By Esther Díaz
Source: Huffington Post
Today is my birthday and I have decided to spend it far from civilization, with some gaiters that will protect me from any potential rattle snake bites and ready to walk for over four hours in an almost completely virgin forest.
I’m in private nature reserve number one, which is overseen by Grupo Ecologico Sierra Gorda (GESG), an NGO which has been fighting for environmental conservation for 28 years in the northernmost third of Queretaro State. If GESG had not acted to save this piece of land, it is a given that it would have been destroyed a long time ago by loggers.
To get to the boundaries of the Reserve you have to travel for an hour on a paved road, and then along an old logging track only accessible by 4x4s, and continue on foot. Even this first part of the expedition is a small adventure in itself.
Roberto Pedraza, who is in charge of the GESG’s Lands for Conservation Program, will be my guide on this journey.
Although he plays down the fact that we have to wear gaiters –he tells me the snakes are most active in July and August, and we are in May at the moment-, it is the first time I walk in a forest wearing this kind of protection. I follow him with certain nervousness but, at the same time, I wish for a snake to cross in front of us, ready to show off its tongue and rattle, and then continue coolly on its way.
However, we have not come to see reptiles, but to set up camera traps. With these, we intend to document the presence of pumas, jaguars and ocelots, among many other species that inhabit well conserved cloud forests like this one.
The climb begins and as we cover ground, I recognize orchids, pink flowered cacti that hang from trees, bromeliads, ferns and purple carnivorous flowers. However, I am ignorant of the rest of the species that surround me. My guide, on the other hand, knows this place like the back of his hand.
The path is very overgrown and he cuts away with his machete. I ask him why he spares some of the branches that cross our path and he promptly responds “they are in danger of extinction”. This leads to him telling me the scientific names of the species which he spares because they are endangered, as well as their place of origin: Ostrya virginiana, Carpinus caroliniana and Tilia mexicana, from the United States; wild avocadoes which are characteristic of Mexican cloud forests…
As he becomes a walking encyclopaedia, I forget almost everything he tells me. I am incapable of retaining the Latin he fires in my direction, but while making the effort to memorize something, the ghost of the rattle snake takes second place in my list of preoccupations.
While we search for signs of the presence of wild cats, cats, as felines are known locally, we stop to admire a special orchid: it’s the first one Roberto saw in flower in this forest.
I ask myself how he can know something’s exact location in this labyrinth, be it a flower or a tree which is home to salamanders. “They are old acquaintances, my protégés”, he tells me without the need for me to ask out loud.
By the time we arrive at a place where the path is almost completely closed, it is not surprising for me that he knows how to read the signs, imperceptible to me, which he left to show him the way on past visits. A notch in a tree or a rock with a certain shape is sufficient to know that we now have to turn left.
Suddenly, the first sign: in the bark of a dead tree fallen across our path, marks which could well be feline claws can be seen. Just five minutes later, we come face to face with marks dug into the earth by its claws. The probability of finding a puma or jaguar face to face is extremely low, but I get goose bumps just thinking about it.
We still have a third of the way to go to arrive at one of the reserve’s limits and strategically place the three camera traps which, three weeks later, we will collect in search of results. If we are lucky, will get them, but this is not always the case.
Up there where the wind blows over
“Last climb and we’re there”, says my guide to encourage me. Minutes later, the air begins to blow and the density of the mosses and lichens hanging from the trees becomes impressive. “If gnomes and fairies exist, they definitely live here”, I think.
It’s a storybook landscape, almost unreal. The beauty is such that pictures and comments are superfluous. I turn 360 degrees and try to capture everything I see. Afterwards, I close my eyes and try to reproduce everything in my head. When I open them, a forest bursting with cedars, oaks and giant magnolias looks back at me. This isn’t a dream, it’s a real place and it would be impossible to fit another drop of beauty in.
Before installing each camera, Roberto cuts the plants surrounding the sensor down to the ground. In this way, the probability of getting a good photo if a feline comes increases, because there will be nothing to come between the cat and the lens.
On the way down, as I eat wild strawberries and take pictures of impossibly shaped ferns, I am grateful for the privilege of having been able to visit this place.
An almost never ending wait
26 days have passed and we are back at this wildlife sanctuary. The cameras which we installed a little more than three weeks ago are not the most recent technology, so we will not be able to see if they have captured an image or video until we are in front of a computer.
Maybe this is why, without realizing it, we climbed faster than last time. We want to return to the city to find out what happened in our absence.
As we begin to climb, everything seems to indicate that we are not alone. This time we find up to eight territorial and claw marks on the trunks and litter in the path. But the best sign of all is one which, even for an expert guide, is truly exciting: the fresh urine of a feline.
Roberto bends down, smells the urine and says “the animal has passed through here very few hours ago”.
Although there is no time for photos on this visit, the place continues to produce the same sensation in me as the first time. I feel shrouded in magic, immersed in the forest’s spell.
Back in the Grupo Ecologico Sierra Gorda’s offices, tired, sweaty and hungry, we sit down impatiently in front of the computer.
We open up the video camera first and… there it is. The backside of a beautiful puma walking along the path which, five hours later, we passed through. If we had gone to remove the cameras a day earlier we would not have found anything. It was today, at four in the morning, when the animal visited the reserve. No film script would have been able to do it better.
The video has also captured a brocket deer which, days earlier, passed the same location by night. The other two cameras, programmed to take pictures, hide one more surprise: the rounded, greyish back of a collared peccary, the wild boar species local to this zone of Mexico, which was at the site six days before.
The find becomes a celebration. These are the clearest and most indisputable finds showing that conservation is achieved by eliminating human interference from wild places. Only then will wildlife be able to retake what people have taken from them: their home.
This statement requires the recognition that even us and our camera traps are intruders in this natural wonder. This is the point where debate is generated among the most radical, who hold the view that no exception to this rule is possible, and those who claim that a minimal presence, controlled and exclusively for supervision and control, is necessary.
For an inquisitive such as I am, it is easier to agree with the second point of view, in which I am in some way part of this piece of green paradise. However, I tell myself that, next time I go to a place like this, I will try to go even more unnoticed. Because in reality, I know there is no place in the puma’s home for human.
