York Town News
From York to the Pantanal: young scientists work in the field
By Jennifer L. Saunders
From macaws to otters to bugs, the members of Pantanal Team 9 are seeing it all in Brazil as these nine York High School students and recent graduates work alongside Jeff Wilford, Liz Kinzly and a team of international researchers with a goal of protecting the world’s largest wetland.
Courtesy photos
YORK - The members of Pantanal Team 9 were not at home watching fireworks on Independence Day.
These York High School students and recent graduates woke up on the morning of July 4 in Brazil's Pantanal to hear, in their words, "the Blue Hyacinth Macaws and Howler monkeys calling to our cabins."
Then, as they wrote, "After a tasty 7 a.m. breakfast of chocolate cake, corn bread and fruit, we set out on our first day's work."
Tales from the field like this one are included regularly on the Expedition Pantanal website, where family, friends and others with interest in the world's largest wetland can track the team's progress.
The nine student volunteers, working alongside their leaders, Jeff Wilford of York Middle School and Liz Kinzly, a former York Middle School science teacher who now teaches at Lynnfield Middle School, are Kortnee Cribby, Luke Graziano, Kelsey Greenier, Anna Lifvergren, Andrew Loane, Nick McMahon, Kiegan Munn, Katie Rasche and Haley Westman. The team is undertaking such projects as monitoring water quality, collecting data on giant river otters and working on an effort to protect Brazil's crocodiles from poachers.
At www.expeditionpantanal.org/, Team 9 is not only providing daily "weblogs" of their experiences with their leaders, "Liz Queen of Peccaries" and "Jeff of the Jungle," but is illustrating the site with pictures of the landscape and wildlife, as well as their teammates at work.
The student volunteers are also working with Dr. Alexine Keuroghlian studying the peccary, which Wilford described as a small pig-like animal with an important role in the Pantanal as a main source of food for the endangered jaguar and as a fruit-eater that distributes seeds throughout the region, helping to maintain the area's biodiversity.
"Peccaries are being studied to better develop a profile of the species habits," the team members wrote in their website journal. "... The two types of Peccaries being studied are white-lipped peccaries and collared peccaries. The group became well versed in the differences of North American pigs and peccaries as peccaries are often mistakenly related to pigs because of physical similarities."
And that was just the beginning.
In their July 7 entry, for example, the team describes a 5:30 a.m. walk.
"On the way to the tower, a certain Jeff o' the Jungle chose to impersonate a jaguar jumping out of the woods. He unfortunately forgot to inform Haley, Kortnee and Andrew that he was making such an impersonation. After a few screams from those caught off guard (and giggles from the rest), our walk continued."
The team has seen exotic birds, otters, frogs, lizards, possums, armadillos and, after much anticipation, peccaries.
As the team reported in one entry, "... the trap held four peccaries - two adults and two babies. After being lassoed and anesthetized (very cool), the animals were weighed, measured and had a chip implanted into them in case they are caught again. It was very exciting for the group to finally have caught peccaries. In the afternoon, we went back out into the field to do a fruit census..."
The team was scheduled to reconnect with family, friends and community members via a "Live Connect" at the York Public Library on Tuesday evening, July 10, and for those who could not be a part of that event, they continue to log their progress and their pictures on the website.
Find out more about what is happening with Pantanal Team 9 by visiting http://www.expeditionpantanal.org/.
