Hitchhiking traps, shooting traps or shotguns coupled to tripwires. Anyone who has seen our documentary “The Amazon Job – The forest is not enough” knows what we are talking about. On our trip we met Mathieu Choteau, an expert on poison dart frogs. His studies on the genus Ranitomeya made him an extremely interesting discussion partner for me.
Mathieu Choteau interview for “The Amazon Job – The forest is not enough”
As we had already heard several times on our trip about the Loreto forests being infested with shooting traps, I asked him without any premonition whether it was really that bad. I was almost ashamed to have asked when he began to talk about his personal ordeal. During one of his field studies in the forest in 2014, he came face to face with the laziest kind of hunting. It knocked him off his feet with a loud bang. What followed was a fight for survival. Over 2 liters of blood loss, 17 operations and half a year in hospital. He almost died in the forest. But hea was lucky. He was not alone, was able to apply a tourniquet and fortunately the barrel of the shotgun did not aim any higher. He still has limited mobility today, but it was his foot and not his hip or, worse, haais stomach.
Here we enter our protected forest for the first time
Tramperas shotgun ammunition
Such accidents happen every week. About half of the wounded bleed to death and die in the forest. Has he been avoiding the forests of Loreto ever since? No! Does that stop us from protecting them? No! Nevertheless, we were shocked to discover that even the forest we had chosen to protect had traces of this very dubious hunting method. During our visit in October this year, we found many beautiful frogs as well as the empty shell of a shotgun. This type of hunting is the main reason why there have been no conservation efforts in a region as biodiverse as this one. That should, no, that must change
Help us to create a safe refuge for every kind of animal! Helft uns ein sicheres Refugium für jede Art von Tier zu schaffen!
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