Daylight glinted off the digital camera’s lens as Vania Tejeda secured it to the tree trunk. She pointed the digital camera towards the close by netted bridge, a 100-foot horizontal rope ladder connecting two massive bushes on reverse sides of a highway 130 toes beneath. In Peru’s Madre de Dios area, one of many Amazon basin’s most biodiverse areas, extractive industries and agricultural land conversion have created roads carving broad scars by means of this dense rainforest. This fragmentation makes it tough for arboreal wildlife, which hardly ever contact the bottom, to traverse their cover ecosystem. With help from WCN’s new Rising Wildlife Leaders Amazonia Program, Vania is developing engineering feats excessive within the treetops to protect connectivity for the under-looked wildlife overhead.
A cover bridge connecting bushes divided by a highway.
WCN’s Amazonia Program is a joint initiative with the Gordon and Betty Moore Basis and the International Surroundings Facility’s Fonseca Management Program. It strengthens management expertise and fosters networking between rising wildlife leaders within the Amazon basin to gas their long-term careers. Vania’s unbelievable ambition earned her a spot in this system’s inaugural cohort this 12 months. Since 2021, she and her colleagues have constructed and put in synthetic cover bridges over forest roads to revive connectivity for black spider monkeys, crimson howler monkeys, kinkajous, sloths, opossums, and plenty of extra animals.
Vania Tejeda putting in a digital camera close to a cover bridge.
Vania’s undertaking is the primary of its form in Peru, serving to arboreal wildlife adapt to a divided habitat and deepening scientific understanding of cover ecology. To date, her workforce has designed and constructed 20 cover bridges that permit rainforest tree-dwellers to seek out meals and genetically numerous mates. Vania’s undertaking makes use of cameras to observe over 25 species utilizing the bridges, accumulating precious information to advocate for environmental insurance policies that can affect nationwide highway planning in logging concession areas.
A black spider monkey crossing a cover bridge.
Crimson howler monkeys utilizing the cover bridges.
Via the Amazonia Program, Vania is studying essential undertaking administration and planning expertise to increase her work’s affect. She and her colleagues are already brainstorming new bridge designs to cater to distinctive animal conduct, corresponding to how spider monkeys typically cross the bridges on their hind legs, utilizing their arms and lengthy tails for stability. Finally, Vania sees her undertaking for what it actually is—a bridge, not simply to attach habitat, however to achieve the next degree in her conservation profession.
Autor David Vasquez
