CRI听力:Agoutis Help Forest Expand

Anchor: Biologists in Brazil have started to reintroduce rare rodents back to the forest where they have an important ecological mission to perform. The agouti resembles a tailless squirrel and is popular among visitors to the Rio city square.

Our reporter Li Dong has the details.



刺豚鼠agouti是一种在中南美洲生活的啮齿类动物rodent,长得像松鼠,但大小却像猫一样.

A park in downtown Rio has the place where the agouti can be found. Agoutis are rodents found in the forests and savannas of Central and South America and the West Indies.

Rio's agoutis were brought from the surrounding forests and released here in the early twentieth century.

They have been reproducing freely ever since and today they number just over six hundred. Currently the rodent is on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species but in the category: least concern.

Twice a day, a Parks Department worker distributes food for the agoutis. Many of these agoutis have lost their fear of humans and accept food from friendly strangers.

Flavio Telles, forest engineer of the Parks and Gardens Administration, says that the agoutis are very popular.

"People often tell us they are bringing their children to see the agoutis just as their parents brought them when they were children to play and try to catch them. People have a very nice relationship with agoutis."

However, it was not until recently that the National Park ecologists began to reintroduce agoutis here, because they noticed the agoutis are an important element which makes a forest healthy.

Tropical rainforest trees were not reproducing as expected, while exotic species were multiplying. Something was missing: the agouti.

Agoutis are responsible for the spread of many tropical tree species. In the Amazon, the Brazil Nut tree is believed to depend on their piercing teeth to spread their seeds.

Something similar occurs in the Atlantic Rainforest with many of the hundreds of three species that exist here.

Ecologist Henrique Zaluar observes that young trees that sprout near the mother tree will not become adult trees.

"The survival of these young trees increases substantially as they grow more distant from the mother tree. The seeds that germinate close to the mother plant will not become trees."

The agoutis were reintroduced through a program that started last January. Their original diet of vegetables was gradually mixed with seeds from forest trees.

Professor Alexandra Pires from Rio's Rural University studies several tree species and their dependence on agoutis for reproduction.

"One of the trees for which agoutis are very important is right behind me, the 'cotieira' tree which has a very hard shelled fruit which few animals can break to remove the seed. In tropical forests around seventy to eighty percent of trees depend on wild animals to spread their seeds, among them this one here, the 'cotieira'."

The reintroduction program is still in its initial stage. Dozens of agoutis will gradually be reintroduced over the course of the next few years.

The pace will depend on the adaptation of the pioneering animals. New groups of agoutis of a different genetic variety will be brought from other locations.

For CRI, I am Li Dong.