Reforestation Day

June 15, 2016, 9:00 am 

Today we have a slight change of pace. Manrique, the head of the biological reserve, has asked us to collaborate with him in an educational event for some students from UNED, the “Universidad Estatal a Distancia,” which is having an outing in the reserve to learn about the forest, our research, and conservation. A bus-load of cheerful college students has arrived, eager to get away from their laptops and experience an actual forest, and files into the “centro” (which serves the purpose of guard station, visiting research station, and educational museum). Manrique has everyone gather around, and explains in his authoritative voice what the day’s plan is. We will begin by collaborating in a reforestation project. Manrique and the rest of the park guards have been nursing some seedlings of native tree species obtained from the nurseries of ICE (the development organization, which tries to mitigate damage caused by the installation of electric wires, roads and canals). Today we will plant these seedlings in a patch of land that was deforested by squatters who have recently been relocated to agricultural lands outside the park boundaries. After that, we’ll have lunch and a talk by the moneros. 

         We load up the park service truck with the seedlings, machetes, and shovels. I walk down the road to reforestation site, which is <1 km away, with my research assistants Juliane Damm, Tlaoli Fuentes and Alexa Duchesneau, leading the students to the place where we will begin planting. Manrique and Chito (another park guard) lead the way, guiding the students (each of whom is carrying a tiny tree, still in is plastic starter bag) to the place where we will plant. The students work in pairs, one digging the holes while the other slits the bag, carefully sliding the tree and its core of dirt into the ground, and pressing the dirt into place to secure the young tree in an upright position. We researchers follow along, marking each little tree with bright colored flagging tape, and also marking the location of each tree on our Garmin GPS device, assigning each a number and species. The combination of GPS location and colored flagging tape will make it easier for us to find the trees we’ve planted in future months, so that we can nurture them and determine whether our reforestation efforts have been successful. The flags also help the students avoid stepping on the trees they have just planted! For someone unaccustomed to the forest, all these weeds and little trees look just alike, and it is impossible to walk without stepping on some sort of plant. 

         Finally done with the planting, we collect all the plastic bags from the tree-planting, and walk back to the centro for lunch. The students are happy to be outside, and obviously feel good about having done something to help this beautiful forest and its residents. They ask us questions about the monkeys, and about what the life of a biologist is like, and – being modern college students -- snap lots of selfies of themselves in the forest, covered in mud. When we get back to the centro, Seidy Rosales is finishing up the lunch preparations. Seidy has worked at the centro since 1990, off and on, and is the person primarily responsible for teaching me Spanish. For several of the early years of the monkey project my small team camped next to her house on a rice farm in the middle of the forest, so she feels like family. She never tires of teasing me.

Susan and Seidy in 1992, when Susan was a graduate student, learning Spanish from Seidy.

         When Seidy sees me approaching, she furrows her brow in her sternest glower, puts her hands on her hips, and then grasps a large ladle, which she waves menacingly in my direction. “¡TIENE que comer más!” [“You HAVE to eat more!”], she demands. She grasps my sleeve, searching in the billowy work shirt for my puny bicep, and squeezes me. “¡Si no come mas, un día vamos a encontrar esta camisa en el bosque con nada al dentro. Será todo que queda de Susan. Dejá de comer estes semillas de pajaros!” [“If you don’t eat more, some day we are going to find this shirt in the forest with nothing inside it! It will be all that is left of Susan. Stop eating that bird food!” (“Bird food” is her term for the granola-gorp mix that is my subsistence during fieldwork days.] I protest that I simply can’t run up and down cliffs after eating gigantic Tico-style meals. She responds “¡Estoy MUY BRAVA con Usted! No me escucha. Hay que comer comidas verdaderos.” [“I am VERY ANGRY with you. You don’t listen. You  need to eat real food.”] Waving the ladle emphatically on each deliberately pronounced syllable, she says “¡Ar-roz y fri-jol! ¿Me entiende?” [“Rice and beans! Do you understand?”] and shoves a massive plate of rice, beans, salad, and arroz con pollo in front of me. Seeing my dismayed look at being served this mountain of food, she breaks into peals of girlish laughter, slaps me, and scurries away to feed other people. Fortunately today I do NOT have to chase monkeys all afternoon, so I obediently tuck into the delicious lunch she has prepared, while chatting with the students about wildlife they have seen, ideas they have for research they would like to do some  day, and good books they have read recently.

         I then proceed to give a talk about the monkey research, explaining what we do in a typical day, and telling them about the lives of the monkeys. Normally I would have some video and photos to show them, via a projector, but it is the middle of the day, and there is too much daylight to project materials on the wall. So in describing the vocal communication and gestures of the monkeys, my fellow monerosand I resort to a bit of “monkey theater,” acting out typical types of monkey interactions for the students as I tell the monkeys’ life stories. Alexa, Juliane and Tlaoli all enthusiastically act their parts, demonstrating their most fearsome monkey threat faces and squeakiest squeak threats in the coalitionary aggression scenes. It is a fun afternoon. We exchange contact information with several of the more enthusiastic students, in the hopes that we can collaborate on future conservation efforts. Manrique seems pleased with the event. 

We are so lucky to have Manrique as leader of the Lomas Barbudal Biological Reserve. He is highly ambitious and knowledgeable about the forest, and has a really strong work ethic. Given his conscientious nature and fearlessness when confronted with social conflicts, we know we can always rely on him to protect the forest from fire, poachers, and other forms of human-inflicted damage. It is always a pleasure to collaborate with him on these educational and conservation missions, and we view him as a true partner in our mission to preserve the monkeys’ habitat.