The Nature Conservancy’s ambitious goal to reforest Brazil—and safeguard its biodiversity by Harriot Manley
“SaVE t HE aMazon.” It’s one of the environmental mantras of this generation. But “Save the Atlantic Forest”? Say that and most people will think you’re talking about maple trees in Vermont.
In fact, the Atlantic Forest is a spectacularly complex and biologically diverse expanse of tropical rainforest running along the eastern coast of Brazil, where lion tamarins clamber in the canopy, tree frogs crouch in the crooks of giant trees, hummingbirds whir, orchids bloom, and Technicolor parrots swirl overhead.
“The Atlantic Forest is the forgotten Amazon,” notes Claudia Picone, an information resource coordinator for The Nature Conservancy’s efforts to restore the forest, which has been ravaged by ranching, illegal logging, agriculture, and other pressures. Formerly twice the size of Texas, only seven percent of the original Atlantic Forest remains, notes Picone. “No tropical forest on earth has come closer to total destruction.”
For the Virginia-based Conservancy, that impending disaster is a call to
White-handed tree frogs in the Atlantic Forest. Opposite: Local tree planters on a hillside near Extrema, Brazil.
COnTEnTS HELp
tree Planters: scott warren, froGs: carlos renato fernandes
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