UTB-TSC students to study India's monsoon forests

Andres Garcia has spent many hours studying the cloud forest of Rancho del Cielo in Mexico.

Now he’ll get to view the wildlife in India, along with his friend Pablo Quintanilla. The two students at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College will leave Tuesday

"Oh, it feels awesome," said Garcia, 24, who just completed his bachelor’s degree in biology. "It’s great that me and my co-worker Pablo are going."

The two young men will get to visit mountain rainforests seldom accessible to ecotourists or other visitors, said Larry Lof, director of the Rancho del Cielo Field Station Program.

Lof was on the field station committee that selected Garcia and Quintanilla to take the trip, which is funded by the Manuel and Mildred Sanchez Student Endowment and the Gorgas Science Foundation.

"It’s a really neat opportunity to see a counterpoint to places that they’ve worked in northeastern Mexico, in El Cielo," Lof said. By counterpoint, Lof meant that the students would now have exposure to not one but two mountain rainforests on opposite sides of the world.

While the rainforest at Rancho El Cielo is home to kinkajous, coatimundis, black bear, and a venomous snake called the fer-de-lance, the rainforest Garcia and Quintanilla will visit harbors elephants, tigers, and sloth bears, leopards, and many species of monkey.

"They got selected because they were students working with our department, and they had a history so they could appreciate the counterpoint of Northeastern Mexico and the Western Ghats, both being mountain rainforests," Lof said.

"They’re keeping a journal as well as a photo journal that they’re both supposed to keep, an extensive one from beginning to end. They’ll probably be making a presentation to Gorgas Science Society which is the science biology society on campus."

Rancho del Cielo is located in an isolated pocket of mountain cloud forest in the southern part of Tamaulipas, Mexico, according to the website gorgassciencefoundation.org/elcielo.

"Within a twenty mile radius, eight distinct forest ecosystems can be found," says the site. "The ‘El Cielo’ cloud forest offers students an opportunity to study a tremendous diversity of both plant and animal species."

ATREE (Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment) will coordinate the two students’ activities in India.

"They’re one of India’s premier research environmental conservation organizations and we have a long working relationship with them in publishing books and doing films on the Western Ghats," Lof said. "So we’ve known the people who are in charge of ATREE and worked with ATREE for many years." Lof said people from ATREE will serve as guides and will ensure that areas are available to them.

"India is a challenge if you’re on your own," he said.

Garcia and Quintanilla have spent countless hours at Rancho del Cielo assisting professors doing research.

"We usually just assist, maybe camera trapping," Garcia said. "You set a camera, and as the animal passes by it sets off a trigger and it takes a snapshot, and that’s camera trapping. And we’ve also set up bird nets to trap birds and then you kind of band them or you identify them."

Quintanilla has also enjoyed his work at Rancho del Cielo and is looking forward to the trip to India.

"Actually I am very excited," said Quintanilla, 25, a computer information systems senior.

"I think it’s a good opportunity, like to see the contrast with Rancho del Cielo where we have been working for years as far as wildlife aspects and the environment," he said.

Garcia plans to continue his education and hopes this trip will help him get into graduate school.

Aug. 10 to visit the monsoon forests of the Western Ghats Mountains of Southwestern India.

"Especially with all the field work, like ATREE, they do a lot of conservation work, it’s field work," he said. "So hopefully this field work will kind of boost my application, and show that I have more field experience than just Rancho del Cielo and doing some work around here in the Valley, but actually traveled and did something with other organizations on the other side of the world."