Rainforests

All in a day's work

Nicolas Tubbs — Mon, 13 May 2013 15:00:00 GMT

Guest blogger: Hannah Chisholm, education volunteer in the Gola Rainforest National Park

Since arriving in Sierra Leone in January, I’ve mostly been working on an educational road show for forest edge communities around Gola Rainforest National Park (GRNP) to show them the breadth of our work and help answer any questions they may have.

Every road show has been different, but they all follow a similar structure so here’s an idea of what typically happens....

Before each road show, Eddie (the education officer) goes to the community to get everything ready and make sure people know we’re coming. The rest of the team and myself then pack up the car with everything we’ll need for the day and hit the road.

After a couple of hours bumping along, we reach the village and even if I’ve never been there before I always know when we arrive as we are greeted by a crowd of people. There are leaf devils, grass devils, kids with tribal face paints and a group of local musicians. I’m dropped off at the parade start point and the rest of the team go ahead to the community barray to get ready. There’s then a parade through the village, which is one of my favourite parts of the day as it’s an opportunity for me to get really involved and people coming out from their houses to join in or to watch. We make our way through the village to the barray, dancing and singing as we go. The songs are all in Mende, but I’m pretty sure that they sometimes make up a song about me as I hear Hannah or pumoi (white face) mixed in with all of the local words!

When we reach the barray there’s an opportunity for the traditional dancers to perform – masked devils and leaf devils dance around the circle that has formed, moving their feet at lightning speed and shaking so hard that the leaves from their costumes start to fall to the ground. After a while we move everyone in to the shade of the barray and start the proceedings with introductions from the GRNP staff, local leaders and village elders.

We wanted the road shows to be as interactive as possible so that the community people share knowledge with each other. The first group to contribute are students who are members of the recently formed GRNP Nature Club. They have been asked to prepare some art/drama/music to present to the community and I have been so impressed with how well they have done. It seems that people out here are natural public speakers and the kids love getting on the microphone!

Other activities during the day include demonstrating how a camera trap works and showing pictures of the animals that have been snapped, a quiz, a Q&A session, and time to share stories and knowledge of the forest. In the evening, as the sun starts to set in the sky we set up a projector screen and show two short films introducing the rest of the GRNP staff and the amazing forest and wildlife they’re working to protect.

To finish off, we use the PA system to play music late into the evening so that people can dance and enjoy themselves – I’ve even had a go myself! It’s really important to give the communities a positive experience of GRNP to build on our relationship with them. It’s been a really exciting, though challenging, project and hopefully it’ll have a lasting impact.

To follow Hannah's adventures in Sierra Leone, check out her blog.

The trip of a lifetime

Nicolas Tubbs — Wed, 08 May 2013 10:53:48 GMT

I've just got back from the Gola Rainforest National Park (GRNP) in Sierra Leone, where I had the exciting job of introducing an intrepid young explorer to the GRNP team and partners. Will Millard is planning to travel down the Mano-Moro rivers on the international border between Sierra Leone and Liberia on nothing but an inflatable raft. From the moment he found out he'd be going on the trip whilst sheltering from the worst British winter in a decade somewhere along the Pennine Way, you can follow his adventure every step of the way by heading over to his blog.

In search of the malimbe

Laura Stevens — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 14:39:00 GMT

Head over to the Saving Species blog and join Simon Wotton from our Conservation Science team as he searches for the endangered malimbe in Gola Rainforest National Park. This elusive bird was thought to have disappeared from Gola, but was rediscovered there in 2007 after 30 years of no records.

Toothpaste contains what?

Laura Stevens — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 16:48:16 GMT

Since I’ve started working with the Rainforests team here at RSPB HQ, my shopping habits have changed. I spend twice as long buying birthday cards as I’m searching the backs for the FSC logo, I’ll buy Rainforest Alliance coffee and tea wherever I can, but there’s one tricky customer that’s almost impossible to spot – palm oil. I do what I can:

our local supermarket labels for sustainable palm oil in its own brand products so I’ll choose those whenever possible
I make everything I can from scratch at home so I that I know exactly what’s in it
I only buy what I need and the stuff that I do buy, I make sure none of it goes to waste.

I thought I was doing a pretty good job at avoiding palm oil or at least I did until Jonathan in the Rainforests team sent me this quiz from the RSPO, which gives you an idea of how many of the products in your house contain palm oil. I started in the bathroom and wasn’t surprised to see shampoo and conditioner in the shower, but then on to the sink and there was toothpaste. Toothpaste contains palm oil? Really? As I worked through the rooms one by one I was surprised to see more and more products that I had no idea contained palm oil appearing – my hairbrush, mascara, rubber gloves. But the worst one came in the kitchen cupboard. Crisps contain palm oil?? NNNNNOOOOO!!!!!!

It just goes to show how far palm oil has infiltrated into our everyday lives. According to the quiz, 64% of the products in my house contain palm oil and if I didn’t even realise half those products contained palm oil, then how am I supposed to know if it’s sustainable or not? And there was me thinking I was doing ok!

Take the quiz here and let us know how much palm oil is lurking in your cupboards...

Gola Rainforest - a TV star in the making

Laura Stevens — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 10:52:03 GMT

Warring giraffes, prehistoric-looking shoebills and brave agama lizards hunting insects on sleeping lions have all helped make the BBC's new series, Africa, compulsive watching. This week's show, Congo, is all Africa's rainforests and if the amazing wildlife and incredible footage isn't reason enough to make you tune in, there's one more reason to watch - one of the stars of tonight's show is the Gola Rainforest National Park!

The park and the surrounding areas were used as a filming location for a number of sequences on tonight's show so keep your eyes peeled for the white-necked picathartes and the leaf-folding frog and you could be catching a glimpse of Gola from your living room.

Tune in from 9pm tonight on BBC 1.

Both photos by Guy Shorrock (rspb-images.com).

Navigating the maize of tropical forest conservation

Laura Stevens — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 12:32:00 GMT

Guest blogger: Heather Ducharme, Senior Policy Officer

A team of UK researchers (including one of RSPB’s own!) has just published a thought-provoking study for those trying of us save tropical forests and other biodiversity-rich tropical habitats.

Noting that most agricultural expansion is one of the biggest threats to these habitats, the paper in PLOS ONE by Ben Phalan and others looked at tropical agricultural data over a ten year period (1999-2008), asking, among other things, what crops expanded the most and where.

Now, think about what you might already know about the biggest threats to tropical habitats : palm oil, pulp and paper in Indonesia? Soya and cattle ranching in Brazil? Perhaps coffee in central America, cocoa in west Africa? These commodities are high up the priority list for many international organizations committed to reducing tropical deforestation and other habitat loss, such as WWF, Greenpeace, the Rainforest Alliance and the Consumer Goods Forum.

But, according to Phalan’s research, the ‘usual suspects’ are only part of the problem. Looking at the global picture, maize is on par with soya as the most rapidly expanding crop by land area in tropical countries. In addition to oil palm, sorghum, beans (from the Phaseolus group), sugarcane, cowpeas, wheat, millet and cassava round out the top 10. Yet the concerned shopper who is faithfully buying certified chocolate and coffee has probably never heard of some of these habitat-threatening crops. Even those of us fed a steady diet of tropical commodity policy are unlikely to be much better informed (as far as I know, there isn’t a Roundtable for Considerate Cowpeas in the works).

There are a number of possible reasons for this knowledge gap. Some of these expanding crops are not exported from tropical countries to the global North in large volumes or in a finished form, making them less obvious targets for campaign actions by NGOs based here. For example, although in some years the UK imports significant quantities of maize from tropical countries like Brazil, usually most of it comes from France. As well, some of these crops may pose greater threats to non-forest habitats like savannahs or tropical wetlands, which are less familiar and perhaps offer less appealing campaign “poster children” than rainforests. (Without thinking about it too much, consider how you feel about grass, armadillos and anteaters compared to trees, tigers and orangutans.... )

But the question remains for the tropical conservation policy community: are some of the most destructive crops going unnoticed? And if so, how do we address these less politically tractable, but still important, threats to tropical habitats and the people and wildlife that depend on them?

This research, as well as lessons learned from the work done so far on tropical commodity supply chains, suggests that prioritizing the land rather than the crop might be the best way to close the gap. This means identifying the most vulnerable areas of remaining wild land in the tropics – central Africa, the Amazon basin and northern Australia are highlighted in Phalan’s work – and advocating for conservation as part of national land use planning and agriculture practice in those areas. This doesn’t mean that applying pressure to international supply chains can’t help, but it’s easy to get lost in the labyrinthine complexities of a global commodity-by-commodity approach. Committing to sustainably sourcing everything produced in those priority places might be a better – and faster - way out.

Dental tips from a tiger

Laura Stevens — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 16:59:00 GMT

I'm not a big fan of going to the dentist so imagine my dismay when the first thing in my diary for 2 January was a dreaded appointment. Not the way I'd choose to start the new year!

One thing my dentist is always trying to convince me of is the importance of flossing to maintain healthy gums. I have to admit that I've tried, but really can't get on with the whole thing, but maybe I should be following the example of one of the Harapan Rainforest tigers. This cheeky chappy was caught on camera making good use of the bungee rope used to attach the camera trap that snapped this shot to its tree.

An early Christmas present from Gola

Laura Stevens — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 12:19:19 GMT

Here’s an early Christmas present for you all from the camera traps hidden deep within the Gola Rainforest National Park – a rare glimpse of the elusive chimpanzees that call this magical place home.

It’s thought that the forest is home to around 300 chimps and the fact that these two have been caught on camera suggests that they’re doing well within the park boundaries. As Christmas presents go, that’s pretty high up on our lists!

From all of us here in the Rainforest Team and from everyone out on the ground out in our seven rainforest projects around the world, have a very merry Christmas and a happy new year.

A spiny surprise

Elva Gemita — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 12:02:57 GMT

I have the best office on earth. Lush green rainforest, filled with life – no grey walls, no cubicles, no artifical white lights. The only downside of working here is ironically one of its best attributes – the sheer size of it. I can imagine it takes most people no more than 5 minutes to get from one side of their office to the other. For me, it can take over 8 hours! (Harapan is about two thirds the size of Greater London.)

Last month, my research team and I headed out on an extended visit to the very southwest corner of Harapan, which is the most remote and inaccessible part of the forest. To get there you need to travel for about 8 hours outside Harapan and then come back in again at the southwest boundary. The task at hand was to put out more camera traps and collecting the memory cards from cameras that we already have out there.

A trip like this isn’t one we can do all that often so we’re always hopeful that we may find something we’ve never seen before, especially since this area has some of the best forest in the whole of Harapan. The most we hoped for was a glimpse of something new courtesy of one of the memory cards, so when we spotted something on the track ahead of us I thought it was just a durian skin. (Durians are the famously spiny (and smelly!) fruits of the forest.) On closer inspection it turned out to be this little chap – a spiny turtle! None of the team had ever seen one before, especially not one alive in the wild, so I can’t begin to describe how excited we were when we spotted this little creature in the flesh! The wildlife in the forest is often shy and tricky to see, so spotting this spiny turtle walking across the track in front of us was worth the 8 hour commute.

Palm oil plantations put endemic island wildlife at risk

Laura Stevens — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 13:59:51 GMT

The expansion of palm oil plantations on São Tomé and Príncipe is threatening species that are only found on these beautiful oceanic islands. Alice Ward-Francis tells us more on the latest post over on the Saving Species blog.

Searching for the elusive Uluguru bushshrike – a day of ups and downs!

Laura Stevens — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 16:06:21 GMT

Guest blogger: Sarah Sanders, Head of Partner Development Unit - Africa, Asia and UK Overseas Territories

At the beginning of October, my boss had to give a presentation at Kew on the tropical rainforest work we’re supporting around the world. He wanted to speak about the Uluguru mountains because they’re important as a water source to Tanzania, but also because they’re home to plants and animals found nowhere else, including the critically endangered Uluguru bushshrike (UBS). He asked me for a picture and unfortunately I couldn’t help. Despite current estimates suggesting there are 1,200 pairs living in the mountains, there are apparently no photographs available of this elusive bird. I was soon to find out why....

The next day, I headed out to Tanzania. I was lucky to be able to join Nsajigwa Kyanjola (BirdLife Officer for the Wildlife Conservation Society Tanzania) and Jasson John (Species Guardian) as they prepared for a survey of Uluguru South. (Jasson is one of only a handful of Tanzanian ornithologists so it was a privilege to spend the day with him.) The team were trying to find out if there were any UBS living in the south part of the mountains. It was thought that they were restricted to the northern part, but with the creation of the Bunduki gap in 2007 (a corridor that links the north and south forest reserves), and with two pairs discovered in the south in 2010, it was now time to see if the birds had spread.

As a starting point, Jasson suggested we revisit the points where the UBS were previously spotted so we started our trek at Vinile, a small village at 1,200m which is only accessible by a rough dirt road. Our local guides, Gimbe (who preferred to walk without shoes – better grip – I should have followed his advice as I slipped a couple of times) and Jacob took us on a very steep climb through many shambas (small farmers plots) until we entered the reserve at the Bunduki Gap where we were greeted by a very colourful Livingstone’s Turaco. We quickly found ourselves in the montane cloud forest, where you’d expect to find the UBS as it likes to live in the high canopy and avoid disturbed areas as they’re rather shy. The lush forest in the Gap contrasted starkly to the dry, burnt valley we had driven up further downstream. The mist and the ‘prehistoric’ tree ferns at around 2,000m added to the atmosphere too. Fortunately the fact it’s so hard to access has meant the area has been left relatively untouched.

As we walked, we stopped every couple of hundred metres to try and entice the UBS by playing their call. Despite this being the perfect spot for them we didn’t manage to see any. Jasson thought this was probably because it’s just before the breeding season so they haven’t started to call yet. If they’re this hard to see it is wonder there’s no photos! Some other spectacular forest birds made up for the lack of UBS sightings though, including a couple of Loveridge’s sunbirds, also only found in the Ulugurus.

We may not have managed to see a UBS, but the good news is that despite their restricted range, the population appears to be fairly stable. But it doesn’t mean they’re safe. Their biggest threat is probably climate change which could alter the structure of the forest in the future. As the bird depends on trees only found at a certain altitude it can’t go much higher as the vegetation changes.

It looks like I’ll have to keep waiting to see a UBS. Although Nsajigwa and Jasson will continue searching, I’ll be in the office with the project team reviewing how we’re getting on with our DFID funded Ulugurus project. To find out more about the project, click here.

We’re still searching for a photo of an UBS so if anyone has one, please let me know!

Tiger tiger

Elva Gemita — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 09:00:00 GMT

I’ve been working in Harapan Rainforest for three years. I’m a biodiversity officer, which means I keep an eye out for and monitor the wide variety of amazing species that call this rainforest home. From sun bears and hornbills to gibbons and pangolins, I keep an eye out for all of them, but by far my favourite is the Sumatran tiger. I like them so much that if I had to choose between a male tiger and a handsome man, the tiger would win every time!

Secretive

By nature, tigers are very secretive and solitary, so they're not always easy to find. Part of my daily routine is to set up camera traps around the rainforest, and to go out looking for footprints. Finding a fresh footprint is a little bit scary, but nothing compared to my experience a couple of weeks ago.

I hadn’t planned on going out in to the rainforest that day, but I got this feeling after lunch that I should go and check the camera traps.

I headed in to the centre of the forest with my colleague Karyanto. It’s a long way to go so to help us cover the ground we went on motorbike. After checking the last of the traps, we headed over to the next camera in Sungai Lalan before heading home. We were riding down part of the road that has dense bamboo on either side when there he was – a magnificent male tiger standing on the road in front of us. It’s hard to describe the feeling, but my initial reaction was “wow!” He looked well fed and healthy, and he seemed almost relaxed as he slowly moved off into the forest.

I knew there was a camera trap nearby and I’d hoped we’d been able to capture this amazing beast on film, so I hopped off the bike and collected the memory card. We reviewed the footage back at camp and unfortunately the male tiger we’d seen wasn’t there, but just five minutes before I’d arrived at the camera a group of three tigers had been photographed. We’re not sure, but we think it was a mother and two cubs.

This is only the second tiger I’ve seen and for Karyanto, it was his first. And we weren’t the only lucky ones – a week later, two of the other staff, Djoko and Heri saw one too.

Why we do it

With camera traps set up all around Harapan, we’ve been able to identify 17 different individuals in the forest since 2009. With less than 300 Sumatran tigers left in the world, it just goes to show why projects like ours are so important in helping to protect some of the world’s most threatened species.

One of Harapan's 17 Sumatran tigers caught on film. What a beauty!

If you’d like to help support projects like Harapan then you can donate your green Clubcard points to Together For Trees – our partnership with Tesco to help save rainforests all over the world, from Asia and Africa to the Caribbean.

That Friday feeling

Laura Stevens — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 10:47:00 GMT

I love Fridays – it’s the end of the working week, the start of the weekend, and there’s even a chocolate bar dedicated to that wonderful Friday feeling. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to channel that feeling and make it do something for nature? Well this week you can!

FSC Friday happens once a year and it’s all about celebrating the world’s forests and promoting responsible forestry. There’s loads of ways you can get involved, from competitions (where you could win an RSPB bug box made from FSC wood) and doing stuff at work to using social media to spread the message. Click here to find out more.

So go on, put that Friday feeling to good use and shout it from the tree tops that stepping up for rainforests can be as simple as looking for a logo!

Follow the frog

Laura Stevens — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 10:04:02 GMT

Rainforest Alliance have produced a brilliant film showing that "you don't have to go to the ends of the earth to protect the planet - just follow the frog". It's well worth a watch, so click here.

Rainforest reporter update

Laura Stevens — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 13:52:08 GMT

In the latest posts from the Together For Trees Rainforest Reporter, Gareth meets Gola Rainforest National Park's very own Dr Doolittle and some local heroes, whilst "enjoying" some unexpected sounds of the rainforest. To take a look, head over to the Rainforest Reporter blog.