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17/10/2005 Capture Macho 
After the last capture we only had
drugs left for one more dart. This could not be a miss or we would have
to wait for several more weeks until we could capture again. It was
another night with a full moon and looked like it was going to rain.
The rainy season just started and it has been raining quite a bit
during the last couple of days. The animal entered the collpa right
after midnight and Javier aimed well. The dart stuck and the animal did
not walk very far. We were very excited when we found out that it was a
male, the first one we caught. For this last capture we had the
complete team, including both César and Valeria and everything went
very smooth. We were able to collect all samples and the animal quietly
walked away after we injected the antidote.
29/09/2005 Capture Guerrera
One of the most
difficult captures. The animal walked far after we darted it and it
took us more than one hour to find it. By the time we got to it, it
woke up and started walking again before we could augment the dose.
When we finally found it again and gave it a second dose the animal
would freeze but would not lay down. We ended up putting the collar on
the animal standing. We called it Guerrera (warrior, or the "tough one"
in Spanish).
6/09/2005 Recovered Collar from Tormenta
Today we recovered the collar from
Tormenta. During an overflight we got a mortality signal so we went out
looking for it. Fortunately we found that the collar had fallen off and
that the animal is ok. The collar gave us the opportunity to evaluate
the performance of the GPS unit. It collected 138 position during the 8
days it was on the animal. This is a very promising result and shows us
what data to expect from this study.
29/08/2005 Capture of Noche
On
our second to last night we got lucky. At 2:00 in the morning a large
female entered the collpa. We had to wait for some time to get a clear
shot, but Javier hit the tapir right in the neck. She walked about 100
meters to a different part of the collpa before she went down.
Unfortunately, she was in the mud of the collpa so it was impossible to
take blood samples. We named her Noche (night in Spanish).
20/08/2005 Capture of Luna
From prior experience, we believed that tapirs did not visit collpas
during a full moon. Nevertheless, we decided to go out tonight and try
our luck. We were almost ready to give up when around 2:40 we heard the
typical cracking of twigs and rustling in the underbrush that denotes
the arrival of a tapir to the collpa. It went right in to eat clay and
it was a clear shot. It was a younger female. We named her Luna
(Spanish for moon).
05/08/2005 Capture of Tormenta
After a short duration of very little activity at the collpas and some
bad luck, we finally had our second capture. It was another female in
very good condition. She came in early in the night at 19:30, which was
fortunate because right when we were done putting on the collar and
collecting all the samples a big thunderstorm hit. We therefore named
her Tormenta (thunderstorm in Spanish).
10/7/2005 First Capture: Victoria
Today at 23:15, we captured our first tapir at Los Amigos, a female we
named Victoria. After several months of preparations we were really
excited, as you can imagine. We darted the animal with a tranquilizer
dart at a Mineral Lick and equipped it with a Radio/GPS collar. The
capture went smoothly with no complications. Now we are planning to
capture 4 more animals during the next couple of weeks.