Juani (Fire, Rain and a love for fauna)

Here I am again, 4 years later. In 2020 I was still 18 years old and I was collaborating in a puma survey project in my province of birth, Buenos Aires. I used to go out into the countryside and into the Camps to look for traces of this almost extinct feline and thus collected a lot of information, which was published by my first mentor Eduardo de Lucca. But my path in conservation had not yet fully begun.

That same 2020, after raising money working on a poultry farm in my town, I went to the Howler Monkey Rescue Center “Proyecto carayá”, in Córdoba (Argentina). I went as a volunteer for only 2 months during the summer, but it didn’t end up like that. I fell in love with the mountains of Córdoba and stayed for 8 months straight, at a time when the pandemic was still present. There I learned hard work, met great friends and learned a lot about wildlife management, both with black howler monkeys, capuchin monkeys, pumas, wild cats and foxes. In total, I spent almost 3 years between 2020 and 2023 at that centre. I had many experiences of capturing monkeys, many of them in the mountains, where I would explore in search of specimens that were moving away from their groups. On one occasion I spent more than 3 days alone in the mountains, with a small awning where I used to sleep, drinking fresh water from the river and eating boiled eggs and fruit.

At the end of 2022, I had a month-long experience in the Calilegua National Park, in the north of Jujuy as a volunteer, where I participated in the jaguar survey program, walking many kilometres a day in the dense yunga removing camera traps, which detected several jaguars. But my common enemy throughout these years was the fire that burned the jungle a few meters away and the smoke prevented us from seeing clearly.

In 2023 I decided to train as a Forestry Brigade and join a brigade in the province of Córdoba that fights forest fires, a common enemy of conservation. I managed to equip myself very well and have great experiences fighting fire, many of them near the reserve where I worked.

At the end of 2023, I decided that I wanted a new challenge, the Amazon was always a boy’s dream, and I always watched documentaries about expeditions in that region. For several years I followed the Inti Wara Yassi community and its work. On one occasion in 2022 I applied for a position and they accepted me, but at that time, when I was 20 years old, I decided to stay in Argentina. I applied again in 2023 and they accepted me as monkey coordinator at Machia Park, one of the 3 wildlife rescue centres that CIWY has in the Bolivian Amazon.

Today I have been in the jungle for my first 6 months. I am a caretaker of a somewhat remote management area in the jungle. In an area that needs maintenance and new air, one often learns to observe the behaviour of the groups of capuchins, squirrel monkeys and spider monkeys that live in the area. The jungle is also very hard, the rainy season has been intense since December, with days and days of non-stop rain, where clothes did not dry. One also learns to value everyday life in solitude with the jungle, to listen to the noise of the birds, the flowing stream and the monkeys, it is a mental work that I acquired over these few years.

In my free time, I like to explore the jungle even more, see waterfalls and see its fauna. Conservation for me is adapting to the place and being able to make do with what one has at one’s disposal, animals give you one of the greatest loves that can exist.

For more of Juani, check out @juancruz_mena on Instagram