Wildfire on Camera- In November and December of 2016, our partners at Spectacled Bear Conservation (SBC) battled a raging wildfire in northern Peru that destroyed thousands of acres of forest—burning down an area bigger than Washington DC and San Francisco combined—and five protected areas that are home to several threatened animal species, including the spectacled bear. Working around the clock with hundreds of community volunteers and park guards, they were able to extinguish the fire and save the lives of at least a hundred spectacled bears. The fire destroyed swaths of critical habitat as well as several remote cameras that were set up in the study area to research the bears.
The fire was just the beginning of the trials faced by SBC and their community. In January, just as they were recovering from the devastation caused by the fires, they were hit with mega storms and heavy rainfall at lower elevation levels—the likes of which they haven’t received since the 1960s—while the drought that had resulted in the fires still persisted at high elevations. Check out our blog post, ‘From Fires to Floods’ to hear how SBC has been combating these back to back natural disasters, and how you can help them in the recovery of spectacled bears.