GLOBAL VISION INTERNATIONAL:
FIRST EXPEDITION LOGISTICS

 

As the first expedition to the area we were in a unique position. There was obviously a small amount of infrastructure in place as Raul (Alberto’s son) had started to set up an eco-tourism project and that was where the huts had come from. The air strip was there due to the small military outpost located near the area and prior to this the oil prospectors used the river as a runway, there is a small crashed plane in the river from a time when the prospectors used to visit. Whilst oil prospectors had visited the area they had done very little damage due to the fact that the area is too far away from main roads to make it worth drilling. This means that the site is almost all primary rainforest. In the 53,000 hectares there are no roads and very few trails.

The main trail when we arrived ran between the camp and the airstrip but there were none that could really be used for scientific purposes. This was both beneficial and detrimental to the science side of the project; the advantage was that there was a clean sheet to start from whilst the disadvantage was the obvious fact that someone (namely us!) had to cut these trails. We set out to cut a 1 km square grid in the forest that consisted of very narrow trails cut with a machete. We cut nothing larger than saplings and cleared ground vegetation to make a passable trail (which was fairly slippery in places!). This was tagged with tiny pieces of coloured plastic to mark out the route (its very easy to get lost in the dark!). When I left we had completed two full 1km squares diagonally opposite one another and recent discussions with other past volunteers has led me to believe that there is a full four kilometre square “Union Jack” grid system in place in the forest.

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