Pantanal Cuisine Part II

[I realized after writing this post that Christina had already written an excellent and yummy-looking post on Pantanal Cuisine, but I figured one can't ever have too much of food, so below is more about food in the Pantanal!]

I love to eat. I plan my days around meals, I bring snacks wherever I go, and I’m unfortunately frequently victim of the pandemic disordered state known as “hangry”. Given my obsession with food, and given that food is an essential facet of any culture, I decided to do a little bit of research this week on Pantanal cuisine and see what the wetlands have in store for our gastrointestinal tracts.

One thing that struck me as I was doing some reading was the diversity of the cuisine of the Pantanal and Brazil in general. With European, African, and indigenous influences from the colonizers, slaves, and natives that came to inhabit Brazil in the last few centuries, Brazilian cuisine is a cultural salad bowl, reflective of its diverse population.

In the Pantanal, the cuisine varies slightly between the north and south. Northern food is very fishy – we’ll likely be eating lots of Pacu, dourado, and pintado. Pacu, if you recall, is our well-toothed friend and cousin of the piranha, and pintado is a local fish without scales or bones. These are often fried, grilled, baked, or smoked. Below are some of the most popular fish dishes:

Peixe a Urucum

Piranha Soup - a rumored aphrodisiac 

In the south the cuisine is influenced heavily by the cattle and wheat farms in the area, giving rise to lots of meat and grains in food. You can look forward to eating lots of beef. Some popular dishes include carne seca com abobora (sundried beef with pumpkin) and paçoca de pilã (sundried beef with manioc flour). 

Seca com abobora

paçoca de pilã

Of course, you can't forget about dessert, which in the Pantanal is sweet and yummy. Furrundu is a local favorite, made of papaya, sugar cane, and coconut. Bocaiúva ice cream is also supposed to be quite tasty!

Furrundu

Are you hungry yet? I think I'm going to have a little snack before class. Happy eating!

-Sarah

Sources

http://www.jacareonline.com.br/oferta/detalhe/50-de-desconto-em-um-delicioso-file-de-peixe-a-urucum-congelado-de-r-44-00-por-r-21-90-compre-e-use-aproveite.html

http://www.saboresdematogrosso.com.br/furrundu/

www.revistadeguste.com

The Lonely Planet: Brazil

Pantanal and Climate Change

NATALYA THAKUR

 

After a discussion about climate change in my social entrepreneurship class, I was intrigued to understand the effects it has had on wetlands, specifically the Pantanal.A growing population and agriculture industry have led to many different action items for the Pantanal to focus on. 

Potential Consequences: As temperatures rise, species will migrate towards higher latitudes and altitudes in both hemispheres, and the species composition and functioning of plants will be altered, particularly the efficiency with which they use water.

The programs started by the World Wildlife Fund in 1998 have focused on the sedimentation plain as well as the maintenance of the Upper Paraguay River Watershed. Environmental management is crucial to this region and efforts are combined with cross-border programs, such as the one in Bolivia (70-20-10%). As of right now the magnitude of information is still being organized, so designing strategies that reduce the vulnerability of the watershed in the face of climate change are the current focus. 

Options Include: Sustainable cattle ranching, land use planning to conserve watershed, and corporate environmental responsibility.

Beyond this--the Pantanal itself is practicing the following:

• Maintenance and purification of water sources, necessary for humans, animals, farming, and river transport
• Protection and maintenance of soil fertility, necessary for agriculture as well as plant life.
• Biological control to avoid plagues from destroying crops
• Regulation of the hydro-biological processes to avoid droughts and floods
• Purification of air.

Doing a bit of further research, I realized that these practices are very real and being follow throughed. For example, the extraction of ore deposits from the Mutún mine is currently in the process of being consolidated and is expected to produce considerable social, economic and environmental changes. Also, a large hydro-electrical facility was recently constructed on the Manso River, a principal tributary of the Cuiaba River, a project designed also to regulate seasonal flooding.

1) http://wwf.panda.org/who_we_are/wwf_offices/bolivia/our_work/pantanal_programme/

2) http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=26370

Pantanal Bird Profiles

I recently read this New York Times Blog from the Frugal Traveler on his experience in the Pantanal. A quote that stuck out to me was the author’s description of the abundance of birds in the region – “…the birds admirably filled in the gaps between mammal- and reptile-spottings. It’s amazingly easy to find hyacinth macaws, toucans, parrots, owls, storks, and my favorite, the flamingo-without-a-neck.”

I wasn’t all that into birds and didn’t take much notice of them until my trip to Australia with BOSP this past fall. One of the girls in the program was an avid birder. She came equipped with a bird guide for the region, an awesome set of binoculars, and a goal to see 50 birds throughout our ten weeks abroad. I’m still not all that into birds, but I do take notice of them more often than I used to. However, my interactions with this student made me realize how much more you can get out of encounters with nature when you can identify and know a little bit about what you’re seeing. That’s why I think the presentations are great as they’re molding us into informed tourists, able to have more intelligent interactions with wildlife and tour guides.

So I’ve decided to write this blog as a mini-profile on three birds - the roseate spoonbill, greater rhea, and jabiru stork – in order to enhance our bird identification skills when we adventure into the Pantanal.

Photo by Luke Seitz

The roseate spoonbill is a bird found along the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico and Central America, as well as in the wetland interior of South America. It is a large wading bird identified by its pink plumage – a color that created due to its diet and often causes the roseate spoonbill to be misidentified as a flamingo by tourists. Its gray spoonbill gets its name for its resemblance to a spoon. This bill shape allows for higher feeding success in sifting mud. If out and about during early morning and evening hours, scan the marshland as this is prime feeding time for the roseate spoonbill. Otherwise, check small shrub-like trees for birds resting in nests. Follow this link to listen to their call!

Photo by Nicole Duplaix

The greater rhea is the largest bird in South America, standing at about 4 feet tall. Although flightless, its long legs aid in running and its large wings aid in changing direction. If seeking the greater rhea out, check open pampas, sparse woodlands, tall vegetation near swamps and rivers, and maybe even farms as this bird enjoys plants and has a taste for agricultural crops. Breeding season starts in August, so maybe we’ll run into a few. Follow this link to listen to the greater rhea’s call!

Photo by Robert Siegel

While the greater rhea is the largest bird in South America, the jabiru stork is the tallest flying bird in the region. These storks have white plumage and featherless black heads and necks, with a red band at the base of the neck. Jabiru storks feed in flocks and can be found foraging and wading in shallow river and pond water. They begin building their 1 m wide by 1.8 m deep nests in August – so maybe we’ll get to see a bit of construction!

Sources:

"Meet Our Animals: Roseate Spoonbill." Smithsonian National Zoological Park. Smithsonian National Zoological Park. Web. 3 Feb 2014.

"Bird Guide: Roseate Spoonbill." The Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Web. 3 Feb 2014.

"Animals: Greater Rhea." National Geographic. National Geographic. Web. 3 Feb 2014.

"Animal Diversity Web: Jabiru." University of Michigan: Museum of Zoology. University of Michigan. Web. 3 Feb 2014.

What is a fish? Why care about fish?

After my presentation on Thursday, Dr. Bob asked me two important questions that I faltered to answer. With the Internet close at hand and a little more time to ponder, I’m writing this blog post in an attempt to answer the questions: What is a fish? And why do we care?

What is a fish?

I started where anyone would start – with a quick Google search. The initial results answered my “what is a fish” query with, “a limbless cold-blooded vertebrate animal with gills and fins and living wholly in water” and “any member of a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic craniate animals that lack limbs with digits.”

Let’s break it down a bit more to a few key characteristics of what it means to be a fish.

1.  Fish are vertebrates. 
2. Fish live in water.  
3. Fish breathe with gills instead of lungs. 
4.  Fish use paired limbs in the form of fins for movement. 
5. Fish are unable to regulate their body temperature.  
6. Fish have scales for protection.

There are, of course, exceptions. As one website puts it, “hagfish aren’t vertebrates and don’t have scales; mudskippers can live outside the water; lungfish use lungs to breathe; lampreys don’t have paired fins; and tuna are warm blooded!”

I hope that helped answer the “what is a fish” question.

Why care about fish?

Having grown up in coastal Alaskan commercial fishing towns for the majority of my life, I care about fish because I see the livelihood and culture fishing creates. Beyond that, fish are a resource used to feed the world on both subsistence and commercial scales. In 2005, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations noted that many of the world’s poorest people depend on fish. Fisheries and aquaculture are a matter of food security and we should not only care about how to feed but the world, but how to do so sustainably.

Sources:

"What is a fish?." Understanding Evolution. University of California Museum of Paleontology. Web. 2 Feb 2014.

"Many of the world's poorest people depend on fish." FAO Newsroom. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Web. 2 Feb 2014.