AUGUST FIRES

AUGUST FIRES

15.08.1994

Well, it is August (end of September now) - winter in the southern hemisphere.  It has not rained for several weeks and the rivers, now sluggish, carry very little water.  However, it is not cold, although the morning air has an indefinable, unmistakably winter quality about it despite the warmth. It may be the clarity, the stillness, I don't know. Daytime temperatures are in the region of 30-34ºC. falling to around 18ºC. at night.  The difference is in the humidity.  It is much drier now.  You do not normally sweat so much.  The first day I did not sweat since I arrived in the Chapare was May 10th.  No doubt the torrents will begin again soon and along with them the constant rivulets of sweat rolling down every part of the body.

The most outstanding feature of August days are the smoke-filled skies.  The sunlight is blocked out by the ever-present pall. This is the tragedy of the tropics and the whole Amazon system.  In August the settlers "chaquean" or slash and burn the vegetation on their properties in preparation for a new sowing season, or to clear new land.  Trees with a circumference of 2 metres or more are hacked to the ground and burned to ashes, the stumps sticking up into the air like fingers accusing humanity of the devastation that we cause.  Charred and blackened and scorched, the Pachamama surely should demand more respect of her children. Maybe she is too week to fight us any more. The original tribal peoples who populated these areas, the Yukis and the Yuracarés, are traditionally nomadic hunter-gatherers.  The settlers who have come in under the government-sponsored settlement programme are people from the altiplano where no trees are to be found.  They do not understand their environment and, perhaps involuntarily, strive to turn it into something akin to what they left behind, forgetting that the reason they left it was that they could not scrape a living from the soil.  The exuberance of the vegetation in places such as this depends precisely on the abundant foliage falling to the ground and decomposing there to form a fertile surface, because the topsoil is a mere 10-12 cm. deep in most places.  Once the forest cover is removed the soil grows impoverished and soon will support no growth whatsoever.  In La Paz the skies are similarly darkened with all the smoke coming from El Beni and Pando, the Amazon areas, and when planes come in to land at Santa Cruz airport the pilots announce that visibility is reduced due to the smoke from the burning Amazon basin in Brazil.

No programme contemplates this, the most serious of all the problems, and if nothing is done - and soon - the damage will be irreparable.  I know many people say that the conservationist voices raised in protest exaggerate and that things are not as bad as they say.  Things ARE as bad as they say - if not worse.  Tropical deforestation is increasing and accelerating. Santa Cruz, the neighbouring "boom" area which deforested earlier to make way for cattle grazing, rice, soya, sugar-cane, etc. has had to be declared a "disaster area" due to drought, and the continuing deforestation of the Chapare is aggravating the situation. Robert and Filippo are trying to get an environmental aspect written into the project specifications, but it is hard work indeed getting these goons (officialdom, I mean) to understand anything at all, even when it is staring them in the face.  I have written to a  number of organizations to try and get environmental condition clauses written into all aid programmes, but I don't know how effective that will be.  It is worth a try.


And still, as winter rolls into spring or, perhaps more accurately, the rainy season approaches, the birds are beginning to build their nests.  Crested oropendolas, fairly large black birds with a spectacularly yellow tail, weave their long pendulous nests which hang from the branches of the trees and sway in the breeze.  The male sits close by his edifice in the hope of attracting a female.  He sings his fluty song and with each melody it seems as though he will topple off the branch because he leans over precariously at the start of each melodic phrase.  The lady comes and he leads her on a guided tour to have a look at his handiwork from every angle.  If she is impressed she will stay.  If not, off she flies to examine the fruits of someone else´s industry.

The tiny hummingbird is also making its nest.  In sharp contrast to the conspicuous palace of the oropendola, this is a tiny, discreet affair carefully hidden under the leaves of a small tree.  It is no bigger than half an egg-shell, fairly similar in shape and just as delicate with scraps of feather and soft material woven into the fabric.  The first one he made was found by a cat which destroyed it so we hope that the new one will survive.  The danger they face is that the trees they choose are fairly low and so are accessible to cats and children.  Robert has warned all the children that if he sees anyone touching a nest some dire consequence will fall upon their heads.  I never cease to marvel at the diminutiveness of these tiny creatures hovering in an iridescent whirr

There are lots of other birds returning now after the "winter", but I do not know their names.  Monica´s (Filippo, the agronomist´s girlfriend) mother came from Houston Texas and I asked her to bring me a book on the birds of this area, so I am learning a little more each day.  Monica´s mother is English-born, was married to an English-Pole (if you know what I mean) and they lived in Texas where he is a cardiologist and she used to be a pathologist but 15 years ago changed over to psychiatry.  Now that's some change-over!!  She is a serious bird-watcher so I learned a bit from her too.  My list has increased to include the yellow-rumped cacique, the smooth-billed aní, the great tinamou, called yut´hu in Quechua (I have only heard this one, not seen it),  the vermilion flycatcher, the pale-throated tapaculos ( a kind of wren), the swallow-tanager - the male a brilliant turquoise blue and the female emerald green - the yellow-bellied tyrannulet and a number of others which I am not so sure about yet.  Even if you are not keen on birds, the names are so interesting in themelves that it is nice just to read them.  The one thing I regret is not having the video camera to film all these things - it was stolen en route, as you know.