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we went up a lot of trees here in the Amazon and we learned all about the different kinds of creatures that live in the Tree Tops particularly the beasts and how much they love or hate you depending on which tree you climb it was a whole Adventure but crucially we managed to deploy our first batch of camera traps there to see what Wildlife we could find and I can confidently say that the results are incredible including some very elusive animals that rarely get spotted let alone filmed in the natural environment and we're of course doing all of this in order to start Gathering the necessary data to protect reconnect and restore the forest canopy of our land and eventually The
Wider rainforest Beyond and in this video today you'll get to see all of those Adventures see all the camera trap footage and learn about the two projects we are setting up to Rew the rainforest canopy so with all the bits of gear prepared for our first proper climb it was time to set out and find an emerging Tree near the mandari lodge further Downstream from our land it is doable I think so we might have to join the ropes together but um it is quite tricky to properly show you the true size of this giant tree but as a reference it has to be at least 13 or 14 stories tall now we definitely don't have the skills to figure out how to get up there ourselves but thank y we found the right man for the job this is
Oli thiago's climbing partner and Moss Earth member who has spent plenty of time in the Ecuadorian Amazon and also the Rope access Pro that has helped us at some of our other vertical rewilding projects with his small company called ropey science nevertheless this big tree is still a challenge even for someone with all these credentials but we didn't just pick it to mess with him we picked it because it is covered in epifit which are these plants that live non-p parasitically on the branches of tall trees and among these we are particularly interested in the tank Brads that can store water up there and will play a role in our project and this particular tree happened to be covered
in so basically the idea is to shoot it over that massive Branch there and it'll come down the other side and then from that we can TI on the flying Ro and put it back over do you think it hasn't gone over no we need to try again because it's in the broken Branch maybe the broken one it's not maybe it's dry it's Can it can be danger yeah I mean it'll probably come with enough pulling but the problem with that is it's going to if you put it really hard it fires towards you maybe ifo's like over there all right yeah we'll clear up boom so this was not an easy process duee to the height of the branch and the sheer amount of epip fites however after quite a few shots and a bit of wrangling OE managed to hit his Target I think this is a 60 M throw line
and as you can see we run out of roope huh it's probably 32 M up to that then it was a matter of pulling the actual climbing rope in place and giving it a final test and OE was ready to climb uh it's good but the bees are all like really coming out now from this point on all hell broke loose for Olie the bees coming out of this giant beehive started going crazy and while they did not sting they did bite pretty hard I think I'm going to come down be ABS out of see so this is um there's one in your ear I've lost count of where they are actually it turns out the uh best view in the jungle it's also Prime real estate for bees so that was our first proper tree a bit of a rough start but a start
nonetheless after this it got dark and we couldn't figure out what to do next so we decided to head back and give all the arrest what just happened to you ollie just uh bit in an intimate spot by be but like 20 minutes after you came down yeah well they're all in my socks and I think they just make way over the next few days things started going better and OE rigged some more trees without giant beehive so we could all have a crack at climbing to explore this place a bit more as you can see around me the canopy is a very diverse place it's because the canopy architecture with its different branches and Cavities creates a lot of different microhabitats for these different plant species and actually the plant community that we'll find in the
inner canopy will be quite different from what we would find on the branches in the outer canopy the crowns of these trees form a complex three-dimensional habitat home to mosses ferns Brads and orchids as well as Vines such as iasa and Lanas and even the killer Strangler fig this place is brimming with life but it is hard to stay up there for long and we often scared away the wildlife after only a quick glance so it was time to deploy our cameras so the reason we're setting up the camera traps up there is that there are many species that don't even come to the ground of the forest so they only live in the canopy so we're setting up the camera trap so that we can capture those species as
well this was fun and interesting work involving long hours in the jungle with a lot of time spent firing the slingshot and disentangling the line as well as climbing up and down the rope and often finishing lades in the day it's such a cool place to be there's all of this myth in the forest uh nice light and you see all of these Lanas all these epip fites it's uh really incredible so I'm going to meet uh Ollie up there is a fast climber and uh we're going to set up this uh this camera trap up there to see what we can find so we figured that we would have the camera trap facing this Branch behind me uh so Ollie is up in a tangle there uh trying to get into position so we can get the camera trap up there
facing this Branch it just seems to be connecting nicely to the rest uh of the canopy and to be a long uh Branch so hopefully we can capture some Wildlife okay so here we are in the second tree of the day just put the camera trap down here it's facing out on another branch that goes off into another tree there is an absolute mountain of sweat bees up here I don't know whether you can see but they have gone into every single orifice of my body so we're just going to head down now and get out of this and once the first climber went up the whole crew underground would get swarmed by sweat bees which led to many original attempts at getting rid of them with mixed results this hairstyle is a pretty effective it's like the SP ceremony have
you ever done that the what ceremony the spa ceremony I think they do something like together Thiago OE and haime our neighbor who took to tree climbing like a duck to water managed to keep six cameras recording up there for about 3 weeks as an initial test run now while we wait for the results to come in I would like to introduce you to our first canopy project using a concept which we've named Sentinel trees and it all begins with the Brads so I'm up a really tall tree again this time I'm uh sitting nicely on the branch this is uh a beautiful view but there's a ton of sweep pees but the purpose really of being up here is because we spotted some uh some tankier looking broads uh that
essentially means that they hold a bit more water like that and they're the ones that form these really nice Sky Wetlands so just wanted to show you that and I managed to film one down there that had a bit of water uh so that you can sort of see how that looks and these really hold a lot of water just look at how much of it was spilling over during all his ordeal with the bees it's pretty impressive that is an abundance of water in a place where it is a scarse resource so it's no wonder that it is an important habitat for many animals which for us means it's an interesting place to look to understand what lives here take this study here for example the author sampled Brads in the
yasuni region looking for amphibians and reptiles and they found 10 species of frog one gecko one snake and two lizard species inside the Brads of the 32 trees they climbed so this gave us an idea we are going to pick a certain number of trees where we will monitor what species we find over time using the water in these Brads to detect environmental DNA this will help us detect as near as possible to species level what animals are drinking this water using the broads as a bit of a bathroom and of course the ones that use them to hide and to lay their eggs and since going up a tree is quite a bit of work we thought we would take the opportunity to also deploy two more devices the first is a camera trap
of course to allow us to visually identify the species which as you will see from our little experiment here has worked quite well we'll be using a new rigging system that oi came up with which allows us to swap the batteries and SD cards without having to climb each tree every time allowing us to keep the cameras in these trees for longer with a lot less effort then the second device we want to deploy is an audio recorder and the potential is huge you see by monitoring the sound of a rainforest we can create a soundscape of the biodiversity that lives there which has been proven to be very effective in detecting the ecological state of that rainforest we based this on a paper
published in nature which is super insightful but more on that one after we launch this when we get to analyze our first bits of sound for us our goal will be to build a soundscape library of how the forest around here sounds like in different stages of recovery this will essentially give us a clear picture of the species composition and the mature forest and the abandoned cow pastures on our land and then allow us to compare this with the results we get in the more pristine forests deeper in the yasuni national park or in the more degraded areas near the oil roads this will allow us to measure our progress and we'll be able to provide these data sets to local students to query and publish research
from which has the added benefit of building this biodiversity monitoring capacity in Ecuador and all this is part of a broader effort to use our lands to build a hybrid between a research station testing Rew Wilding interventions a local capacity building Hub and a tourism Outpost deep in the yasuni region of the vast Amazon rainforest to try and create bigger and broader Regional impact and to achieve this we will be spending around 250,000 here in the next 2 years covering the two projects in this video and quite a few more that we are yet to reveal to you and all of this work the buying of the land to protect it and the development of these projects is only made possible by the support of our Mossy Earth
members people like you watching this video that decide to contribute a small amount every month towards our work we then use this money to build our own Rew Wilding teams on the ground to maximize impact and transparency and those teams then develop these projects based on good science to ensure they have a solid foundation and ultimately that they are able to restore the wild ecosystems that we all want to see Thrive right now we have our own teams in Ecuador Scotland Portugal and Indonesia helping bring back all sorts of amazing habitats and supporting all kinds of wonderfully diverse Wildlife it's super fun but above all impactful and if it sounds like something for you then please consider becoming a member at moss.
Earth okay so that was our first project and before we talk about the next one it is finally time to look at the results from our camera trap so this here is a canopy Highway and it is essentially a set of branches that connect to another tree and allow the animals to move through the forest without ever having to go down to the forest floor and as you can see the branches they're all a bit more bare because so many animals have been walking back and forth along them and that is of course why we've been setting our camera traps here and I can promise you this place gets a lot of traffic it was really cool to get a glimpse of these animals in their natural environment there were kingu everywhere they are these cute
animals in the family of the raccoon and when they're not busy exploring the canopy they took an interest in our cameras and while some were clearly scared others wanted to get a closer look and so did this creature at first we weren't sure what it was until it revealed a unique feature this is of course a two- toad sloth and later we managed to see it moving about at its trademark speed it's an animal we were not lucky enough to spot despite our best attempts so it is really cool to have its presence confirmed in our land there was of course this charming saki monkey that was trying to adjust the framing much like one does when taking a selfie these sakis were so Nimble it was
beautiful to see just how comfortable they are jumping around like this at 30 m above the forest floor even when they are carrying a precious burden on their backs and we also saw all sorts of other wonderful Birds including some which are very difficult to spot such as this nocturnal kurasa and then we saw this animal this is an arboreal porcupine probably either the Amazonian longtailed porcupine or the Brazilian porcupine while this porcupine here in another tree might actually be the elusive streak dwarf porcupine this would be a very cool record to have on our land and I think it clearly illustrates why we need to put camera traps up there to understand this place better and why we need to keep them there not just for a
few weeks but ideally for a few years the potential is enormous and it will all be made possible with alli's rigging system and in case you're curious to see more of this footage we have cut an extended video of the climbing adventures and the full clips from these camera traps and uploaded it to our Mossy Earth field notes Channel where we share regular under theground updates from our projects ranging from how much the deployed Coral has grown to the nitty-gritty of seagrass and oyster restoration projects among many others so I think it's a great way to catch up if you're a member and if you're not yet a member but maybe are considering supporting us it's a really good place
to learn about our work so be sure to head over there and subscribe if it is interesting for you now seeing all of these animals move about the canopy is what inspired our second project you see rainforest fragmentation is a big problem because it can lead to alterations to Forest Dynamics structure composition and microclimate making the landscape more susceptible to droughts and fires and the proof is right in front of us as the only deforested part of our land was so dry that it suffered from a fire that spread through the cow pasture after an electrical pole fell on it this happened yesterday guys yesterday just yesterday in about 2 hours everything was gone everything was gone in 2 hours it's totally burning everything
it's still a fire there look at that so in this part was amazing the last time I make one time make a look at this huge tree can you see the mark of this tree here that was a big tree none of the forest was burnt which tells you a lot about why these small pockets of fragmentation are so dangerous and why a continuous healthy Forest is really important we will be implementing some active measures to recover the forest here and also to help local people protect and recover their own forests through tourism and other bioeconomies but for this project we want to focus on the connectivity of the wildlife populations and once again our land is the perfect testing ground you see we
have this road here that slices the land in two as well as the open pockets created by the cacao plantations and the cow pasture this significantly hampers the movement of Wildlife and it is something I noticed myself while filming the wildlife particularly the various groups of monkeys that tend to stay in the same area in this corner here we have a group of red Titi monkeys and golden mantle tamarins and up here in the more mature rainforest we have the saki monkeys that you saw on the camera traps then on the other side of the caca plantations the cow pastures in the road we have another group of titis and another group of sakis and further down near the river we have another group of
golden mantle tamarinds and some night monkeys as well now some of this is due to territory of course but what was immediately obvious to me while trying to film the monkeys in this area here was that they always escaped this way whenever we eventually spooked them regardless of whether we were coming from the road or from the forest the monkeys here would always Retreat along the canopy and deeper into the forest and that is because their habitat is fragmented I saw them dozens of times right here next to the road but not a single time on the other side of the road which was a really clear sign that the lack of continuous canopy is a significant barrier for a Boral animals
like them who really don't like to come down from the safety of the trees now picture this at scale with all the fragmentation that exists in these areas that have been logged and have been getting worse over the last 30 years the problem is quite big thankfully though there is a neat short-term solution we can Implement at least for the animal sake which is a canopy Bridge these are simple structures but they have a proven track record which we know because our partners at conservation evidence collect information on a wide range of practices and then ask experts to give them a rating based on the papers they gathered this one has 10 papers backing it up and it is rated as beneficial because it scores at about 80% in
Effectiveness meaning it is effective in achieving its objectives and 70% in terms of certainty meaning there is good evidence for it so we will start by testing the various types of canopy bridges on our land in 2020 25 and then monitoring the results with camera traps to see which ones work best for most species in our region one of the challenges we are looking to overcome is how to build a canopy bridge that also works for amphibians reptiles and invertebrates that suffer from the same problems as mammals of course because as far as we know no one has designed a bridge that works for them as well so if you have any ideas please leave them in the comments down below and we will try
to implement them now all of this testing will allow us to pick the best Bridge types to deploy as far and wide as we might be allowed in the region to rebuild Wildlife networks and increase the resilience of those populations and at the end of this whole Adventure it was finally my time to climb one of the Giants of the Amazon one that managed to survive the logging and still stands proudly to this day on our land so from up here I can see most of the canopy of our land and I must say that it has been an absolutely magical experience to get to know this habitat a bit better and have the chance to explore it here in our land so I hope you've enjoyed it as well and just a reminder that this project and all our
other projects are only possible because of our Mossy Earth members so if you'd like to support our work then please consider heading over to moss. Earth to learn more and uh now it's time I uh figure out how to uh how to get down from here and get my feet back on a firm steady ground until next time cheers
