Río Congo Arriba (Panama) (EFE).- In the forest of the Cerro Chucantí private reserve, in the Darién of Panama, a family of black spider monkeys (Ateles fusciceps rufiventris) have fun in the trees while eating. This is a common sight in this area of high biodiversity, although the Ateles fusciceps species is among the most endangered on the planet.
“There is nowhere in the world where you can see it as easily and in a good population as you see here” Ateles fusciceps, which “is in the top 25 most endangered primates in the world. So it’s kind of a conservation interest. That is impressive,” said Panamanian researcher Josué Ortega during an EFE visit to the reserve.
Due to unsustainable subsistence hunting, constant habitat fragmentation and illegal pet trade, Ateles fusciceps is among the 25 most endangered primates in the world, according to the Species Survival Commission’s Primate Specialist Group. of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (GEPN-IUCN).
And the Darién black spider monkey, a primate species endemic to Panama and Colombia, was declared Critically Endangered on the list of Threatened Species of the Panamanian Ministry of Environment in 2016.
But on Cerro Chucantí, “hunting is not a big problem.” What threatens the place the most is deforestation and illegal logging, but in recent years the size of the reserve “has doubled” to protect the area, the researcher explained.
A reserve with “overwhelming” biodiversity
Ortega, a researcher at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), based in Panama, and at the German Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior, has been in the Cerro Chucantí reserve for six years, in charge of monitoring terrestrial mammals.
In this private reserve, of about 800 hectares, there are also “the six species of felines registered for Panama”, among which are included the puma, the jaguar and the ocelot, and “not every place in Mesoamerica can afford to say so ”.
“We have a very complete chain of predators in Chucantí and that tells you that the forest is healthy (…) it is a special place. The biodiversity found on this site is overwhelming. There are always new species to science: a new insect, a new plant, a new snail, whatever. It never ceases to amaze me,” Ortega said.
This also speaks of the “science work” carried out by the Asociación Adopta Bosque Panamá, responsible for the reserve – which was created in 2003 with only 42 hectares – and of which Ortega is an associate researcher.
In the reserve area there are more than 40 camera traps, twenty in the canopy – the layer of branches and leaves formed by the tops of neighboring trees – and the others in the understory – the variety of vegetation that grows in the areas closest to the soil – explained Ortega
The idea is to collect data that allows understanding “the dynamics” of this neotropical forest, he added.
Dozens of new species discovered in Panama
Biologist Guido Berguido, executive director of the Panama Forest Adopt Association, told EFE that “more than 60 species that were not known to science have been discovered” since it was created almost two decades ago.
“And the most interesting thing is that almost the majority of these 60 species of plants, animals and fungi are endemic, they are not found anywhere else on the planet,” he said.
Both Berguido and the biologist Ángel Romero, associate researcher at Adopta Bosque Panamá, emphasized that the species that have been described are only found in a small area on the top of Cerro Chucantí, not in the entire reserve, let alone in the entire mountain. , which covers thousands of hectares and rises to 1,439 meters above sea level, the highest peak in the Serranía de Majé.
“The vast majority of these endemic species are found only in the very narrow altitudinal band that goes from 1,200 to 1,400 meters, which indicates great fragility. In a maximum area of 5 square kilometers is the entire population of these species,” said Berguido.
Of the 60 species discovered, 22 have already been described and another 4 are in process. One of them is Greta Thunberg’s frog (Pristimantis gretathunbergae sp. nov.), which belongs to the group of rainfrogs of the genus Pristimantis, Family Strabomantidae, Romero recalled.