The four wheel drive truck stopped at 8 in the evening in the middle of nowhere. There was no longer a trail to follow so we carefully got out of the truck. Jose Vallejos and Robyn Appleton, members of the Society for the Spectacled Bear Conservation (SBC), and I adjusted our headlights and our backpacks and headed to Cerro Venado on foot. Three hours later we met with Isa Sánchez and Javier Vallejos, also members of the SBC, in the first camp site under the light of the crescent moon and the stars. Me moved some stones to level the ground, laid out our sleeping bags and said goodnight.From Canada to Chiclayo
Robyn Appleton has had a fascination for bears ever since she was a girl. She studied biology and got a masters on these admirable mammals. On one of her trips, she decided to visit Peru to see a friend who worked in the Chaparrí Reserve. From that moment she fell in love with the Peruvian spectacled bear.
At the end of 2006, together with his friend and right hand, Javier Vallejos, he started a long journey on foot searching for bears in the surroundings of Laquipampa and Incahuasi until he reached Batán Grande. He was convinced that he would find them. One December morning, after unloading their backpacks from a mototaxi and wandering for hours, they saw their first bear. Fifteen minutes later, they saw another one climbing down a hill. They camped on the top of a hill for a week in order to watch these animals.
When they started to run out of food (and without the will or strength to go to the nearest town to get more) they saw a mother bear with her two cubs walk right in front of them right before entering the dry woods. In three weeks times, they had the opportunity to observe over eight spectacled bears. The study had begun. The SBC had taken its first step.
Laura the bear
We awoke at 5 in the morning thanks to the cries of some emerald parakeets and an eagle flying over us. Javier and Isa discovered that Laura, one of their favorite bears, had given birth to her first cub a couple of days ago. The night before our arrival, they had left her sleeping a couple of meters away from the campsite. Well, 200 meters up a 60º slope, to be exact; that is, a two hour walk.
Laura was one of the first bears that they found when hey started the project and ever since she was a year and a half, she let them approach her without showing signs of fear. That is why her, and two other bears, were chosen to be part of the first chapter of the project. Each one of them was equipped with a GPS collar to monitor their movements. The preliminary report that was sent to the General Management of Flora and Fauna of the Ministry of Agriculture (DGFFS) says:
“The data that we have received from the GPS collars are of great importance because they help us understand the life span of wild bears in the dry woods and how they use their habitat. The most important positions were given in Ocotber 2008 when we found a bear in an area that we thought bears never reached. This place consisted of 100 to 500 meter tall rocks (…) a young male walked over 150 kilometers in less than a week. We are now understanding the needs of a young male and the living space that a bear requires. We have also confirmed that males change the use of their habitat during the different seasons. In summer they descend to 200 meters over sea level to eat sapodilla fruit and find females. During the winter, the young males climb back up to the most remote areas where they can feed off the pasallo trees, bromeliads and snails.”
Laura was lying next to her cub at the foot of a rock wall. When she saw us arrive she shyly growled as a warning sign. The cub raised its eyes to look at us and then went back to playing with a dry branch. We stayed there all day observing them. The temperature was of 32 degrees Celsius and we stood on 20 square centimeters on the slope but we did not mind. The show was amazing.
The cub was restless and did not stop playing. It climbed on its mother’s back then it climbed back down and bit her paw; then her ear. It wobbled while inspecting the area and then went back to sleep. It drank Laura’s milk in intervals of approximately one hour making constant slurping noises. Then it got up and drank its mother’s saliva as if it were kissing her. Laura always played along.
When the sun started to set, she placed her cub face up on the ground and started licking it as if she were bathing ad cleaning it before bed. We collected our things and walked up the slope looking for a place to camp and stay the night. When Laura saw us leave, she got up and approached the spot where we had been to check that everything was in order.
More about the bears
The Spectacled Bear is the only one in South America. It became known around the world thanks to Micahel Bond’s Paddington Bear which told the story of a Peruvian Spectacled Bear who loved jelly.
This bear lives in the mountain range from Venezuela to Bolivia, including Ecuador, Colombia and Peru. In our country, they can be found at altitudes between 250 and 4500 meters.
The bears are four to six and a half feet long. Males weigh approximately 308 pounds, females about 176 lbs.
They are mainly vegetarian: they eat bromeliads, berries, any kind of cacti to keep hydrated, the heart of the pasallo tree, sapote fruit, snails and insects.
Life in Cerro Venado
South of the Laquipampa Wildlife Refuge, 60km north of Chiclayo, past the Batán Grande town and across orange, onion, corn and mango crops, we arrived in front of a fenced wall. This is where the hectares belonging to the El Cebú Farmers’ Committee in the Mochumí Viejo community begin. This is also the area of study of the spectacled bear in the northern dried woods. It is an extreme rural area that holds more life than we could ever imagine.
Across this limit we find a plain forest full of sapodilla and carob trees and giant cacti. Cerro Venado is a couple of kilometers away from this first site. It has almost vertical slopes in some places, flat rock slabs on its walls, massive weed and dehydrated tree sprouts on dry seasons and exuberant vegetation during the rainy season.
Despite the complicated conditions, life always appears here. Eight small pools of water or jagueys have been found in the highlands of this area which are the main available source of water during most of the year. The project has the goal of detecting the geographical distribution and abundance of bears in this unprotected – and protected, like Laquipampa – area. To achieve this, twenty “trap” cameras have been installed in these jagueys in order to complement the information collected from observation.
To the date, 33 bears have been identified in the area and valuable information about their feeding habits and journeys have been collected as well as pictures of the abundant fauna that lives there along with them like pumas, ocelots, deer, wildcats, etc. the most interesting finding is the proof that spectacled bears reproduce in their wild state.
