‘It’s only a forty five minute hike Ms. Mahung,’ said Elmar Requena the TIDE Terrestrial Biologist. ‘And you get a chance to get out of the office, spend time with your rangers and do an early morning biodiversity monitoring,’ he continued. He sparked my interest right away and I could not help but join the enthusiastic team. The journey began on Tuesday evening March 17, 2009 with a drive to Esso landing where we took the TIDE boat across to the ranger station. Of course passing through the dump pile where the town’s garbage is dumped daily was a depressing site!
As soon as we arrived at the landing, ranger Ishim was there waiting in the boat to take us to the ranger station which is only five minutes away. When we arrived, ranger Janelle Borland, who was off duty, but joined the team because she felt she needed to accompany me since she was concerned about my overnight stay at the rustic station with the male rangers, volunteered to make supper for the group. Rangers rejoiced as it was surely good not to have ramen as usual for supper this evening.

During this time we all sat in the kitchen reminiscing ranger patrol experiences. This is when I heard of times when rangers crashed the boat during night patrols, got lost when on exchange visits and many other weird stories. The issue of safety of rangers while on duty was the highlight of the night and it was a perfect opportunity for me to reassure rangers that safety was of utmost important. I reminded them that they should not pretend to be super heroes by entertaining confrontations with hunters or fishers. I advised that they should be knowledgeable of the forest and fisheries laws and regulations and their role and responsibilities as TIDE’s rangers. I asked that they take every opportunity to create awareness of the importance of the work we do. I had fun asking how they would react to scenarios I made up of illegal hunting and fishing and emphasized the importance of exercising good public relations when on duty. Within a few minutes we were eating delicious tacari chicken with white rice prepared by female ranger, chef, mom Janelle Borland.

Before going to sleep, Elmar reviewed the following day’s itinerary and when I heard that the group had decided to set the alarm for 3am and leave the station at 4am, I knew it was time to get some rest to prepare for the following day. By this time I needed to use the bathroom, and was a bit skeptical to go downstairs to the outhouse so Janelle, my personal security as she called herself, quickly volunteered to go downstairs with me. We also went to the deck to check on the boats before going back upstairs and to bed. It was a lovely starry, quiet night away from the hustle and bright lights of town life.

You will hear of the early morning experience with biodiversity monitoring in my next blog.