We have salt licks here in our reserves too. They may get themselves into trouble with humans, but on the other hand they may head deep into the jungle, far from hunters, returning only periodically.Ī few years ago, in the lowland Amazonian rainforests of Peru, I filmed a herd of White-lipped Peccaries feeding at a clay salt lick: The herd certainly won’t stay on our reserves, because we have very little area at low enough elevations. This rate of attrition is not sustainable, but it will be very hard to control. I’ve heard that fourteen of the pigs in this herd have been shot and eaten when they were off our reserve.
I’ve occasionally had to climb trees to escape those Amazonian herds. In the Amazon they often travel in herds of 200 or more, and such herds have been known to kill even jaguars in defense of their young. This herd apparently destroyed a neighbor’s crop field in a single hour, and when the owner tried to chase them out, they reacted aggressively. They tend to get into trouble with humans. These are challenging animals to conserve, because they range very widely. Subsequent interviews with the local people revealed that this herd had come through our Naturetrek Reserve from the foothill forests farther to the east, near Rio Negro and Cumanda, where biologists from the Universidad Estatal Amazonica (including our manager Juan Pablo Reyes) had earlier detected a population using camera traps. White-lipped Peccaries in our Cerro Candelaria Reserve. Collared Peccaries are known from cloud forests and paramos near Banos, but these White-lipped Peccaries are much more at home in Amazonian rainforests, and this new record from Cerro Candelaria Reserve is near the highest elevation ever recorded for the species.
These are very large and rowdy wild pigs, much larger than the more common Collared Peccary ( Pecari tajacu). But a few weeks ago our wardens were astonished to find a large herd of White-lipped Peccaries ( Tayassu pecari) in our Cerro Candelaria Reserve. We thought we knew all the large mammal species that could be found there. My colleagues and I have been exploring what is now the Naturetrek and Cerro Candelaria Reserves for decades, and the El Placer community has been exploring it for a century.
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