The Black Caiman (Melanosuchus niger) is the largest South American crocodile and the Amazon’s biggest predator. But despite its size and power it can be hunted with ease and the species has been
reduced in numbers by 99% over the last century.

The wild population is estimated to be between 25,000 and 50,000 and is restricted to slow-moving rivers, streams and lakes in rainforests and seasonally flooded savannas in the Amazon basin. It is now considered to be dependent on human conservation initiatives and occurs in the CTF UK supported reserves at Jatun Sacha in Eastern Ecuador and at Uwasu in Central Brazil.

Black Caiman, which can grow up to about 20 feet (6 meters) long, swim very well, mainly using their tails to propel themselves through the water. They are supremely adapted to aquatic life with eyes and nostrils at the top of the head. Mostly active at night, they hunt for fish, including piranhas and catfish, birds and turtles and even the largest Amazonian land animals like capybaras. Some 75 long, sharp conical teeth are used for catching prey – but not tearing it apart. They swallow their victims whole!

Females build a huge mound nest of soil and vegetation about 5 feet across and lay 50–60 eggs in each clutch. While the eggs are incubating, the females guard the nest and are dangerously aggressive at this time. The sex of the Black Caiman offspring is determined by the temperature in the nest rather than by genetics.

Black Caimans are found in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guyana and Peru with unconfirmed reports from Venezuela. In reserves where it has substantial protection, most populations appear to recover well from previous heavy hunting pressure.

Thanks to Tom Snyder for the Caiman image

Your donations closing critical rainforest gaps at Jatun Sacha. The fabulous Jatun Sacha Biological Station sits on the fringes of Amazonian Ecuador and is still being consolidated nineteen years after the first tracts of rainforest were preserved.

The 7,500 acre forest, designated in the early 1990′s as the Second World Children’s Rainforest reserve, is situated in the narrow Tropical Wet Forest Life Zone of Eastern Ecuador, where the Eastern slopes of the Andes merge into the vastness of the Amazon basin. With the help of your donations, another piece has just been fitted into this exotic jigsaw puzzle – 60 hectares (approx. 150 acres) of forest, marked on our map as Douglas Clarke’s tract.

This strip of forest has its feet on the banks of the Arajuno River, in the upper Napo River watershed, which exhibits some of the highest biodiversity counts in the world. Adjacent to Douglas Clarke’s tract is a plot of rainforest where over 246 tree species have been identified in a 1 hectare (2.5 acre) area. The Jatun Sacha Reserve count has now reached 535 bird species (more than 1 in 20 of all the species in the world!) and an astonishing 850 butterfly species. And 2,000 fungi species have been found along a one kilometre transect.

Jaguars and Mountain Lions 95 per cent of the Douglas Clarke tract is primary forest and the remainder is secondary forest of various ages. It will provide additional space for all animals, birds and other organisms that receive pressure from the road on the Northern side of the Jatun Sacha Reserve along the Napo River. It also provides important habitat for jaguars and mountain lions that occasionally cross the Arajuno River to the Jatun Sacha side for hunting.

ECUADOR

It fills an important gap on the back side of the Reserve where some of the highest quality, most diverse forest is found – and, as is clear from the map, it connects significant blocks of forest along the banks of the Arajuno River. The purchase also removes a dangerous threat to the most sensitive part of the Jatun Sacha forest.

Because of the previous owner’s eco-tourism interests, he was in partnership with the local provincial works commissioner to construct a road to his block of forest through the Jatun Sacha Reserve. Indeed, the Jatun Sacha Foundation recently had to fight the two partners all the way to the Ecuadorian Supreme Court to stop the planned road – an expensive legal fight which the Foundation eventually won.

On a broader front, the 19-year development of the Jatun Sacha Biological Station has had a very positive effect in the area, as numerous local Non-Government Organisations have developed their own private reserve initiatives along the Jatun Sacha peninsula, starting projects based on the Jatun Sacha model.

Photo credit Tambako the Jaguar

The common, or Humboldt’s, Woolly Monkey (Lagothrix lagotricha), one of the chunkiest and heaviest New World primates, lives in the rainforests of the Western Amazon river basin, including the CTF supported Reserves at Uwasu in Western Brazil and Jatun Sacha in Eastern Ecuador.

Reserves such as these are critical for the survival of these monkeys. They inhabit river edge gallery forest; palm woodland; seasonally flooded varzea and dry terra firma primary forest; and high altitude cloud forest. They prefer mature, continuous, undisturbed humid tracts – and will not live in secondary woodland which has re-grown after logging.

Covered in short, dense fur, they have large, round heads with a bare black or brown face. Their bodies are thick, with sturdy limbs, and their protruding bellies have given them the Portuguese name ‘barrigudo’ or ‘big belly’. They average 16–24 inches in length (40–60 cms), excluding their thick and prehensile tail.

They are active during the day – and gregarious – living in social groups of 10 to 70, often in company with capuchins, howlers and other species of monkeys. Rather slow moving, they generally travel on all fours, but often swing by their hands, feet and tail – or by the tail alone. On the ground, they can stand erect using their tail for support, but they are happiest in the forest mid-canopy at 7–12 metres (22–38 feet).

Their principal food is ripe fruit, supplemented by leaves, seeds and some insects. Seeds are most important early in the rainy season when ripe fruit is not readily available. Most intensively hunted Females reach maturity at 6–8 years and males any time after 5 years. Females bear single young after a 7–8 months gestation period and feed their babies for 9–12 months. The young are carried for the first month or so on the abdomen of the mother and climb onto her back after 6 weeks.

It is at this time that woolly monkeys are at their most vulnerable. They are the most intensively hunted primate species in South America – a mother normally being killed so that her infant can be sold on the pet market. Tragically, it is estimated that ten mothers are sacrificed for every live individual infant that actually reaches the market.

Groups of young woollies are very playful in the wild, while grooming is a common activity within a social group. Adult males receive the most grooming, whilst adult females are usually groomed by their juvenile daughters. Communication is by voice, facial expression and other visual behaviour and woollies can show subtle changes in mood and intention by employing a variety of expressions.

Restricted to the Western Amazon basin of Northern South America, common woolly monkeys occur in the upper Magdalena River valley in Colombia; throughout much of the upper Amazon basin of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia; in Brazil west of the Rio Negro; and in the foothills and Eastern slopes of the Andes up to 3,000 metres.

And Michael McColm considers ‘that the 3150 hectare Bilsa Biological Station continues to be the only sustainable and viable conservation initiative in the Mache-Chindul region’. The Foundation is seeking funding for forested properties within the Bilsa Boundary, which, all together, total about 250 hectares. But the 24 hectares that has just been secured by the CTF donation was the most urgent.

It is Pre-Montane Tropical Wet Forest – probably the rarest forest type in Western Ecuador with less than 1% remaining. The purchase will connect two existing important tracts of this type of forest inside the boundaries of the Bilsa Station. The forest is along the higher ridge-line of the Reserve and at this elevation provides habitat and protection for Jaguars, the exotic Long-Wattled Umbrella-bird and the rare, large and striking Banded Ground-Cuckoo as well as watershed protection for the Dogola River.

This river is one of the few in Western Ecuador still surrounded by forest habitat and protects a correspondingly high level of unique endemic fish species – species found in no other coastal river in the region.

Unique wildlife

The Bilsa Biological Station’s biodiversity credentials are certainly impeccable. Two thousand different plant species have been documented, including 30 species completely new to science. Abundant animal and bird populations indicate an intact ecosystem. To date, 24 mammal species are known to live in Bilsa, five of which are on international threatened species lists. Apart from the jaguar, these are the jaguarundi, oncilla, giant anteater and troupes of mantled howler monkeys.

More than 300 species of birds have been documented, amongst the highest totals for any Western coastal forest in Ecuador. But once again, it is the uniqueness of many of the birds which makes Bilsa so special. It is listed as a key area for the protection of birds in both the Choco and Tumbesian endemic bird areas (confined respectively to Ecuador and Colombia and Ecuador and Peru), which between them hold 96 species of birds found nowhere else in the World.