Originally published 2019-07-17.
What lives in the forest around one of Central America's most talked-about archaeological sites? Quite a lot, it turns out. When biologists from Conservation International's Rapid Assessment Program surveyed the rainforest around the ruins known as Ciudad Blanca, the "White City" or "Lost City of the Monkey God" in the Mosquitia region of eastern Honduras, they found an unusually intact ecosystem: 198 bird species, 30 kinds of medium and large mammals including jaguars, pumas and ocelots, and several animals that had not been recorded in Honduras for decades.
The headline finds were a tiger beetle, Odontochila nicaraguense, previously known only from Nicaragua and feared extinct; the false tree coral snake Rhinobothryum bovallii, unrecorded in Honduras since 1965; and the pale-faced bat Phylloderma stenops, not reported in the country for more than 75 years.
The survey began in 2017, with teams flown in and out by helicopter, and the results were published in 2019. Below, the photographs taken by Trond Larsen of Conservation International show some of the animals that share the valley with the ruins, followed by what the numbers really mean.
How a legend became a survey site
Stories of a lost "White City" hidden in the Honduran jungle circulated for generations. The Pech name for it is Kahã Kamasa. Most archaeologists doubt the legend ever referred to one specific city, but in 2012 a team led by documentary filmmaker Steve Elkins flew lidar, a laser-scanning technique that can see through forest canopy, over remote valleys in Mosquitia. The scans revealed two large pre-Columbian settlements with plazas and earthworks.
A joint Honduran-American expedition reached one of the sites on the ground in February 2015 and found an earthen pyramid and a cache of stone offerings. Writer Douglas Preston told the story in his 2017 book The Lost City of the Monkey God. Because the valley had been so hard to reach, it also offered biologists a rare chance to see what an undisturbed patch of Mesoamerican rainforest holds.
What the expedition counted
Conservation International's published tally, drawn from its RAP bulletin, gives a clearer picture than many of the viral summaries that circulated in 2019:
- Plants: 183 species in 68 families, including 14 threatened species and three new to Honduras.
- Butterflies and moths: 246 species, 15 of them new records for the country.
- Birds: 198 species, among them the endangered great green macaw.
- Amphibians and reptiles: 22 amphibians and 35 reptiles.
- Fish: 13 native species and, notably, no invasive ones.
- Small mammals: 40 species, 30 bats and 10 rodents.
- Medium and large mammals: 30 species, including big cats and the white-lipped peccary, which now survives in only about 13% of its former range in Mesoamerica.
Some early reports gave "94 butterflies" and "56 amphibians and reptiles". The figures above come straight from Conservation International's own summary and are the ones to rely on.
Photo gallery: animals of the Mosquitia forest
Red-eyed tree frog. With its lime-green body, blue-and-yellow flanks and scarlet eyes, Agalychnis callidryas is one of the best-known frogs of Central American lowland forests. It is active at night and lays its eggs on leaves hanging over water, so the hatching tadpoles drop straight into a pond or stream. It is not rare, but finding it in good numbers is a sign of healthy, humid forest.
Plumed basilisk. The green basilisk, Basiliscus plumifrons, lives along forest streams and is famous for sprinting across the surface of water on its hind legs, which earned basilisks the nickname "Jesus Christ lizards". The tall crests are most developed in adult males. It needs shaded rivers lined with vegetation, exactly the kind of habitat the survey found intact.
Morpho butterfly. The electric blue of a morpho does not come from pigment. Microscopic ridges on its wing scales reflect blue light, a trick known as structural colour, while the brown underside with eyespots helps it vanish when it settles. Butterflies and moths were the largest animal group in the count, with 246 species.
Glass frog. Glass frogs (family Centrolenidae) are named for their translucent bellies, through which the heart and other organs can be seen. Many species lay eggs on leaves above streams, and in a number of them the parents guard the clutch. Because they depend on clean, shaded water, they are useful indicators of forest health.
Eyelash viper. Bothriechis schlegelii is a small, tree-dwelling pit viper named for the raised scales above its eyes. It comes in several colours, from mossy green to bright yellow, and ambushes frogs, lizards and birds from branches. It is venomous, so it is a snake to admire from a distance.
Tiger beetle. Tiger beetles are fast, long-legged hunters with large jaws. The expedition's most celebrated record was Odontochila nicaraguense, a species previously known only from Nicaragua and believed to be extinct. Finding it in Honduras extended its known range and showed it still survives.
Worm salamander. Worm salamanders are slender, small-limbed members of the lungless salamander family, which breathe through their moist skin. They spend most of their lives hidden in leaf litter and soil, so they are easy to miss. Records like this one help scientists map species that are rarely seen even by people who live nearby.
"Rediscovered" does not always mean "back from extinction"
Headlines in 2019 said creatures "thought to be extinct" had been "found alive". That is partly true and worth reading carefully. Of the three standout records, only the tiger beetle had been feared globally extinct. The coral snake and the pale-faced bat were simply missing from Honduran records for a very long time; both are known from other countries.
A missing record can mean an animal vanished, but it can also mean nobody with the right expertise had looked in the right place. Remote, roadless forest like this tends to hide species rather than lose them. That is why rapid surveys matter: they turn guesswork into a baseline that later studies can compare against.
Why the forest is still under pressure
The valley's isolation protected it, but the wider region is changing. Conservation International points to agriculture and cattle ranching pushing into the forest, along with hunting that has already thinned out game birds such as curassows across much of Honduras. Large animals like jaguars and peccaries need big, connected areas, so protecting a single valley is not enough on its own.
The survey's recommendation was to treat the Ciudad Blanca area as a top conservation priority, keep it free from farming encroachment and keep monitoring it. The Honduran government also set up the Kaha Kamasa Foundation to fund research and protection. For readers, the practical lesson is that the "lost city" is not only an archaeological story: the forest around it is a living record that can still be lost.
Sources: Conservation International: Biological treasures of the “Lost City of the Monkey God” in Honduras; Wikipedia: La Ciudad Blanca; Photos by Trond Larsen / Conservation International, via Good News Network.
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