Giants of the Savannah
That's Erin, right? You must be Erin! Hello, James! Hi, nice to meet you! Welcome to Wichabai! It's beautiful, sorry we're late. Would you like to go upstairs and have a drink and we'll have a chat about our adventure? Yes, thank you. I'm originally from Northern Ireland but I've been a resident in Guyana for 10 years, I've been visiting here for 15 years, and I've been a Guyanese citizen for one year, proudly! I was brought up in an outside place on farms in Northern Ireland, but I think that it never occurred to me that people could live in a way that is so very different to how people live in the rest of the world. How does anybody find themselves in a far, distant part of the world? I fell in love.
Chadow, Chadow, can you hear me? I said the anteater is heading down the big swamp. Alright, copy Chadow, we're coming there now, over. Here we have this evolutionarily-fantastical creature looking like an ancient animal, an ancient beast, that you wouldn't even think exists. It looks ridiculous;
it's got this ridiculous long nose, this ridiculous long tongue, and his mouth is at the end of the nose, it's very silly. People had been observing that they were not seeing as many anteaters as they used to see. The amount of research that's been done on giant anteaters in the wild is very limited. And you know what? We're actually finding out things that are new to science. As humans, we tend to think of ourselves as separate from or above other animals. But, we might not be that different from our animal cousins. We've become separated from the natural world and it's time to reconnect.
This is A WILD Connection. I love Guyana. I made Guyana my home because it's the most special place I ever went to. I can stand here on this veranda and I can breathe in air that nobody has breathed in, in this country, right. For a thousand miles, no one has breathed in that air except maybe some birds. I see
a mountain range of beautiful blue mountains, and in fact there are mountains on all sides. And in the evening when the sun goes down and this place turns golden, that is wonderful to see and I sit down here with a little glass of rum, and I look out and I think: I'm in paradise. I'm so lucky to be here. How could I be here? The people of the South Rupununi really understand the necessity for taking care of the land. It's really in their hearts to do that.
My name is Leroy Ignacio. I was born in a village named Shulinab village. The anteater, it's like an icon of the savannah, it's such a unique animal and they're there and nobody really sees it as important species.
But they're so important, we don't understand them. What happened was about two and a half years ago, people from all the different communities, we all got together and we had a big meeting about what our strategy would be for the next few years. Everybody is talking about conservation, biodiversity, protect our lands. And then we said giant anteaters, because people had been observing that they were not seeing as many anteaters as they used to see. The amount of research that's been done on giant anteaters in the wild is very limited. That pilot program, we started off in Katoonarib village, with the long-term goal that we would be able to get a baseline population estimate for anteaters in that area.
If you have a baseline population estimate then you can create some kind of conservation strategy. And you know what? We're actually finding out things that are new to science. Good morning, Erin. Hi, James. The vaqueros are ready to go, and we're just going to follow them into the savannah looking for anteaters, and I hope that we'll be able to find something today. When we came to do our anteater work, we wanted to be able to track the anteaters.
We started off on motorbikes, because they're faster. Well, that's mainly it, because they're faster. But we quickly found that there's much to be said for riding on horseback.
Cowboys? They're they're the ones that know the savannah pretty well. The cattle here, they're free-range. Cowboys have to go in all directions. One of the best ways to move around, cross-country, is by horseback. My father is Amerindian, full Amerindian. He's a Wapishana tribe, and my mother, also, is a Wapishana tribe, too.
And I am a Wapishana tribe. And so (when) I grew up, I started to learn about vaquero work: riding wild horses, roping wild animals in the savannahs. We use horses to move silent, so the anteaters can't hear us when we are moving with the horses.
I really enjoy myself looking for anteaters, tracking anteaters, seeing anteaters. So, it's really a good combination now that we're using the cowboys who know the environment. Now, that combination of knowledge and skill is working towards conservation.
Oh no. Drive backwards into a freaking swamp, just embarrass ourselves. Well, sorry, embarrass me. Ready? Yep! No, no, no. James, we just need to engage it. Hold on.
I think it'll come out okay once it's engaged. The Rupununi, especially the south, the accessibility is still limited. The roads, pretty much, are still natural, right? You still find it a little more wilder because it's a little bit more untouched by the outside. The local knowledge is very important. Very few people get this far south. If they make it to Guyana, then they'll stop in the north. They'll see the north and the south is, it's an extra distance to travel, but it's worth it to come here.
Of course, the locals have access to it here. And, they're doing a pretty good job of keeping it real. Chadow, Chadow, can you hear me? Do you have, have you seen anything? Any signs of anteaters anywhere? To the west side? All right so I'm going to travel along the road and I'll see you there. Copy that, over. Hi, Lee.
Hi, Ari. We got some signs of the anteater! Dig marks and tracks! Alright, let's go. I say we could walk there. Do yeah, Chadow, right around here you. See the tracks? Right, uh-huh. Erin, it's close. close to this area.
Here we see some dig marks and some tracks head heading into the bush here. So we can come down, Chadow, and we can walk down just tie up our horses right there. Right, you see that? Yeah, this is heavy, heavy.
It's a big one you, can see it's a big one that's heading that way. But, this is recent? This is a recent mark here? You can see this is recent because of this morning, it's fresh grass mashed down there, right? See, the older grass, the wind already would have kind of covered it back a little bit. But here you can see it's fresh, especially when you get closer to where it's wet.
You see? This is a fresh one. You can see some moisture on the grass still from when he pressed down on this side right here. so is that that's a footprint there right this is a footprint here so i guess the bush is too thick here to follow it here so we go out and we yeah i see if it comes out the other side yeah okay close behind a couple hours though are going to head out in different directions to see if they could see an anteater maybe in the bush um but we have our walkie-talkies so we'll be able to keep in touch with them it's full of batteries so it's natural beeping behavior there one of the srcs ranges has just come across a giant anteater and giant anteaters have very poor vision average hearing but they have excellent sense of smell and so we have to get on the right side of the wind it's moving along on the long grass in a swamp in the low land so we've been able to follow it and keeping downwind so the animal cannot smell them and moving slowly and quietly on horseback or just walking so that's going to be our strategy we're not going to move too quickly we don't want to startle the animal they have a low metabolic rate and a low basal body temperature that's because of the diet that they have of ants so they're not really made to move quickly for long periods of time taro could you just repeat that for me over teddy and peter is heading down the big swamp the big swamp that i just walked over right over there to the east side over okay all right copy chad over coming there now over more towards me on the next hill to the swamp set in the swamp then okay all right so just down the hill from me i think it's in there i often see anteaters maybe more from a geological point of view you would think that they're far too big to lose right but you could lose them in a swamp you would think that you'd be able to tell an anteater from a mile away you know what it is but it looks exactly like a rock right it's just a rock that moves and sometimes it doesn't move so then it's just a rock so you can't find them at all here we have this evolutionarily fantastical creature looking like an ancient animal an ancient beast that you wouldn't even think exists it looks ridiculous it's got this ridiculous long nose it's a ridiculous long tongue and his mouth is at the end of the nose it's very silly and it's huge tail right it's far too long existing for millions of years perfectly well suited to the environment the environment's perfectly well suited to it and yet here we are us annoying humans trying to destroy it accidentally or on purpose walk very slowly like that it minimizes the crushing of the leaves shadow's climbing this tree to see if he could see the anteater so we're just going to wait for a signal from him and he'll tell us what he could see and i always take advice from shadow local advice is best so here we are in the land of giants and we've got a giant that can reach up to eight foot long from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail that has disappeared right in front of us and it always amazes me that animals no matter how big they are whether they be elephants or tigers or giant anteaters can just disappear in plain sight right in front of our eyes like ghosts so it's sleeping sleeping it's sleeping sleeping happy just sleeping follow the steps that they are taking this is totally phenomenal we have got within six feet of a giant anteater sleeping and it is just in total slap you can see how he's bedded down he or she in this cross it's getting dark it's just taking a nap tail she's folded her tail right over her body yeah you can see on top there amazing you can just see her string amazing i've got to say this ranks might have been the top 10 of all the wildlife experiences i've ever had is to be this close to an animal that is so oblivious to your presence what a privilege to be here and to witness this this is so nice because the rangers followed her in here and she was comfortable enough just to lie down and fall asleep and that's perfect that's that's all we want that's perfect i remember the very first time i was told by the people i was living with about giant anteaters it was an old lady while she's still there auntie nelly she said that antheator and the culture is known to be um evil not not the animal right but in the culture there are what we call the kanaimo the kanima is the the evil spirit and this kanaimo or sometimes zombie can take the form of a different animal he chooses a lot of the time to disguise himself as an anteater but it's really a person who takes on an evil spirit and becomes evil that's why the education is important to let people know that this is a tradition but these animals actually are natural animals they add a value to the environment because they eat a lot of termites do you have a wooden house if you don't have enough antiquities around toronto to eat at your house and people will often say that they like having the antigens around because they'll eat the ants from their farm and the ants destroy their farms most people realize that the the anti-terror itself is is not what they say not troubling anybody it's not doing anybody any harm so actually it's a wonderful animal it's a wonderful species to do conservation work on because there is no real conflict with the anteaters and people very easy for antigens and people to co-exist they actually help each other out so we're heading this way because there's a camera trap right in this bush island that i want to check we need to change the batteries and look at the data that we've got on it this is a good location to put the camera traps because this is where the bush islands are and excellent refuge so this is a bush island over here this is a bush island right here yes so our trap is right over this little um ditch all right so the reason we put the camera trap in this location is because we had some guests staying with us and we were looking for antiques early one morning and we saw just behind us a mother anteater with a young one on her back we followed the anteater and she made her way into this bush right so we let her go we went back and had her breakfast and then a couple of hours later we came right to this location the watch has come up a little bit though you need some wellies you see why they like this area huh it's nice nice and cool sheltered so this is where we put our camera trap right here yes so this is the sd card in here this is trap number 19 for this area okay so let's see what it is so this is going to be how many months worth of action this would be two months two months look at this this is excellent it's a baby this is the same young one well it's a young one anyway it might be the same one right well i would expect i mean i think having two little ones this size in this area over four days is probably too much to ask for so you're saying roughly four months of age i think from i'd say maybe four to six months because i've never actually seen a mother and a young one walking next to each other i've seen them in camera traps but i've never seen it out in the savannah so i think it's only in places where they would feel safe well this is my opinion but this is a different anteater do you see the see the difference yeah it's climbing it's climbing the tree it's climbing the tree yeah yeah i've never heard of anteaters of giant anteaters doing that i i think this is something that new that we're um observing in this area so this is totally unique new new behavior that you you're finding i haven't read about this kind of um activity anywhere else and so i mean what that what i've just shown you there that was the small young anteater that was this adult anteater and that other climbing anteater that's three individuals passing through here recently over quite a short period of time it became possible to identify the individuals based on their unique the unique combination of markings that they have and then we found there were multiple individuals arriving at these scratching trees over actually quite short periods of time so in one location even over eight days there were four or five different ant teachers arriving there and remember these anteaters are supposed to be solitary creatures they weren't interacting with each other directly but they're coming to the same location and marking it sometimes climbing it rubbing against it sniffing it so they're definitely communicating with each other at those locations and that was something novel that we did never expected to find so we identified these individual anteaters and then we named them so that we have an teacher called wow anything i could come up with really so i need some more names for aunties i've already named them after all my friends and my mother and my sister my granny and everybody else so that's how we're getting to know these anteaters really personally so here i am i'm not a biologist right i'm a geologist with a set of other people who are not biologists they're vaqueros they're cowboys they're farmers they're ranchers they're teachers and off we go out and trying to do some science work out what's going on so far on the farm road you gotta go have somebody be there to warn us before we come too close i am on the right hand side on the roger evan hill the wind how is the wind so we coming good we're coming good they are very threatened in this place here you you can't find so much anteaters anymore so i want to teach my son about this anteater so he must learn how to track and how to monitor and how he must keep them he must know them where they are living where they feed where they sleep so later on time when i get older i wouldn't be able to go go out like how i am going out now so there is my son to represent me to do all the works what i have done in this place here to make sure the anteaters are around all the time for the future for me as a person that's it in conservation tourism would like to see a lot more of ghana like protect it protected by the people around them right i think each part of guyana should have persons looking after their environment shouldn't really be somebody come and tell you what to do so for rupanuni we're working towards having each community have a safe zone for the animals once people understand the dangers the threats the benefits of the nature is going to make a change right and if we start in rupa nuni then we can we can spread out to the rest again i think our work here is not just for the small community but i think it benefits the whole world and at large i came here when i was 18 years old i was a gap year student and i came to work in a primary school in a little tiny remote village and every afternoon the kids would come and bring water for us at home they would send guavas for us or food for us to eat and we really felt like we had become part of a community and when i left the village i remember saying to justin how am i ever going to repay the people in that village for looking after like us like that like their own children when we hadn't got a clue what's going on he said don't worry you'll find a chance right so that's how i feel about the rupert union now is that i have had all the privileges of have been brought up in a developed society having been well educated and if i could come and live here and try and pay back a little bit of what they gave me that's something that valuable that i could do and this little bit of work that we're doing has only been a year and a half already we are being able to discover new things and i think potentially have a positive impact on the future of anteaters in this area are you going to talk with the camera so you
2021-10-15 20:10
