pictures from the camera traps that we set up about a week back when we did a big all day hike. It was really great to see our efforts had some effect in learning more about the local wildlife. We were all really excited to check out the cameras to see what we caught.  We found pictures of bats, an opossum, great currassows, coatimundis, grey foxes, red brocket deer and then the big moment was when we got a picture of a JAGUAR! We were all really excited for that and the timestamp shows it at 11:26 pm on New Years Eve so it must have been heading to a New Years party.

After this though we were pretty much done with the program which was pretty sad. But we got that night to all hang out together. So we played cards all and hung out most of the day and as it got later we went to a local bar and sang some karaoke. It was an amazing program and I got to spend it some really amazing and fun people. Luckily a few came from Rutgers right here so I know I’ll see them again and then as a group we’re keeping in touch and we may just plan to get together again sometime soon. The next day we said our sad goodbyes to each other and the beautiful country of Belize. Luckily I did have some good company on the plane ride back.

I’m sad the trip is over but it does feel good to be home. I’m not to fond of heat so the cold feels good again and I do love getting to bundle up and cuddle with my dog. And it’s nice to be back home with my family and friends. I wouldn’t trade this trip for the world though, I learned so much and it was such an amazing time! But peace out for now! I’ll be checking back on this blog one more time in a week or so to tell you all a bit more about the trip.

 

Hey everyone I’m back to catch you up on my trip again! Everything has still been really amazing and I can’t believe my time here is winding down already. But instead of focusing on that we’re going to focus on all the great stuff I’ve been doing with this program!

So after our day off on New Year’s day we got right back into the swing of things. The next day we took a ride to the Belize Raptor Sanctuary. This place was a bumpy hour drive away but it was definitely worth the drive. The sanctuary is somewhere that takes in abused, abandoned, injured or poached birds local to Belize but really just any bird that is in need of help. They work hard everyday to rescue and rehabilitate these animals so they can be re-released if possible otherwise they do keep these birds and take great care of them. Not do that do that but they also train these birds and use them for local educational purposes. Many local people poach birds for food, sport, because they’re a nuisance or even because they carry bad omens. Their education outreach extends to local schools and families so the public can know that these birds are not harmful and to teach conservation and environmental respect to the general public.

This sanctuary was a really amazing place to learn and practice bird handling techniques. As well as see how they’re treating and rehabilitating these injured birds, all with unique situations of their own. We even got the see one of their shows that the sanctuary puts on for visitors so they can educate people. It was very fun and nice to see the birds in action because they all have their own fun personalities, my favorite was the black vulture, Cora. We also got to hear about the rehabilitator’s struggle of caring so much for the birds but having them avoid you at all costs. Because a rehabilitator has to do tough things with the birds that they don’t want to do in order to help them heal, the birds are often not to fond of their rehabilitator even if they love the birds dearly. However it is better to have that than a bird that has imprinted on you and won’t release back into the wild because it believes you are its family. The goal of rehab is always to release the animal back into the wild safely.

The next day we had to get up bright and early to prepare for our day of bird banding at the Runaway Creek Nature reserve. I had mentioned in a previous blog post that we set up mist nets at the reserve for this purpose. So that day we unrolled the nets so they would be able to catch some birds. You have to get up early because the birds are most active at dawn so you get the best results that way. After we set up the nets we had to wait a half an hour to see if we got any birds, go check the nets, band birds if their were any and then rinse and repeat. Quite honestly, for a four hour morning we didn’t do so hot but that’s alright because sometimes that’s just part of the job and it can’t always be exciting. That morning we only caught two birds but it was still a great time! The first was a beautiful feisty little American Pygmy Kingfisher although we weren’t able to band that bird because that particular species has an issue with banding getting stuck on their foot. So better to just release the bird than risk harming it. The second was a Hooded Warbler and this bird actually already had a band on its foot. So this was a great demonstration of the purpose of the bands. We found out he was two years old and has also been seen on the east coast in the US so it probably took the same flight as us down to Belize! So seeing those birds was a pretty cool experience and I’d definitely like to try going banding again sometime.

 

Later that day we took another trip back to the Belize Zoo. We were given an old jaguar skeleton that the zoo has and we got to do a cool little bone lab with it. First off it was amazing seeing their skeleton because that alone really helps you wrap your head around the power that they have. It was also interesting because the jaguar skeleton actually wasn’t too unfamiliar since they really do turn out to just be giant house cats. It was pretty much a blown up version of any normal cat that we know of at home. As a group we got to work as a team to construct the skeleton back to it’s former glory. It was almost like a weird jigsaw puzzle. Overall it was a great experience to test our knowledge of anatomy and to learn a few things about these animals. It also shows how exotic animal work can be tough but that you can use things you already know and translate to animals you’ve never seen in your life before. Like comparing house cats to lions, dogs to wolves, cows to giraffes and horses to tapirs. Obviously there are some big distinctions between all animals but these comparisons can help get a base down.

Then the day after that we took a ride over to the Community Baboon Sanctuary. So similar to the zoo and other sanctuaries we have visited these people have dedicated their livelihoods to taking care of and protecting animals and this sanctuary in particular focuses on local Howler Monkey populations. This sanctuary is particularly cool because this sanctuary is integrated around a local village. What had happened was researchers and conservationists had found a couple populations of Howler Monkey and were looking to protect them. However their living grounds were within and around a local village. What could have happened was the land would be bought out for the sanctuary and then all of the people living there would be kicked out and displaced. But a group of local women called the Women’s Conservation Group got together and helped run this sanctuary while also letting everybody keep their homes. A deal was struck with the village that everybody can stay if they just follow a few rules (such as no interacting with the monkeys, no poaching and no cutting down trees in the area) then everyone can stay. This produced a great little village of people who have a lot of respect for the land and animals around it and strive to protect and live in harmony with it. It’s great to hear conservation stories where things seem to work out for everybody and it couldn’t have been done without the group of amazing women. So we got to explore some of the sanctuary and we were actually able to see a family of howler monkeys up in the trees above us. There were 7 total and one was a young baby so it was really amazing to get to see in person and see the community’s conservation efforts actively working out.

I only have a couple more days here but there’s still a lot going on that I will have to tell you about soon!