Barro Colorado Island and the Panama Canal
For the last day of our trip, we stopped at one of the most extraordinary research sites of the tropical Americas: Barro Colorado Nature Monument. This place includes an island and five surrounding mainland peninsulas on the southern shores of Lago Gatun, of which Barro Colorado Island (BCI) is the star. This biological reserve was created in 1923 as a scientific research base for the study of tropical ecosystems and has been managed by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STR) since 1946. BCI is the largest island within the Canal’s waterway, fringed by marshy grasslands and mangroves, while inland comprises primary lowland tropical seasonally deciduous forest. Wildlife abounds: four species of monkeys, 200 of ants, more than 400 species of birds and more than 1250 species of trees.
Through a special agreement between Lindblad Expeditions and the Smithsonian Institute we get to walk the trails of an otherwise almost-exclusively-for-scientists site. BCI has produced many of the scientific knowledge on Neotropical biology out there and for more than sixty years has been gathering data on weather, phenology, behavior, ecology and evolution. Today we could take walks through the many trails that are open to the public or a Zodiac cruise along the forested edges of the main island. We found out that the traps we saw were for capturing agouti, the nets we saw were for studying the phenology of beer belly trees, the night cameras were for spotting ocelots and even jaguars and tapir, and the black bags were to study solitary bees. Very few people get to learn about the importance of basic biology. If one does not understand the basics about monkeys, cats, trees and insects, we cannot protect them. How can you save something you do not understand? Tropical research and biology gives that to the world, understanding. Today we were part of knowledge, what else can you ask for?
To top it all, we had a daylight transit through the last set of locks: the Gatun Locks. Our week in Costa Rica and Panama took us through many different habitats and allowed many different activities. Can we live in a place as remote as the Casa Orquidea Botanical Garden? Could we spend six months on an island isolated from civilization like BCI? Whatever the answer to these questions, this week hopefully left us wondering: what if….
