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CENFOR's reports on the fauna of the lake focus on the aquatic birds as the target of their conservation efforts. This emphasis is understandable, since the lake is rich in such species. (There are also many land birds that feed and nest near the shores and in the totora as well.) Nearly all these waterfowl, though, are widely distributed, since birds can fly from one area to another, unlike the fish, blocked from entering the altiplano by the cordilleras. Of the forty-odd species of aquatic birds, CENFOR listed twenty-six as being of particular importance. Of these, twenty-five have distributions that extend north into central Peru and south into Chile [footnote 17] --the reverse of the pattern of the fish, where nearly all the native species are restricted to the lake. Some of these waterfowl are migrants, traveling as far as Patagonia and even North America in their annual movements.
The one endemic bird species, found only in Titicaca and the nearby Lago Umayo, is Rollandia microptera, the short-winged grebe. This bird has a characteristic that is highly atypical among waterfowl: it has lost the ability to fly. Like other grebes, it has large feet, with broad lobed toes, set far back on its body, allowing it to swim and dive effectively. (The scientific name of the grebe family, Podicipedidae, derives from Latin roots that mean "rump-footed".) This species shares with most other grebes a long narrow bill and head, a slim neck, and an elongated body. Propelled underwater by its powerful feet, it resembles a streamlined torpedo that homes in on the fish, insects and crustaceans that make up its diet. Many other grebe species take flight only a few times a year, when they move between their nesting areas in stands of aquatic vegetation [footnote 18] and areas where they feed in other seasons. By abandoning flight altogether, the short-winged grebe has traveled further down the path of specializing as a diver than most other grebes. The ancestors of this short-winged grebe remained in the altiplano lakes, where they found abundant food throughout the year in close proximity to their favored nesting sites in the totora beds. Without any evolutionary pressure to preserve the ability to fly, their wings gradually decreased in relative size. This change gave them the character for which they received their species name, microptera, tiny-winged. This bird can flap its wings and skitter along the surface of the lake when it is startled-a graceless, though efficient, movement that the local villagers find amusing, as I do. Like other grebes, it usually escapes its pursuers by diving. Once underwater, it can hold its breath for a long period and shift its direction, enabling it to elude capture. Though they are unusual as a flightless waterfowl, these grebes are not scarce. They are protected by the effectiveness of their ability to avoid capture, by the size of the beds of totora in which they breed--and by the preferences of the lakeshore villagers, who target the giant coot (Fulicula gigantea) on the infrequent occasions when they hunt. These large plump birds make better eating than the smaller, stringier grebes. Moreover, despite their ability to fly, these coots are easier targets for hunters than grebes, since they are less wary. In addition, they form large flocks that allow groups of villagers to hunt them. Since this single endemic species remains abundant, there seems to have been little need for CENFOR to set up regulations to protect it. Like the other aquatic birds and the reed beds, this species has coexisted stably with human populations around Lake Titicaca for centuries. It was a sensible and cautious act to seek protection for an ecosystem as distinctive as the Titicaca reedbeds. Nonetheless, when the government claimed that it needed to introduce new regulations to conserve the flora and fauna, it overstated its case, and further alienated the local villagers, who under other circumstances might well have supported the reserve. Once the reserve was established in 1978, events unfolded very differently in its two sections, Ramis Sector and Puno Sector. Villagers opposed the Reserve forcefully in the Sector Ramis. Some of them followed the model of presenting memoriales that had worked successfully in the western Ilave delta. In December 1978, villagers in the districts of Taraco and Huancané held assemblies and formed the Totora Defense Front (Frente de Defensa de la Totora), which peasants from the neighboring district of Pusi joined in 1980. Some of its founding members had contacts with the Totora League in the western Ilave Delta and with the left-wing Peruvian Peasant Confederation, one of the main organizations of the political opposition in the southern highlands and throughout the country. The Front sent memoriales similar to those of the League to government officials in Puno, demanding the suspension of the Supreme Decree that established the reserve. These efforts did not bear fruit, and the Totora Defense Front lapsed into inactivity in the early 1980s. A more diffuse but more effective form of opposition in Ramis Sector has been the consistently antagonistic stance toward the presence of government agencies. Starting in 1979 and continuing through the 1980s, the villagers drove government officials out of communities by threatening to beat them, and, in some cases, by surrounding their vehicles and by throwing stones at them. These confrontations, more than the presentation of memoriales, have kept CENFOR from attempting to enforce its jurisdiction over this region.
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