Chapter 9 by Andrea Guinanzaca

Chapter nine takes place in Brazil.  Kolbert goes to a place in Brazil located near the Venezuelan border. There she goes to a square-shaped area known as Reserve 1202. The place is controlled by the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project, an organization founded in the 1970s by Tom Lovejoy. A few decades ago, Lovejoy wanted to find a way on how to protect specific rainforest areas from farmers and ranchers cutting down trees. He presented the plan to the Brazilian government, and ever since then, he has been given grants to study the rainforest. Kolbert goes to Reserve 1202 with an ornithologist named Mario Cohn-Haft. Cohn-Haft takes Kolbert out into the forest late at night to listen to bird calls.

Cohn-Haft was an expert in bird calls and so he explains that, over the course of his many years at Reserve 1202, he’s noticed a gradual decline in the diversity of bird species, and in biodiversity overall.

This is because of the limited number of species and a small amount of space, result in biodiversity o become disastrous. In addition, Cohn-Haft drives Kolbert away from Reserve 1202 and into the main rainforest, where he conducts tests and collects samples to compare with those from Reserve 1202.  An entomologist named Terry Erwin estimated that rainforests contained at least 30 million species of arthropod. Other scientists have argued that Erwin was overestimating the biodiversity of rainforests, but, regardless, it’s clear that rainforests are home to a staggering number of different life forms. Some have estimated that even a one percent loss in the area of untouched rainforest results in a quarter of a percent loss of all the species in the rainforest.

One night at Reserve 1202, Kolbert wakes up to watch an “army ant parade.”  She’d been told that she’d see a huge group of ants marching through the forest, but no ants appeared. Kolbert hears the sounds of birds, which had been expecting the ants to march, as well. In conclusion, Lovejoy argues that many species have vanished from his reserves in the last few decades, suggesting that the fragmentation of the rainforest ecosystem results in rapidly shrinking biodiversity.