A Tapir Gallery Online Reprint

TPF News header
Vol. 4, No. 8 ~ August 2001                         A publication of the Tapir Preservation Fund ~ Astoria, Oregon, USA


Online tapir community

Receivng your great letters is one of the benefits of this business. We get lots of them, and I’m going to apologize again this month for the delay in answering, and I have to share this one with you. When Judith Norton (a long-time Club Tapir contributor) signed up for another year, she also signed up newlyweds Laura Zeigen and Alan Bernstein, who, we hope, are going to enjoy seeing tapirs in their mailbox each month. (Welcome!)

In addition, Judith wrote: “Thank you for all your work. I stumbled across Club Tapir two years ago through Earth Angels and take great delight in reading stories about tapirs and other good efforts for our planet. I recently used Club Tapir as an example of a viable online community for a master’s class presentation on Community. Skeptics were converted, and now know a lot more about tapirs!”

It was quite a compliment to be mentioned in this way. It’s been one of our goals, and a very rewarding one, to help foster this growing tapir community. And the community is succeeding. It’s not large, but it continues to grow and to offer something back to the people in the field who work to save and learn about our designated animals and their habitats. It’s also a community of very special people. Tapir people are some of the nicest we’ve ever met - without a doubt.


Donations and wooden animals

Judith Norton discovered us through the Earth Angels, a group of inner-city kids in St. Louis who we met online. Through earth-friendly events such as angel pin sales and cleaning up cans from the streets and parks, recently sent us yet another 500 hard-won dollars. This brings the total of their contributions to the Tapir Preservation Fund to $3,000. Some of this money has been used for land purchase and conservation efforts in Ecuador.

The recent check went to purchase another shipment of wooden tapirs made by hand in Brazil. These are being sold in the Tapir Gallery Gift Shop, which will increase the Angels’ donation through sales. This is our second shipment, purchased with the logistical help of Patricia Medici. She bought them for us from “Didi,” an artist who works for Morro do Diabo State Park, where Patricia conducts her collaring studies. The carved tapirs are elegant and graceful, and have been very popular. In addition, Didi created a wonderful wooden capybara with its baby and two luscious giant anteaters. (Can giant anteaters be “luscious”? Wait and see! The answer is “Yes!”) We’ll let you know when they’re available.


New project for Club Tapir

Anah Tereza de Almeida Jácomo is a PhD candidate studying at the Universidade de Brasília-Brazil. To date she has radio-collared 11 lowland tapirs, and hopes to collar 10 more this year. The project, entitled “Ecology and Conservation of Tapirs in Emas National Park and Surrounding Farmland” is conducted in Brazil’s Cerrado. Anah described it in the following letter written in June:

“The Cerrado is Brazil’s second most extensive biome after the Amazon. It covers two million square kilometers and spans 21 degrees of latitude. Its savanna-like vegetation includes a variety of habitats, including riparian forest, marsh, and grassland. The Cerrado has lost over 45% of its natural vegetation to farming, large dams, mining, urbanization, and other large-scale human activity. Consequently, with the loss of natural habitat wildlife is rapidly becoming confined to protected reserves.

“Emas National Park (ENP), with its 132,000 hectares located in central Brazil, more precisely in the extreme southwest of the State of Goiás, at 18019’ S and 520 45’ W, is one of the country’s largest Cerrado reserves. However, its protected fauna have been suffering with the pressure of insularization due to intense farming activities in the surrounding area.

“Emas Park is widely known for protecting populations of large mammals such as tapirs, peccaries, maned wolves, pumas, and jaguars. Tapirs apparently play important roles in the Cerrado ecology, especially through seed dispersing and by representing one of most important prey biomass for the jaguar. Despite their ecological importance, there are virtually no field studies considering their ecology and conservation in the Cerrado. This research was designed to collect information on the ecology of tapirs in a continuous preserved Cerrado (ENP) as well as in fragmented Cerrado in farmland. This information will be used in the conservation and management of tapirs in the Park as well as in private Cerrado areas.

“Since April, 2000, 11 tapirs (6 males and 5 females) have been captured and radio-collared. Although the individuals were captured in the Park, they all have home ranges overlapping Park and farmland area. Data on their sociality, reproduction, home range, diet and habitat use are being collected. Blood and serum samples are being stored for future genetic and epidemiology studies.

“The project has just been given a vehicle and now most urgently needs funding support for sedatives, for making more tapir traps, and gasoline for radio-tracking marked animals. In the project’s current situation, grants from $200 to $700 will fulfill my needs.”


Baby balata rubber tapir, sitting
Balata rubber baby tapir from Guyana. We received three in the typical dog-sit position, and more that are standing. The standing tapirs will be online soon.


Fundraisers back online

We had planned to put special fundraisers on eBay until November to help bring people from tapir range countries to the Tapir Symposium. Our first auction featured two unique balsa wood tapirs donated by Ian Rose of the Oriente Fund. You may have noticed we were quiet after that, as moving halfway across the country distracted us.

In August we posted several items on eBay and were happy that a number of you bid on them. There will be more to come, so stay tuned to the Tapir Gallery Update (e-mail tapir@tapirback.com to join the list) or check eBay for “TPF Fundraiser.” Several of the nifty items we’ve put up lately have been animals other than tapirs, but of course tapirs remain the focus. One of the upcoming items on eBay will be a pair of “tapir tapers,” tapir-shaped candleholders donated by Mark and Carol Reid.


Panama: Tapirs and presidents

One of our most loyal tapir supporters is Alex Cárdenas. He is a Panama currently studying physics in the U.S. When he returned home to Panama over the last Christmas and New Year’s vacation, he reported seeing images of tapirs on a large wall in a tunnel. Here “people have painted the faces of former presidents and historic places in Panama. They’ve also painted some local animals, and I saw a tapir on the wall. Each picture is very big, several meters long.” Of course, he also went to El Nispero Zoo and saw the two live tapirs there.


We applaud Woodland Park Zoo . . . and bananas

Christine Kim, one of Club Tapir’s consistent donors, wrote to us on December 11, 2000, “ . . . The last time Rob and I were at the Woodland Park Zoo [in Seattle] we saw live video footage of the baby tapir getting scratched down - Heidi [Frohring, tapir keeper and member of Club Tapir] sprayed something on its coat and started massaging it, and eventually it flopped over with its feet sticking straight out. . . . Its snout kept maneuvering to stay near the banana Heidi had in one hand as she was rubbing it down. This was definitely one of our top tapir moments!"


Lowland tapir in the wild.

Lowland tapir in the wild.
WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT: These beautiful photos of lowland tapirs in the wild were taken by Alexine Keuroghlian, an American who has been living and working in Brazil for many years. Her work on peccaries consists of research and conservation in the Pantanal region. The location is Rio Negro Farm, South Pantanal. Photo © 2001 Alexine Keuroghlian.


A gift from the Symposium

The Tapir Symposium is not only asking for donations, it will give one. We’ll have both a live auction and a silent auction. Each attendee is asked to bring an item from their country to sell. It doesn’t have to be expensive, but we hope it will be interesing. Funds raised will be presented from the symposium to Dr. Daniel Janzen to help purchase tapir habitat in the Guanacaste Reserve in Costa Rica.



Editors:
Sheryl Todd, tapir@tapirback.com
Kate Wilson, kmwilson@mindspring.com




Club Tapir winners for July 2001

1st place: Charles Foerster and the tapirs of Corcovado National Park, Costa Rica

Thanks to your generous donations, Club Tapir raised a total of $726 in July. Of this, Charles Foerster will receive $581. As this newsletter goes to print, Charles is in the field in Costa Rica working on his project. Our last two issues of TPF News discussed the purpose of his new study using exclosures and showed pictures of them. Charles wants to be able to quantify and illustrate what could happen to the forest if the taiprs disappeared. This may be one of the best ways ever devised to teach people the value of keeping the tapir population healthy. Hunting is a threat to tapirs even in protected areas such as Corcovado National Park.

Charles told us in June that $500 would allow him to build six more exclosures. This month’s donation should do the trick, and allow a bit left over for additional costs or other supplies needed. We’ll keep you posted.

By the way, if you are attending the Symposium in San Jose, Costa Rica, this November and want to see Charles’s work first-hand, he’ll be leading a small group to Corcovado after the conference. Contact him by e-mail: CRFoerster@aol.com. Remember, he may be in the field when you read this and unable to reply immediately.


2nd place: First International Tapir Symposium, 2001

You’ve seen the Symposium in the Winner’s Box before, and it’s back again this month. This month’s second-place win will put another $145 of Club Tapir’s money into the fund. To that, we add $55 earmarked by two Club Tapir donors to go directly to the Symposium rather than to be counted as votes. You can do that! Money raised for the Symposium will help bring participants from tapir range countries. In fact, much of the Symposium’s $56,000 budget will be used to help participants. Costs for some key people will be high because of round trip airfare from places such as Asia. Every bit we can raise will help. We’re still short about $15,000 of the total budget. Over 60 abstracts of papers and posters have been received from around the world.

See Caligo Ventures' Web site for details and registration: http://www.caligo.com/tapir/



Club Tapir Donor List for June, 2001

Masayuki Adachi, Japan
Christopher Anderson, USA
Kevin & Janet Anderson, USA
Michelle and Scott Babcock, USA
Jo Ann and Cemil Bayrakci, USA
Rana Bayrakci, USA
Corinna Bechko & Gabriel Hardman, USA
Barbara Boon, USA
Karin Bronnenberg (Drewnitzki), USA
Alex Cárdenas, Panamá
Oliver Cartwright, England
Steve Cremer, USA
Sharon Danielsen, USA
Gary Davis, USA
Nicola DeBolt, USA
Irma & Guenter Drewnitzki, Germany
Ellen Dwight & Ken Aron, USA
Rachel T. Emmer, USA
Michelle Farthing, USA
Kevin Flesher, USA
Heidi Frohring, USA
Della Garell, USA
Shannon Hiemstra, USA
Kristen Hode, USA
Hodge & Hodge, USA
Peter Jackson, USA
Audrey Jakab & Alejandro Berlin, USA
Sally & Harvey James, England
Gernot Janda, Austria
Kathy Knight, England
Dawn Kravagna, USA
Carol Langford, USA
Laura, USA
Dean Leverett, England
Rob Lyman & Christine Kim, USA
Andy Markley, USA
Amy Marshall, USA
Patricia Medici, Brazil
Dennis Milam, USA
Derek Mix, USA
James Nelson, USA
James Norton, USA
Judith Norton, USA
Kieran O’Donoghue & Bob Biggs, Australia
Verena Pipper, Germany
Justine Powell, Australia
Carol Reid, Canada
Mark A. Reid, Canada
Ayéssa Rourke, USA
Peggy Shaver, USA
Wendy Skriver, USA
Timothy Somers, USA
Mike Souza, USA
Tamsin Spargo, England
Michele Stancer, USA
Michele Stansbury, USA
Lauren Svitil, USA
Alex & Susan Sze, USA
Gary & Beth Todd, USA
E.V. Todd, USA
Ted and Lois Todd, USA
Jenifer Van Vleck, USA
Kate Wilson, USA
Sally Woodcock, England
Laura Zeigen & Alan Bernstein, USA


All tapirs are endangered species.
Saving tapirs helps save the rainforest.


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