In search of Guyana's biodiversity
GEORGETOWN, Guyana - GREEN parrots in the trees. Dwarf caymans in the road puddles. Fruit bats in the night, Jaguars in the jungles. Scientists call it biodiversity. Environmentalists say tropical forests have it in spades, but that we're in danger of losing it as humans stretch farther, crop closer and dig deeper. A few stalwart foreigners have been coming since the early 19th century to explore and capture it, up to the many rivers of this green and hot country on the north-eastern shoulder of South America. But just what benefits van biodiversity provide for one of the hemisphere's poorest countries, whose population is more interested in throwing some biodiversity into the stew pot than in protecting it? Those are questions a collaboration between the University of Guyana and the Smithsonian Institute is beginning to answer at South America's first Centre for the Study of Biological Diversity on the University Campus here. Launched in 1992 with funds from the Royal Bank of Canadaa, the Centre is the repository for specimens of plants and animals collected by foreign and national scientists and students. The idea is this: You have to know what species are present, where they occur and how they relate to the land and waters before knowing how - or even if - to protect them. The Centre's herbarium and zoological museum contain about 60 000 specimens of plants and mammals, fishes, birds, insects, reptiles, amphibians, butterflies and moths. Guyana is unique in the world, with 84 per cent of the country still covered with pristine rainforests - some 32 million acres. The forests grow atop one of the world's oldest and most stable granite bases, known as the Guyana Shield, which dates back some 2.5 billion years. Though life has had a long, long time to evolve and adapt here,, the sheer inaccessibility of the jungles has kept Guyana one of the most unexplored and unknown places on earth. "Collecting has been going on here since the 1800s, but scientific sampling is only a very recent phenomenon," said the Centre's young, self-taught computer specialist, Naseem Nasir, who has started plotting on a geographic information system precisely where the specimens in the Centre's prim white cabinets, heavy wooden drawers and glass cases were collected. Scientists have tended to collect specimens where they can get relatively easy access - along river corridors, where you can travel by boat, in the flattish grasslands called savannahs, and near the capital city of Georgetown, at the broad, brown mouth of the Demerara River. "If you look at the map we've made that shows the density of species colelcted, you would conclude that the richest parts of Guyana, biologically, are near the capital city and along the rivers," Nasir said. "We know that's not true. The data is biased according to accessibility." In the past, foreign scientists by-passed the Guyanese entirely, shipping their specimens home to museums or universities with nary a thought for building home-grown research and education capacity to help Guyana define its own national patrimony as a tool for development and conservation planning. The Centre is attempting to encourage scientists to cover areas never explored before, particularly in the most remote jungles in the southern part of Guyana, which is considered part of Amazonia in terms of its animals and plants. The incentive for striking out across unknown terrain: discovering new species. Cynthia Watsonm the 20-year old curator of the zoological collection, said that she netted some 1 600 specimens of fish on a field trip she took last year along the coastal plan, including at least one fish of the characid family identified as a `holotype' or new species. Watson was so thrilled by her first field adventure she has decided to become Guyana's first professional ichthyologist. She showed a visitor some of the rivers' curiosities in glass jars, starting with the infamous piranhas, their mouths like a set of saw blades. "We have a lot of different kinds, but only two types attack humans - the red and the black piranhas," she said, holding up the jar to light. "They're really vicious. If yoou put your finger next to it, they snap it off." Hungry Guyanese do eat piranhas, Watson continued, though "it's not popular - too many bones." She continued the tour through drawers containing 200 different bats and 400 different species of birds - bitterns, limpkins, red and blue macaaws, trogos, contingas and the hoatzin, Guyana's national bird. "We call it the Canje Pheasant," said Watson, extending the dead bird's wings to show the unique hooks on the leading edge - thought to be a holdover from its reptilian ancestors. "They are real bad flyers. They use the hooks to climb trees." From ant-eaters to poison arrow frogs to fishing bats to labaries (the local name for the deadly pit viper bothrops), the animals and plants in the Centre's collection will hopefully start to inform the government of Guyana on the location of the country's biodiversity `hotspots'. As the richest environments are identified, Guyana can begin to plan for their preservation as eco-tourism sites, as sources of new chemical compounds for medicinal or cosmetic uses, as exotic fruits or specialty furniture woods, and, in the future, perhaps, as "carbon sinks" - that is, forested areas that can absorb carbon dioxide on a planetary scale, offsetting the effects of global warming. These uses of tropical forest could some day produce more income for Guyana than cutting down the forests to sell the timber. But to choose priority conservation sites, you have to know exactly what lives where. And the Centre for the Study of Biodiversity is in a race against time. "If you could survey every square mile of Guyana, you would have perfecr data," said Nasir. "But you can't wait for perfect data. By that time, the forest is sold for logging and gone." 
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