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This morning we made our last trek out to the park on the "washboard" road. Now that I'm feeling more rested and stomach has settled, it wasn't quite as bad as the other days. We birded along one perimeter of the park for a few hours, managing to tease out a shy Short-billed tinamou, along with the Rufous Casiornis (seriously, who thinks up these names?)
Marcelo gave us a mini-lecture on the ecology of the cerrado. The park covers 130,000 hectares of mostly dense grasses. During the rainy season, frequent lightning often ignites fires, a natural phenomenon for this ecosystem. The fires were not a problem back when the cerrado covered the entire region, but now that it is contained and surrounded by agriculture, fire can be devastating if left unchecked. In 2011, a new (unqualified) park superintendent did not maintain the controlled burn program and fire wiped out 70% of the park in just three days: vegetation, animals. It has slowly come back (no anteaters yet), but now they annually burn corridors to act as barriers limiting the natural fires. A different, essential ecosystem lives in the recently burned areas, seeds coming to life in the heat.
During the afternoon we drove the 400 km (6 hours) back to Campo Grande.
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Tracey Funny little Owls. Great picture.