By "Tern" Alexa Schirtzinger
"They call us guanacos," my Salvadoran friend Miguel once told me, "because we reproduce like crazy." I must have looked confused, because he went on to explain that a guanaco was a nondescript, furry South American animal that...um, reproduced like crazy.
The furry, South American part is true. Guanacos (Lama guanicoe) are members of the camel family and are often referred to as the wild version of a llama. Standing up to four feet tall at the shoulder, with thick, shaggy, cinnamon-colored fur and big brown eyes, they look kind of huggable. Guanacos are native to South America, where they roam in small groups at high elevations, eating lichens and grasses.
Miguel was probably joking about the reason Salvadorans call themselves guanacos--but, I recently realized, he had a point. Guanacos--the furry kind--used to roam the high plains of South America in the millions; they were to South America what squirrels are to a Dallas suburb. But they've gone the way of the American bison: Today, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society, guanacos number around half a million. Their largest population resides in Karukinka, a 740,000-acre nature preserve at the southern tip of South America, in Tierra del Fuego.
While the guanaco might have been the animal ecologists least expected to suffer, even when habitat loss and migration interference resulted from human encroachment, at least someone's doing something about it: On Monday, Science Daily reported, the Wildlife Conservation Society initiated a study on the guanaco in Karukinka. Seven guanaco family groups now wear radio collars, and experts are hoping their movements will provide some insight into migration patterns and behavior.
A guanaco is less glamorous than a leatherback, certainly--especially if its only distinguishing quality is its reproductive fecundity. But the animal that once reigned over South America probably plays some essential role in that region's ecosystem, even if we're not sure what that role is. We may have yet to discover it.