ML141217
People
Contributor
Date
Location
- Age
- Not specified
- Sex
- Not specified
- Playback
- Not specified
Media notes
Subject 1: (Interview). Subtitle: Brandon T. Bestelmeyer. Timecode In: 00:10:45. Timecode out: 00:20:44. Notes: Laguna del Tigre National Park; Oil development. Subject 2: (Interview). Subtitle: Barry Chernoff. Timecode In: 00:22:07. Timecode out: 00:46:10. Notes: Ichthyology. Equipment Notes: Stereo=1; Decoded MS stereo. Guatemala dat #6. log abs time 00 amience at dock with generator, but a squeak.. engineer fooling around. starts again at 1:40 (generator with crickets behind, nighttime sound. ends 9:48. ---- interview with Brandon Bestelmeyer (bb) 10:15 my name is brandon bestelmeyer and i am a community ecologist who uses ants to ask question about the diversity of life on the planet. ...i'm a finishing phd student at col. state univ. i'm the scientific team leader, i am responsible for directing an putting together the science. cj: doing field bio here in tough conditions, is it a hard job? bb: not really they take care of themselves, they know what they're doing and they go do it. cj: what is it about this place, what is unique about Laguna del Tigre and this whole ecosystem. bb: ....probably the single most important thing about Laguna del Tigre national park is that it's smack in the center of one of the largest areas of tropical forest left in central america. a lot fo the Mayan biosphere reserve has been used multiply to harbor populations, and this is one of the last holdouts, this is a place where there should be no compromise in terms of allowing deforestation and oil exploitation etc. 12:55 ** cj: and what is the situation with oil in this area. bb: well there's oil development going on within the core area, which is Laguna del Tigre biotope, there's been some grandfathered concessions that have come in and they've also allowed for some new development to occur inside the park, little is known about the env. impact, little env. impact work done and the effects of oil development in terms of contamination of groundwater, as well as having al the people come in on the roads to colonize the area and work in oil fields and illegal immigration to set up ranches and things like that has gone unmonitored and the impact unevaluated. cj:(we can hear boat?) cj: it's early so far, but how is it going? bb: oh the project is working good. We¿ve had a few snags in getting equipment to people but Barry Chernoff has found 50 percent of the fish species known in the area, he's found one new species (boat in background), folks are rg a lot of wildlife here which is actually pretty encouraging considering the level of human impact here, and the diversity is of many of the groups seems relatively unimpacted. (boat sound..we wait) 15:09 cj: on oil exploration. What about the govt of Guatemala? Are they behind you? bb: they are actually, the guat govt is stuck in a very difficult position, on one hand this is a rel. poor country and they need resources to develop and it happens that 40 percent of Laguna del Tigre park overlays an area that is compatible with oil development so it's bad luck in planning of park with respect to some of those oil national resources. so consejo national por areas protejidas conap actually wants us to perform this...it's actually a govt regulatory organization that runs the national parks. and they are interested in having do this work so they can better decide where further oil development should occur. 16:22 (ticks crawling up linda's leg...."what are these, little ticks? oh yeah! are we standing in a tick field? 16:34 yes we are. take a look at this leg. see all those little ones. linda..all right i can put boots and pants on, that would keep the ticks off? cj: no that's all right. end 17:12 START AGAIN: 17:45 CJ: CONAP WHAT THEY WOULD DO WITH THIS INFO? BB: THEY REALLY WANT US TO GET THIS INFORMATION FOR THEM, THEY HAV... (Notes truncated)
Technical information
- Recorder
- Microphone
- Accessories
Archival information
- Cataloged
- 4 Sep 2009 - Ben Brotman
- Digitized
- 4 Sep 2009 - Ben Brotman
- Edited
- 4 Sep 2009 - Ben Brotman