Interview: George McGavin talks wild Guyana

I caught up with George McGavin of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History to ask him about his experiences in Guyana filming BBC One's Lost Land of the Jaguar, which starts Wednesday 30 August...

OxSciBlog: Why is Guyana an interesting place to study?
George McGavin: Guyana, with an area of 215,000 km squared, is a little smaller than the United Kingdom but only has a human population of 800,000, most of whom live in the capital, Georgetown, and along the coastal strip. Because of the very low population pressure, the country’s natural vegetation remains largely intact with somewhere in the region of 80 per cent of the land area covered in dense forest. The biodiversity of Guyana is known to be very high with 8,000 species of plants (including 1,000 tree species) of which about half are endemic and more than 2,700 vertebrate species.

OSB: What species there captured your imagination?
G McG: Finding the world’s biggest spider, Theraphosa blondi [Goliath bird eating spider] was an enormous thrill. Even being attacked by army ants was quite special in an odd way. For someone who works on small species I have to say I was won over by the big creatures that live here. We filmed the world’s heaviest snake, the anaconda, and I got pretty close to black caiman. During the last week of filming we had gone as far as we could the Rewa River and I was standing by the bank drinking a coffee when a large dark shape flew over. A Harpy Eagle, the world’s largest eagle, was sitting high in a tree eating a monkey it had just plucked from the canopy. Wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan scrambled down from our camp just in time to get some stunning, full-frame footage of this top predator!

OSB: What are the challenges of filming in the jungle?
G McG: The obvious challenges are heath issues such as exhaustion, dehydration, stings, bites and accidents and the fact that if you stand too long in the one spot you start to rot! One of the directors contracted cutaneous leishmaniasis and one of the team had a bot fly larva burrowing into his scalp. But the equipment really suffers too. We had two tonnes of very expensive camera and computer equipment in the field. Constant high humidity is not good for microelectronics and we had to lash up a hot box from some plywood and light bulbs to try to keep the key items from dying on us.

OSB: How can we preserve Guyanan wildlife?
G McG: This biodiversity hotspot is without doubt one of the least explored rainforests on the planet but it is poised on the brink of changes that could have devastating effects on its rich flora and fauna. Logging and mineral extraction could wreak havoc in habitats that have survived undisturbed for many thousand of years. The lack of baseline information for the area and its unspoiled nature makes the region a high priority for immediate conservation action. At the end of the expedition I spoke to the President of Guyana, Bharrat Jagdeo, and he shares our concerns. What is desperately needed in a mechanism whereby the cash-rich countries can pay biodiversity-rich countries to maintain their forests intact to everyone’s benefit.

OSB: Why is preserving the biodiversity of places such as Guyana important?
G McG: Rainforests are a dwindling global resource of major importance. We know that within their bounds, less than six per cent of the total land surface area of the Earth, are more than half of all the living species, some experts say as much as three quarters. Whatever the fraction, is it utter stupidity to lose any more. We need biodiversity to survive - it’s what has sustained us for many tens of thousands of years. Within nature’s store cupboard are the bacterial, fungal, plant and animal species that will yield medicines, foods and genetic resources to keep us going for at least the next millennium. 

Dr George McGavin is an Honorary Research Associate at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

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