primatesperu

Please visit the About Us page which now includes bios on several new PrimatesPeru team members!

Though we've been doing our best to plan for all the details of this project in advance, like clockwork, each month presents several unforseable developments.  Fresh from the month of June we've encountered some difficulties in dealing with Peru's National Insitute of Natural Resources (INRENA), which oversees the preservation of the country's natural resources and wildlife and issues permits for any related research. Unfortunately for us, Peru has chosen to consolidate this office under the Ministry of Agriculture and Development, which has translated into extra vigilience on our part to ensure that the handling of our research permits are not forgotten.  Sounds easy enough, right? Not so when, (1) we are not in the country and (2) we are not even in the same hemisphere.

The second major development is the unexpected costs of acquiring specialty equipment that is essential to the completion of our research.  Some of the tools required for rare procedures such as germ cell collection are proving more costly than expected.  We are discovering first-hand the true costs of working with companies that are the sole suppliers of certain technologies.  So far nothing insurmountable has come up, however, this month has certainly provided us with a shock or two.

On the plus side, since arriving in India we have been exploring some amazing natural environments on the Andaman Islands and around Bangalore City.  In the Andamans, we visited Parrot Island, which is a small piece of mangrove where 10,000 parrots nest every night.  On the way there and back we caught glimpses of the indigenous Jawara tribe from our convoy (sorry pictures were not allowed).

In Bangalore we went to the Bannerghatta National Park with a zoo and "safari" tour full of black bears, tigers, lions, and elephants.  Surprisingly, the only species we didn't see on the "safari" were the elephants.  For the most part we were impressed.  Unlike Africa, these Indian "safari" grounds are partitioned according to animal, enclosed, and replenished daily with food (hence the use of quotation marks).  In one sense, it is much like a zoo, except that the safari territories are very large, within which the animals live unbothered.  This system is not ideal but somewhat necessary given the large Indian population and proximity to Bangalore City.