Standing Guard: Saviours of the hooded grebe
BY EARTH TOUCH NEWS MARCH 12 2020
This story originally appeared on bioGraphic, an online magazine about nature and sustainability powered by the California Academy of Sciences.
Every December on the remote basaltic plateaus of southern Patagonia in Argentina, hooded grebes (Podiceps gallardoi) settle in to lay their eggs. Nearby, their personal guardians, field technicians charged with protecting the birds and their nests, stand watch. Armed with binoculars, flashlights, and shotguns, the guardians do whatever they can to eliminate threats to the grebes, although some perils are harder to see than others.
It is an extreme endeavour that requires both patience and warm clothing, says Ignacio "Kini" Roesler, a conservation biologist and ornithologist with Aves Argentinas, an environmental nonprofit in Buenos Aires, one of two main groups dedicated to protecting the hooded grebe. At up to 1,200 metres (3,900 feet) in elevation, the Patagonia steppe is a flat, open desert, dotted with more than a thousand glacial lakes, surrounded by rocky bluffs and framed by the Andes in the distance. The weather here is always harsh – windy and cold, even in the South American summer, when the hooded grebes build their nests on vegetation floating on the lakes.
The work of a colony guardian can be lonely. Other than a teammate or two for company, there is nobody around for hundreds of kilometres, and field stints in this harsh environment can last for weeks at a time. Despite the hardships, though, guardians are regularly reminded that their work is critical. "You are taking all this responsibility for the conservation of species," Roesler says. "So, it's pretty good actually – the feeling."
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