Discover why the lay of the land makes the Manu region so biodiverse
Sitting at a dizzying 3,400 meters in the mountains of south Peru is the bustling city of Cusco, the once capital of the Inca empire and the gateway to the infamous Machu Picchu – the lost city.
Here is where our journey begins, taking us from the high Andes down to the steaming tropics of the Amazon jungle to the land of jaguars and macaws.
We’re headed towards the Manu National Park – a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most biodiverse places on the planet.
I’m with a group of volunteers travelling with the Crees Foundation, a not-for-profit conservation organisation carrying out scientific research and sustainable living initiatives at their Manu Learning Centre (MLC) next to the national park.
Forest Reborn
Dr Gareth Bruce, a Field Staff Assistant with Crees, is our guide for the journey. He explains:
“The MLC is a protected area of 643 hectares, so to trek from one perimeter to the next is about a day’s walk. The forest has been left to regenerate for 30 to 50 years.”
The MLC was one farmland, a hacienda, devoid of richness and diversity. The land was deforested for cattle ranching, logging, and agriculture. Some of the forest was completely cleared, while other areas were selectively logged for valuable trees.
But from destruction now grows hope.
“The fact that the forest was once destroyed at MLC is what makes it so unique and interesting”, says Gareth. “It’s an experiment to see how well a forest can regenerate. From our research, it looks really positive. Just the other week, we had a paper published showing that the regenerating forest at MLC has a really high biodiversity and conservation value; of the species we would expect to see in forest before disturbance, an average of 83% had now returned.”
With 64% of forests worldwide in a state of regeneration, this is good news indeed.
Welcome to Manu National Park
After six hours of travelling through the Andes, we reach Acjanaco: the gateway to Manu National Park. At an altitude of 3,500 meters, we are surrounded by thick fog and we layer on fleeces while stepping out of the minibus to take a look at the interpretation board and map. Gareth talks us through the species that can be found in Manu National Park and it’s an impressive list – from top predators the jaguar and puma, to spectacled bears, black caiman and giant otters, 13 species of monkey and over 1,000 species of birds: that’s 10% of the world’s total.
We hit the road again and with the endless steep switchbacks, it takes us no time to drop 2,000 meters; we leave sparse sweeping grasslands, pass through the miniature gnarled trees of elfin forest, and into the cloud forest where water cascades off plunging slopes into the deep canyons below.
“It’s this varied typography with lots of different habitat types that creates greater species diversity,” explains Gareth. “If you go to the centre of the Amazon it’s all more or less flat land, low level forest. But here at the foothills of the Andes we have all these different forest types, all these different typographies, meaning there are more species.”
Wildlife Encounters
We continue to corkscrew downwards, hugging the dynamite blasted walls on our left as the narrow road falls into the sheer abyss to our right. Suddenly we stop behind a group of tourists who have jumped out of their minibus and are excitedly pointing into the forest. Full of curiosity, we join them on the roadside. Immediately a chorus begins to ripple through our small gathering, in tones of hushed amazement: “Bears, bears, bears!”
Mid way up a tree, next to the glittering cascade of a waterfall, a spectacled bear and her two cubs move in and out of view between the foliage. I never imagined I’d be lucky enough to meet the bear that captured my imagination as a child: Paddington Bear from deepest, darkest Peru.
“I can’t believe it”, grins Gareth, “I didn’t think you could see bears here. There’s never been a record of anyone at Crees seeing them here… I can’t believe it.”
It’s a long time before Gareth stops grinning.
Spectacled bears (Tremarctos ornatus) are the only surviving species of bear native to South America and the only surviving member of the subfamily Tremarctinae. The species is classified as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List because of poaching and habitat loss.
Still reeling from the excitement of such a rare sighting, we’re back on the road again and heading towards our next wildlife encounter. At about 5pm we pullover and clamber down into a viewing platform that locals have built at the roadside. Unlike the unexpected bear sighting, we’re told that it’s almost a certainty that we’ll see the national bird of Peru here: the Andean cock-of-the-rock (Rupicola peruvianus).
Sure enough, we’re greeted by the orange flame plumage of a male; he must be a contender for the most colourful bird in the world. The cock-of-the-rock lives in a narrow range of altitude in the Andes, between 500 and 2,300 meters. Many species specialise to live at very specific altitude ranges or habitat types. This makes the Manu region, with its diverse typography, a very special place for any wildlife lover.
This cock-of-the-rock entertained us with his frantic mating display: calling, bobbing up and down, flying from branch to branch and sometimes aggressively displacing a neighbour. Activity and noise reaches a crescendo when a female approaches, as males compete to lure her to their perch.
After a night walk in search of amphibians and a much needed sleep at Paradise Lodge, the next day we’re ready for the last leg of the journey. As we wait in the town of Atalaya for our boat to take us down the Alto Madre de Dios river, we watch as a blue and yellow macaw (Ara ararauna) feeds in a garden no more than a few meters from us. As part of Crees’ research work, we’ll monitor these macaws and several other species of parrot at a nearby clay lick, to see whether they’re being effected by tourism and habitat loss.
Soon we’re bobbing along the river with swathes of Amazon rainforest sweeping over the hills and I can’t believe that this will be my home for the next six months. As we walk to the lodges at MLC, we’re surrounded by the squawks and whoops of life in the tropical forest. This is where the adventure really begins…