February 2022
Similar to other biodiverse regions on the planet, the Tambopata region in the Peruvian Amazon has been facing its share of environmental issues over the last decade. Since the last time I visited 2 years ago, the difference is stark. Gold mining has been legalised in the area, and apart from deforestation for development of roads, this has been a major cause for loss of forest cover.
The Los Amigos Biological Station, 6 hours away by boat, is my home away from home. After participating in a field course in 2014, I kept returning to the Madre de Dios region to spend over 3 months each year at the field station. Over this period I worked as a photographer, a research assistant, and eventually a field manager. My experiences here have been burned into memory. The smells are nostalgic. The silence and lack of regular connectivity is soothing. A break from the “real world”. I love it. Yet connectivity is what I am here to improve.
Over the last 3 years, I have moved away from my primary profession as a photographer to develop wildlife tracking technology - GPS collars, RFID enabled trap monitors etc. The idea is to create an easily deployable network where all these sensors can relay information. This will help researchers get information about their target wildlife species while sitting at base camp. What a thrill to be carrying the equipment up the river to deploy in the Amazon Rainforest!
A general philosophy of field work can be summed up as “Things will go wrong, and we will fix them”. And things have gone wrong. Beginning with the weather – right after I installed the first receiver there was a torrential downpour. I spent my days trying to work out the solar power, while running tests on the various GPS collars we brought. The nights were rainy and the mornings quiet. Watching the GPS collars relay information to me while I lay in bed over 2 miles away was surreal. When things work it is the best feeling in the world. All the minor flaws that I dealt with over the last 3 years seemed just that - minor.
In addition to being able to code, solder, and make electronic devices, I have developed a set of handy skills in all my years here. Knowing the trails of the forest is extremely helpful when I have to keep looking at a screen to check the progress of the tests that are running. I always vaguely know where I am, and can never be absolutely lost. And while things did not go perfectly, I did get useful information to perfect our product. The next phase is to go home and work on improving these snags. The heavy feeling in my heart as I caught the boat to leave was unrelated to work though. It’s the feeling of leaving home and getting back to the “real world”.
by Ishaan
