Blog - Operation Wallacea

Day 16 Left camp with most of the other staff at about 0830hrs to travel by old army truck cross country on the dirt track, repeating the four hours journey of two weeks ago. Apart from a rather close brush with a bush fire, the journey itself was quite pleasant...

Day 15 Went out with Ben and a group to do a Route 4 lemur survey. Although we only saw few lemurs, it was an enjoyable walk in the forest and I was conscious that it would be the last survey I would do of this trip. Came back to...

Day 14 This morning Ben helped me do an inventory check of the medical equipment. A necessary but time consuming task, we were interrupted by three school students towards the end. “Can you identify a snake we’ve found, Ben?” Ben replied that he would in a minute, adding “where is...

Day 13 This morning we went up to the area baited for fossa but found few tracks, and none of them from this strange creature. After coming back to camp I went for a wander round the lake. It’s only 50m from the camp and is quite large and absolutely...

Day 12 Went out for a long day today. Began about 8am with Stu and walked up route 2 and checked our baited area from yesterday – nothing unfortunately. Got to route 3 and did formal survey before a short journey to meet up with other group for lunch stop...

Day 11 Began today with a walk into the forest with Felix and Roger. Roger is the camp manager for Opwall here and Felix is the small mammal specialist. Went to check 2 lines of traps and found one shrew tenrec which was measured, marked and released. All the other...

Day 10 Slept until 8, but then too hot to stay in my tent. New school group coming in today so spent this morning tidying and checking inventory of the medical centre, dealing with a couple of minor problems and doing some washing (clothes getting ever less clean with each...

Day 9 A long but enjoyable day today. The school students left (new group in tomorrow) so I had the chance to go out on an extended boat trip with Ben, Tash, and Rob. Walked down to the boat which took about 1 hr 15mins and found the tide incredibly...

Day 8 Out to Route 5 today to release a chameleon. When specimens are collected (e.g. for photographing or spectroscopy) they are kept for as short a time as possible and then returned to the exact site from which they came (each position recorded by GPS etc). Once released, it...

Day 7 This morning I walked down to the mangrove area with Rob (herpetologist) and one of the groups of school students. Saw a lot of wildlife including sportive lemurs, 3 snake species, mud skippers and other fish, a Frances’ sparrowhawk, and several kingfishers. Back for lunch then out to...

Day 6 Another change of activity today – out with the ‘birders.’ Went up a sample route to do some mist netting. Interesting to see how the nets were set up. Caught about 5 birds of three species. Each was recorded before being released again. Bruno, a Madagascan ornithologist/scientist/photographer explained...

Day 5 Having seen loads of ‘herps,’ I thought I’d go out with the lemur group today. We went out on an ‘opportunistic’ which is a bit more exploratory. Ben is the lemur scientist and is highly knowledgeable about this group. We logged 35 sifaka lemurs and a couple of...