National Geographic January-December 1983. I-II. [antikvár]

On Assignment DAVID AND CAROL HUGHES The rains fell every day during most of the 18 months that David and Carol Hughes spent in Costa Rica filming "Rain Forest," a new National Geographic TV Special to be shown January 12 on Public Television. Yet sometimes shelter was as close as the nearest giant leaf. The moisture that attacked their equipment and morale was only one of their many problems. At one point, Carol was poisoned by a potent caterpillar. "It was red and white and covered with long hairs," she said. "It fell off a branch as I was photographing it and gently brushed my arm. I felt a slight sting right away that slowly built into intense pain, spreading up my arm and into my chest. I really wondered whether this was it." However, the pain gradually ebbed away, leaving Carol unharmed but more wary. To film some of their most remarkable scenes—^like the ants inside the thorn of an acacia tree—the couple used fiber-optic probes to control tiny beams of light. More often , they captured images through sheer determination and patience. A collection of their photographs appears in this issue. "Rain Forest" is the third special the award-winning filmmakers have produced for the Society and WQED/Pittsburgh with support from the Gulf Oil Corporation. The others were "Etosha: Place of Dry Water" and "The Living Sands of Namib." A new film on African animals of the night is in the works. For photographer James P. Blair (below, left), who covered the story of earth's dwindling rain forests for two years, sharing a dugout with fellow traveler Bob Langenwalteron the Tapanahoni River in Suriname was a welcome break. After visiting so many areas where the forests were being destroyed, it was a joy, he said, to glide down an unspoiled waterway through an untouched forest. "Even the rain was refreshing." Jim's travels during 20 years on the Geographic staff have taken him from the quiet islands of Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic to the riot-torn black townships of South Africa, coverage that won the Overseas Press Club Award in 1977. For the rain forest story, he visited 11 nations on four continents, demonstrating the magazine's commitment, he said, to do comprehensive reporting. "To a photographer, that's one of the greatest gifts." WILBUR E. GARREH ALWYN gentry from the Missouri 1 Botanical Garden in St. Louis moves I swiftly among the tall trees of the I tropical rain forest in the Chocó ' region of Colombia, constantly excited, speaking rapidly in English, Kansas-accented Spanish, and Latin. Iryantheraporcata! Psychotria cooperi! Those are the names of plants whose branches he snips off with his garden shears and with a cutter at the end of an aluminum pole extendable up to 45 feet. Sometimes he'll climb higher than that, snipping as he goes. What he does has worldwide implications, as I can attest after many months of far-flung investigation. Gentry is cutting, one might say, into one of the most controversial issues of our day. His concern is nothing less than the survival of the world's tropical rain forests. If they don't survive, he tells me, there may one day be dire consequences for much of humanity. But for the moment he focuses on botanical marvels. "Just look at what's on that tree!" He counts off SO species that grow on it. Ferns, vines, bromeliads, orchids. There are a lot more, but the exciting thing about this tree as tall as a ten-story building, first spotted by Gentry the previous year, is that it is a species never described before. Ghillean Prance of the New York Botanical Garden, the specialist for the plant family Caryocaraceae to which it belongs, has named it Anthodiscus chocoensis. We swelter in the humidity of the rain forest just south of Quibdó, the capital of Chocó province, about 40 miles east across a range of hills from the Pacific coast. This is one of the wettest spots on earth. Recorded annual precipitation averages 10,000 millimeters. That's 400 inches, or 33 feet. Usually it rains every day, or every other day, heavily. I squeeze some moss on a tree trunk. It squirts like a wet sponge. High and relatively steady levels of heat and moisture are characteristic of tropical rain forests, as is the enormous variety of organisms. Whatfas-cinates me is that Gentry, along with other botanists, has of late collected data to show that this wettest region of South America may well be the most species-rich rain forest of them all. On sample plots adding up jq quarter of an acre he has counted 208 differ! ent tree species. In a forest of the temperate zone, say in the Missouri Ozarks, you migijf find 25. In New Hampshire, fewer still. To put it another way, the British Isles are said to have about 1,450 species of vascular plants—trees, shrubs, and herbs; Gentry has reported 1,100 on less than a square mile farther south in the Chocó region. To be sure, this species business is a tricky thing, and experts often disagree. Estimates of how many species of living things exist on earth vary widely, from four to ten million or even more, by far the most numerous being insects. Biologists believe that at least two-thirds of all species exist only in the tropics, and half of those only in tropical rain forests. Of the latter, the great majority have not yet been described by scientists. And so Gentry's find is not an isolated case. There's even a chance that today's snippings, stashed in a big black plastic bag and to be pressed tonight between newspapers and doused in formaldehyde, will turn out to contain a new species or two. I stand under Gentry's tree and look up. How beautiful, those waterdrops at the end of pointed leaves. The sun makes them glow Uke pearls. It hasn't rained in the past 24 hours, but drops keep dripping from one of the bromeliads up there. It's an arm-size clump containing its own little pool of water and a bit of soil with tiny, mainly microscopic plants and animals—a little world of its own. Splash, a pearl just hit my eyeglasses. A dark man with a grizzled beard comes walking along. What does he think of this tree? "It's a chagúalo," he says in Spanish. He appreciates it too: Its wood is strong and floats well; he could make it into a good dugout canoe and get a good price for it. For once, Gentry has been silent. Earlier he had told me that a lot of equally impressive trees he saw the previous year are no longer around. A road is being built nearby, and that's what happens when access becomes easier, people come and get the big trees. He was so angry he cursed. "Dammit, my forest's gone!" But wasn't there a lot of forest around us still? That set him off again. Couldn't I get it into my head that when the big trees go an awful lot of other species go too, which National Geographic, January 1983