PANAMA CITY – This story began on the forest floor. It was still dark and deceptively cool in the jungle outside of Panama City when Corey Tarwater, a researcher with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), got into a truck.
It was about 5 a.m. on March 10.
Tarwater started up the white manual-transmission pickup, with the Smithsonian’s famous blue and yellow logo emblazoned on the side. In the truck with her was Beth King, the head of communications for STRI.
They were headed deep into the forest of Panama’s Soberanía National Park to work on a scientific study of tropical birds.
The truck turned onto Pipeline Road, a 10-mile section of gravel and pavement that stretches into the forest north of the town of Gamboa. It’s a 45-minute drive from Panama City. The road was originally built along a pipeline designed to ship oil between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Today, it is also used to access some of the best birding in the Americas.
But these researchers weren’t there just to birdwatch. They were continuing a census of tropical birds that has been underway for 44 years.
The existence of STRI is something of a miracle that dates back to the Isthmus of Panama’s very formation, roughly 3 million years ago when North America and South America collided to form a land bridge between the two continents.
Species of animals that had previously been isolated on each continent could now intermingle. Gigantic prehistoric sloths migrated to North America, and horses migrated to South America.
When the Americas connected, they also separated what are now the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
“What the evidence suggests is that Panama changed the world more by separating oceans than by joining continents,” said Luis Alfredo Miranda, the visitor experience manager at Biomuseo – a Smithsonian-affiliated museum dedicated to biodiversity located just outside Panama City. “Before Panama, water and species flowed between oceans. Three million years ago, that was no longer possible.”
After the land bridge emerged, the Atlantic Ocean became saltier than the Pacific, and ocean currents and climates changed worldwide.
Millions of years later, Panama was no longer a bridge for prehistoric beasts crossing from one continent to another. The country was thrumming with progress as work began on the Panama Canal.
In 1910, it was U.S. President William Howard Taft who originally ordered Smithsonian Institution secretary Charles Walcott – a paleontologist – to send scientists to Panama to study the potential environmental impact of the Panama Canal.
The Smithsonian then launched the first biological survey of what was then the Panama Canal Zone. Researchers discovered that although Panama is 30,000 square miles, slightly smaller than the state of South Carolina, it is rich with biodiversity.
Tropical rainforests cover roughly 6% of the earth’s terrestrial surface area, but they support more than 50% of the world’s species. Rainforests make up 63% of Panama’s territory.
Panama is also home to over 200 species of mammals and over 1,000 species of birds.
After the biological survey in 1910, the Smithsonian decided to stay in Panama, founding STRI, one of the oldest tropical research institutions in the world.
Today, STRI employs 40 staff scientists and hosts more than 1,000 research visitors per year. It is the only bureau of the Smithsonian located outside of the United States.
The organization has 13 research facilities, including the headquarters in Panama City, the outpost in Gamboa and a facility on Barro Colorado Island in Gatun Lake.
The Smithsonian is a unique arm of the federal government. It was created by Congress in 1846 as an “establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge” and receives around 40% of its funding from private sources.
Ever since its inception, the Smithsonian has been overseen by a Board of Regents. U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts are both currently on the board.
STRI researchers and staff said they have long believed that the Smithsonian, as a beloved and well-respected institution, was somewhat insulated from drastic changes in funding and support.
On March 27, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which asked Vance to “remove improper ideology” and slash Smithsonian funding that could benefit diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
The new order has not yet impacted STRI, and it’s unclear if the Trump administration will seek to change its funding or staffing. STRI staff said that the organization creates a unique environment where researchers from all over the world can come together no matter the political climate. STRI also has a local impact within Panama.
According to King, the communications director, 380 people work at STRI, and almost all of them are Panamanian.
“It’s really an amazing example of science diplomacy in this region,” she said.
In the rainforest with Tarwater and the researchers, the influence of politics feels as faint as the soft calls of howler monkeys in distant trees.
After navigating the truck several miles through pothole-filled Pipeline Road – the rainy season floods portions of the road and makes it uneven – King and Tarwater finally reached another pickup truck and a tarp canopy set up on the side of the road, along with a group of researchers who were assembling an array of tools and instruments.
“We’ve got 20 12-meter nets set up, and they capture birds that fly through, and then we bring them back,” Tarwater explained. “We bleed them [take blood samples], we take a tailfeather, we take pictures.”
Tarwater is a professor of zoology and physiology at the University of Wyoming. Besides Panama, she has done research on birds in Hawaii, Brazil and British Columbia.
For two hours, the field station was filled with the sounds of scientists at work, capturing the birds – a beautiful array of colors and sizes – and gently taking measurements before holding them in their palms and letting them fly away.
The team is working on a book that will outline the Panama birds’ molt process – the shedding of feathers during different seasons.
“We take photos of them, because there is no book in Panama for molt,” Tarwater explained. “We use a book in Brazil, which does not have all the same species, but it’s as close as we’ve got. We’re working on our own book at the same time, trying to learn all of these molts so we can figure out how to age them.”
Every 20 minutes or so, researchers came back with small canvas bags that chirped and fidgeted.
“It just hangs out in the little bag,” said Reina Galvan, a field researcher and student working with Tarwater. “It keeps them calm.”
The bird census doesn’t just keep scientists informed about tropical species, Tarwater explained. Birds can be key indicators of changes to ecosystems.
“Even though we’re in this amazing protected rainforest, we’re learning that climate change is having a big impact on these species,” Tarwater said. “This is one of the first studies that are showing that even in protected habitats, that’s not enough – with climate change happening, protected forests are not enough to keep biodiversity.”
A published report on the research, which analyzed 57 bird species found in Panama, found that the populations of 40 of those species declined, even though Soberanía National Park is completely protected from logging and development.
“On the one hand, the diversity is amazing,” Tarwater said. “On the other hand, it’s a depressing story that we didn’t know we’d be telling.”
Climate change may not just be impacting the reproduction of these bird species – it may be changing their body size as well.
“Pretty much all of our birds have declined in body mass over time,” Tarwater said. “They’re not changing the shape of their wings, their skeletal structure hasn’t changed, but body masses are changing, which is part of the evidence that leads us to believe that what they’re eating has changed.”
Birds have a varied diet, including bugs, fruit and flowers. If climate change is leading to a loss of food for them, Tarwater explained, it could have cascading impacts on the world’s greater ecosystems – and on us.
“If we lose birds, we lose a lot of the fruits that we like to eat,” she said. “They are seed dispersers of fruits that humans consume. They’re pollinators. They’re herbivores. Birds are an incredibly important species because they have these ecosystem services that humans rely on.”
The bird census is just one of dozens of studies STRI supports at any given moment. Its research arms touch Panama City, the canal, the forest and, further north, Gatun Lake, which is one of the country’s main sources of fresh water.
Just north of the skyscrapers of Panama City, with telephone lines crisscrossing apartment buildings and tiny streets, the urban landscape quickly gives way to Soberanía’s lush green rainforest.
Close by, often within eyesight, is the Panama Canal. The highway follows the canal as it snakes through Panama.
At 7 a.m. on March 11, the boat dock in Gamboa was filled with workers and a few tourists.
They were all headed to STRI’s field station on Barro Colorado Island.
The island was formed when the Chagres River was dammed in 1912 to form Gatun Lake, which is part of the Panama Canal and feeds fresh water into its locks.
In 1923, the island was set aside as a nature reserve by the governor of the Panama Canal Zone, then administered by the United States. Congress later strengthened the island’s status as a preserve for the purpose of scientific research. Under a treaty signed by U.S. President Jimmy Carter in 1977, control of Barro Colorado was returned to Panama. Since then, the Panamanian government has invited the Smithsonian to serve as the island’s custodian.
Nestled in the forest on the island’s northeast side, the Barro Colorado Island Research Station looks and feels more like a summer camp than a scientific outpost. The main building splits off into hiking trails, dorms and research facilities.
Scientists come from around the world to do research at Barro Colorado Island, which is protected from any residential development or commercial activity.
From the water, the research center looks like a mirage. It takes several minutes by boat to catch a glimpse of its dock and concrete stairs.
“It’s a big deal that we’re celebrating 100 years of STRI, because there aren’t too many places on the planet where someone has studied one area for such a long time,” King said.
It’s true – because of Barro Colorado Island’s long history as a research station, scientists have access to some of the oldest continuously recorded data on tropical rainforests in the world.
That makes it a popular first stop for scientists early in their careers who want to learn how to conduct ambitious projects.
“If someone comes to study monkeys, and the monkeys eat fruit, we know what that fruit is,” King explained. “They don’t have to start from scratch. There’s tons of background information. Most of the plants are known. Most of the birds are known.”
The STRI boat docked at the base of a hill leading up to the research station’s buildings. There are offices, wood-paneled conference rooms and labs.
A few miles of trails snake around the research station. They aren’t typical hiking trails, though. Construction flags covered in writing and staked into the ground, test tubes and ribbon tied around trees line the paths.
King walked along the path as toucans squeaked overhead.
“It’s probably the most marked forest you’ll ever see,” King said. “If you just start looking around, you’ll see that lots and lots of trees and plants have flagging.”
After a hike through the forest, several of STRI’s scientists sat down in the mess hall – a summer camp-esque room with scientists and tourists in hiking boots balancing salad on plastic trays. The group discussed the miraculous, delicate existence of a place that has shaped so many careers.
Camilo Andres Calderon Acevedo, a postdoctoral researcher at STRI, and Marco Tschapka, a professor at the University of Ulm in southern Germany, study bats in STRI’s Bat Lab. They were on the island to conduct work on a similar study to the bird census Tarwater is working on.
“We want to survey bats twice a year for however many more years we can, given the funding and resources,” Acevedo said. “The idea is that this is a survey that will last more than 50 years into the future.”
The census, Acevedo explained, will take place in the wet season and dry season. It’s groundwork for future researchers.
“We know that the data that we’re creating right now is not for immediate use,” Acevedo said. “It is for the future to be used and understand how these climatic changes are affecting bats as a model for how it could be affecting other vertebrates.”
Although there has been bat research conducted in isolated parts of Panama for decades, Tschapka explained, STRI’s ability to consolidate research and contribute to long-term projects will show researchers how animals respond to changes in their environment.
Headquartered in Gamboa, the Bat Lab – run by researcher Rachel Page – is running multiple projects with the goal of understanding how the behavior of bats impacts and is impacted by the larger world.
As much as the scientists loved talking about their work, there was a looming question in the air – what fate could befall this place under potential budget cuts or policy changes under Trump? How does this work impact the lives of everyday people thousands of miles away?
“One of the general problems is that we have interests and problems that are in the immediate future, and we have interests and problems that are the far future,” Tschapka said. “One of the problems in conservation is that this long-term stuff tends to get overshadowed by the stuff that’s much more immediate. That’s a big, big problem, and I don’t know how to resolve it.”
The Bat Lab researches tropical bats – but Tschapka emphasized that the “ecosystem service” of pollination, seed dispersal and pest control that bats provide has a global impact.
In September 2024, a study by the University of Chicago Energy Policy Institute found that when North American bat populations were decimated by a deadly disease called White-Nose Syndrome in 2006, farmers had to increase the use of pesticides by 31% to make up for the lack of natural insect control.
In the years after, U.S. infant mortality rose by 7.9% – indicating that the loss of biodiversity in an area can have long-term human consequences.
“You can imagine an ecosystem like a clock,” Tschapka said. “If you open a clockwork up, you see there are lots of these little wheels in there that are spinning and all that have functions. There are some little wheels you can take out and the clock will still run, but it’s no longer that precise, or some things don’t work that well anymore.”
Josh Tewksbury, director of STRI, said the long history of the research station is a sacred trust for the scientists and a huge benefit to the world.
“Our job as the stewards of [Barro Colorado] is to support science forever, to understand the most complex parts of the natural world, and to translate that into knowledge that can help us manage that world more effectively,” Tewksbury said. “This is the only place on the planet where we’ve watched 250,000 trees die in a small area over 40 years, only to be replaced with another 265,000 trees.”
In the early afternoon, workers sat in the plastic seats in the STRI boat as it skipped across Gatun Lake’s shimmering water and back to Gamboa.
This story began on the forest floor. It ended a few hundred feet up, in the rainforest canopy.
It was a few days later, on a cool, humid morning at Parque Natural Metropolitano – another nature reserve in Panama.
Andrés Alfonso-Rojas, a researcher at STRI, put on a harness and climbed into a metal basket attached to a construction crane that was about to lift him more than 100 feet in the air.
Alfonso was assisting with a study, conducted by STRI and researchers at Northern Arizona University, that investigated the temperatures of rainforest tree leaves to find clues about climate change.
The maximum temperature at which plants can photosynthesize, according to the study, hovers around 116 degrees Fahrenheit.
The study found that if the temperature of tropical rainforests get too high, leaves – and eventually entire canopies – could die.
The crane lifted Alfonso up to an area where small plastic containers that looked like Tupperware had been placed around several leaves. The containers were attached to wires that snaked across branches and through the trees.
“Those are the heating chambers, and you can see the cable that is hanging there,” Alfonso said.
Alfonso spoke via radio to the crane operator, who lifted the basket further up until it sat roughly 160 feet above the ground. The forest stretched into Panama City as the skyscrapers gleamed in the morning sun.
“The question is whether these big canopy trees can adjust, within their lifetime, to a rise in temperature. If they can’t, then tropical forests will take up less carbon in a warmer future, and that will contribute less to the mitigation of anthropogenic climate change than they are doing now,” he said. “We’re doing it now because we don’t have that much time. We’re running out of time, and we cannot reverse what is happening. The only thing we can do is adapt.”
The future of the Smithsonian Institution – and, inherently, STRI and its research – is unclear. So far, King said in late March, STRI has not suffered any budget cuts other than its diversity officer being laid off.
STRI would not comment further on the Trump administration’s actions – but researchers and staff said that even if politicians order changes to this quiet hideaway, they hope the value of their work would offer some protection.
“We are perhaps the only country in the world who’s invested this much in understanding the tropics, and that’s a long term investment we’ve made in collaboration with the country of Panama,” said Tewksbury, sitting at a table in the mess hall. “It’s been nothing but beneficial for the U.S. and Panama. So I feel pretty good about it.”
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