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Peru
PP001 Amazonian Wildlife Ecology and Conservation Course (Weeks 1, 3, 5 & 7)
This course is designed to give you an introduction to Amazonian
wildlife, the survey techniques used to assess the diversity of
various taxa and conservation management techniques that are
producing results in Amazonia. The course consists of a series of
lectures and field based practicals and aims to teach you the survey
techniques and main species likely to be encountered in groups such
as freshwater fish, amphibians and reptiles, birds, freshwater
mammals, exploitation rates of large mammals and birds and primate
population and behaviour studies. In addition the course covers a
series of examples of conservation management in Amazonia. PP101 Biodiversity Monitoring in the Pacaya Samiria National Reserve (Weeks 2 - 8; need to have completed PP001) Research assistants on this project will be based on the research ship and will need to be prepared for the hot and humid conditions of the Amazonian rainforest. Whilst some respite can be found on the boat where the fan-cooled cabins, showers and food provide a retreat from the tough working conditions, the main reward is the opportunity to see and work with such a huge range of birds and animals, including the larger, and more rare, animals such as pumas, primates and tapirs.
There is a large team of mainly Peruvian researchers based on the research ship with nine different research programmes running. Each night the various scientists write up on a whiteboard the timings for their projects and the volunteers they need for the following day to complete various research tasks. Research Assistants signing up for the various projects will help on all the projects over the course of their stay. There is a strong research atmosphere on the boat with teams coming and going at all times of day and night on various research tasks.
Research tasks which require volunteer manpower include: spotlight surveys for caimans and diet studies of this species (which necessitates capture of the caimans through noosing), transect surveys for the abundant Pink and Grey River Dolphins and an elusive population of manatees at this site, mist netting surveys of the bird communities utilising the forest understorey, transect counts of wading birds, point counts of macaws as indicators of forest fruiting, gill net surveys of fish communities, standardised searching surveys to characterise the amphibian communities, land based transect counts of primates, large mammals and game birds as indicators of levels of exploitation, checking 20 camera traps run at a variety of habitats and depending on water level, monitoring river turtle nesting sites and habitat selection by the Yellow-spotted River Turtle. In addition to these surveys, there are dissertation studies where assistance may also be required - for example, assisting with behavioural data observations on the primate species.
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