Ecotourists Gets a Bird's-eye View of Atlantic Rainforest
10/27/97
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Headline: Ecotourists Gets a Bird's-eye View of Atlantic Rainforest
Source: The Detroit
Date: 10/27/97
Author: William Allen, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Copyright 1997: The Detroit [detnews.com home page]
Brazil gives ecotourists a bird's-eye view
John Greene will always remember the
mud of the rain forest.
As he trudged into the Brazilian
jungle to help build a treetop walkway
for a conservation group, he carried two
clean towels -- one to wipe the mud off
his hands and the other to wipe it off
his glasses. "By the end of the day, you
couldn't tell which was which," he said.
Greene, 55, a master carpenter for
the Anheuser-Busch Cos. brewery, spent
most of April in the Atlantic coastal
forest. His company sent him there to
help with a project conceived by the
environmental group Conservation
International.
"When I left St. Louis, I had no idea
that I was getting into mud up to my
knees, and rain every day," he said. But
he'd go again: "It was the most
educational and rewarding thing I've ever
done."
For nearly a month, he led a team
building a 350-foot walkway as high as 60
feet above a ravine between two
mountains. Among the hardships: nearly
constant rain, seven days a week almost
24 hours a day.
"You don't quit because it's
raining," he said. "You work right on
through, pretending it's not there."
Even when it wasn't raining, humidity
and dripping leaves sopped the forest and
made the mountainside as slick as jelly.
Greene constantly slipped and fell. Even
when he cushioned the fall with his
hands, water and mud flew onto his face.
The aim of the walkway is to
encourage ecotourism in the area,
enabling tour operators and local
residents to gain income from the forest
in a way other than cutting it down,
selling the logs and farming the land.
The walkway, scheduled to open in June
1998, will allow visitors to view
wildlife and plants that can't be seen
from below.
The Atlantic forest is isolated from
the vast Amazon forest to the west. It
has been reduced to less than 5 percent
of its original area but is still home to
some of the most diverse animal and plant
life in the world. Species found nowhere
else include 6,000 kinds of plants, 260
reptiles, 199 birds and 73 mammals, among
them the golden lion tamarin.
The darkness, tough wood, rain,
language barrier and other conditions
made the job last 10 times longer than it
would take in the United States, Greene
estimated.
Greene came away with a new
appreciation for tropical forests and the
need to save the species native to each
region, partly because they hold
potential for economic benefit and partly
because they're just plain strange and
beautiful.
"Countries are beginning to realize
how important it is to save what we have
rather than turn it into a waste site,"
he said. "If you destroy the habitat that
these plants and animals live in, it's
like destroying the dinosaurs."