Miscellany

	Web resources for the biodiversity and ecology of animals
	Introducing the Swire Institute of Marine Science Museum-a resource that may be useful for your research!
	New locality records species of conservation concern
	Society of Conservation Biology 16th Annual Meeting at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK. 14th-19th July 2002
	Watching wildlife in Panamá
	My trip to the South American rainforest
	The most accessible rainforest in the world?
	Trekking in the Peruvian Andes

The most accessible rainforest in the world?

by Richard T. Corlett

Three cities claim to have the most accessible rainforest in the world, so I timed the US$1.25 taxi ride from the Parque Natural Metropolitano to my Panama City hotel very carefully. Eight minutes! Even a Panamanian taxi driver would find it difficult to reach Bukit Timah Nature Reserve from downtown Singapore that quickly, leaving only the Parque Nacional da Tijuca in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as a possible rival. If any Porcupine! reader has been there, please let me know.

Panama City from the Park

Panama City, on the Pacific coast of Panama, has a severe dry season so the rainforest which occupies 192 hectares of the 265-hectare park is semi-deciduous, one of the last lowland remnants of this ecosystem in Panama. Although the forest must have suffered considerable damage during the city’s long and turbulent history, it still looks and feels like rainforest, and it still supports tamarin monkeys, sloths, deer, agoutis and at least 186 bird species (other sources say "more than 200"). On my two early morning visits, I saw two groups of tamarins and several agoutis, as well as a great variety of birds. The gravel paths are reasonably well signposted and a number of trees and other plants are labeled, which I found very useful. I met nobody in the entire park on my first visit, except the warden to whom I paid my US$2 dollar entrance fee, and only two groups of visitors on my second visit.

map of the Park

path through the forest

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