Mata Atlântica

Golden lion tamarin conservation site, Brazil. Photo Credit: Ylfa Muindi

I am a current Project Dragonfly graduate student.
In May 2019, I joined Project Dragonfly’s Brazil Earth Expedition.

These are some memories from the experience.

“Art Imitates Nature,” quoth Aristotle. “Wrong, sir!” quoth Augusto Boal.

Boal points out the inadequacy of this translation of Aristotle’s famous phrase. The artist does not imitate; the artist re-creates. Nature is not a completion of all things; nature is the principle of creation itself (Boal, 2000).

So, the more adequate translation of Aristotle’s statement would be “Art recreates the very principle of creation itself” (Boal, 2000).

This distinction is important for naturalists and conservationists. Nature is not complete. Nature is not perfect. Nature aims for perfection, but the very act of creation generates imperfections. Conservation, in its very essence, strives to maintain a perfect whole. While in the Mata Atlantica of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, I was so deeply overcome with the giddiness of rampant creation to the point where I no longer consider myself a conservationist. I am a naturalist - I strive to recreate the principle of creation.

The Mata Atlantica is a writhing, crawling, soaring, leaping, shining bastion of biodiversity. It contains high endemism, species found nowhere else, immense tree diversity (many of the trees have yet to be identified by science), and also significant species richness (Martini, Fiaschi, Amorim, Da Paixão 2007). As one of the oldest rainforests on the planet, its creativity and potential for creation knew no bounds… until recently. Much of the land not taken over by the cities of Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo is cattle-burnt.

Native plant nursery. Photo Credit: Ylfa Muindi

Only 5% of this once vast, dazzlingly complex forest remains. A wonderfully charismatic and fascinating creature who defies expectations unwittingly served as the mascot for this remaining forest - the golden lion tamarin. Through a combination of adaptations and the primate’s own sexual selection, they created a rather unique way for a monkey to raise a baby. They tend to live in groups with one dominant male and one dominant female who tend to be monogamous, and, when there is a baby (or two, as twins are common), everyone from the dominant pair to the rest of the group helps care for them when they cry out, when they are hungry, when they are cold. To watch the families is to marvel at their ability to communicate to their needs. When they hold out their little Da Vinci-esque black hands as if to take a delicate cup of hot tea, others rush over to accept the offer to be groomed. They bird-screech out an alarm, and the rest rush to back them up, leaping furiously through the branches. By sharing images and stories of these incredible monkeys, local conservationists were able to spread love for the forest and a desire to protect what remains. That creativity paid off, and the population rebounded after near extinction. There is now not enough forest for the tamarins to expand into.

Associação Mico-Leão Dourado (AMLD or Golden Lion Tamarin Association) is creating new forest for these monkeys to expand into, and, in turn, for sloths, toucans, and jaguarundis to expand into. To create a forest, it takes a community. AMLD partners with local women and their families to generate viable economic alternatives to cultivating land for livestock or logging; women who have, through necessity, learned how to forage and harvest from the forest itself are now tasked with discovering the secrets of how trees grow and produce offspring. The acts of propagating seeds, nursing seedlings, and planting new forest is a profound mode of creation. To see the look of pride in the greenhouses brimming with green sprouts is to know that the action took an enormous amount of research, dedication, and trial and error. These reforests are creating a new community for the human occupants of this ecosystem to expand into, as well. Expansion of the spirit, of the mind, is unavoidable in these forests.

Such daring creativity is present throughout Brazil. Like the United States, it is a big, complicated country rife with cultural diversity. You hear it as you stroll through Rio de Janeiro, where musicians are paid to play live music from all corners of Brazil in bars, on beaches, or in storefronts. You taste it as you sample your way through the cuisines. You see it in the architecture, the fashions, and the art.

To be in Brazil was to experience the optimism of creativity and imagination. It was to see how recreating the creative principle inspires us to grow as people and as community members.

WORKS CITED

Boal, A. (2000). Theater of the Oppressed. Pluto Press.

Martini, A. M. Z., Fiaschi, P., Amorim, A. M., & Da Paixão, J. L. (2007). A hot-point within a hot-spot: a high diversity site in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. Biodiversity and Conservation, 16(11), 3111-3128.

Virunga

Black back member of a gorilla troop. Photo Credit: Muindi Fanuel Muindi

This story was featured “Stories from the Wild”, an event hosted by KUOW
Story begins at 28:50 in video

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For a full transcript of the story, see below:

We woke up late that day in Virunga National Park. I never in my life dreamed that I would be late on the day I got to finally see mountain gorillas, but life doesn’t always play out in the ways you expect. The other group, American journalists, had left an hour before. When my husband and I arrived at ranger headquarters, the ranger was already irritated with us. In a blend of rounded French and smoothed-out Swahili, he explained the rules and safety guidelines we were to follow with the gorillas. Don’t touch them. Maintain a safe distance of 7 meters. Always wear the medical face mask near gorillas. Don’t eat in front of them. Do as the ranger tells you.

He led us through sorghum fields of deep red against the volcanoes in the distance. It had rained that morning, and everything glittered against a brilliant blue sky. We walked along the edge of the rainforest, rushing to catch up to the first group, not speaking. But then the commander walked out of the forest. He and our ranger spoke, and I understood that he had just seen a different troop nearby. They made the decision to give up on meeting the first group. We walked a few minutes into the forest and then the ranger turned around and asked us to pull up our face masks.

I thought that it had to be too soon to put up our masks, but then the ranger shifted aside and standing there was a silverback. He was on the path ahead, immense, breathtakingly immense, and fully awesome. He knuckle-walked past us, his shoulder gently checking my shoulder as he sauntered by. We walked on. With every step, butterflies lifted off the forest floor. The rainforests of Congo are filled with tiny butterflies, and they form halos around your head as you walk. They like all the sweat.

A few moments later, my shoulder still humming with the contact, the ranger pulled open a curtain of leaves. A second silverback was in repose behind the curtain, one arm cradling his heavy head, his legs stretched out on a bed of crushed shoots. While I was trying to take him in, a little, fuzzy face suddenly popped up from his side. Nestled into the armpit of the silverback was a three-year-old female. The silverback had adopted an orphaned infant during the recent war. Her parents and the rest of her troop had been murdered by militia members, explained the ranger… “assassinés”. My French was not strong enough to ask how she avoided the wildlife trade, how this silverback found her, if he was related. What I do know is that he did find her and had kept her safe and healthy for over a year. In that year, he avoided poacher’s snares, armed militias, and a volcanic eruption which spewed a river of lava over their territory. And here they were – relaxing in a green nest.

We walked on. I don’t know how long we walked for – I remember it felt more like flying that hacking through a thick jungle. Suddenly, we heard the clatter of a gorilla pounding her chest, the crashing of branches, and the screams of a very feisty 6 year old. She obviously recognized the ranger. She ran up and tackled him from behind. No touching indeed. He laughed, she laughed, and then a smaller, quieter juvenile climbed down from the tree she was watching from. The two of them proceeded to eat bamboo, the feisty one crushing through pieces probably a little too big for her. Then, they looked up, away from us.

I turned and found myself staring into the big brown eyes of a baby. He was 8 months old and still learning how to walk. His little face was the definition of wonder and joyful curiosity. He was drawn to the three humans, and every time he wandered too close, his mama reached out one arm and pulled him back into her sphere. Wander, pull back, wander, pull back. Finally, mama picked him up, swung him onto her back and joined the blackback who had been sitting by himself.

Blackbacks are male gorillas on the edge of adulthood. This individual was 17 and every bit as immense and striking as his father who had brushed past me farther back in the forest. The rangers think that he will probably stay with the family, as he seems comfortable with his place in the troop. The baby set his sights on the blackback. He clambered over, and then craned his little neck to look up a the male. He started climbing up the furry belly, fist over tiny fist, until he reached his brother’s chest. Then he grabbed fistfuls of hair and shook and screamed until the blackback plucked him off. He wandered back, clambered back up, grabbed fistfuls of fur and ripped and screamed again. Again and again, the blackback was content to play this little game, always gentle.

Virunga National Park Ranger. Photo Credit: Muindi Fanuel Muindi

We often tell such simple, flat stories about animals. Stories which match the data, which educate others about animals in clean, precise ways. “Gorillas live in troops with a dominant male, the silverback. They are intelligent. They are vegetarians. They share 98% of our DNA.” I was struck by how dynamic these gorillas were. They were adapting to changes in their home.

They clearly have not settled on a simple story of what a gorilla is or is not. And to meet a gorilla is to look face to face with someone who interprets the world very much as you do, for our senses are nearly identical in every way. It was clear that they were observing me, measuring me. I could not help but wonder at what they are thinking. I know that they will remember this day, too. How will they remember it?  Will they ever think of me, of my tear-filled eyes as I sat in the bamboo? While I have language to share my memories, and microphones to amplify and record the thoughts I was experiencing that day, the thoughts of the gorillas are lost to us. The actions of the gorillas, the old male who adopted the infant, was this a way of resisting having your thoughts die with you?  What all do we lose when we lose gorillas?

Before we left the forest, I held the hand of the ranger and thanked him for everything he has done. He had deep creases around his eyes, his voice soft from speaking in the forest for so many decades, his shoulder bent under the gun he carried. He was a  biologist with paramilitary training who had witnessed so many changes in his home. He clearly felt deeply moved by the experience of sitting with the gorillas, too, though neither of us shared our thoughts. We just looked at each other.