Two Towns Fight for Road Closed for Wildlife Park
4/7/98
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Title: Two Towns Fight for Road Closed for Wildlife Park
Date: 4/7/98
Byline: Diana Jean Schemo
[F] OZ DO IGUACU, Brazil -- All of the people demonstrating here recently had a
vivid where-were-you-when-it-happened memory of the closing of the road into
the Iguacu Falls National Park a dozen years ago.
Irineu Colombo had hopped the ferry at the end of the road and played his
trombone at a party at the town on the other side of the Iguacu River. When the
party ended, Colombo saw that the road, which cut through a protected natural
reserve, had been permanently shut.
"It was closed without hearing the voice of the people," said Colombo, now a
state legislator of the leftist Workers Party. "The contact between two
communities was cut suddenly."
Now, in a bitter dispute with conservationists, local businessmen and
residents, backed by politicians, are clamoring for the road to reopen
formally. They complain that once the 13-mile-long road closed, businesses went
bankrupt and families that lived in towns on opposite sides of the park were
forced to drive more than 100 miles to see one another.
Ignoring the closing, residents -- supported by the local Rotary chapter,
according to a banner stretched across the trees -- have seized a piece of the
park and opened the road to traffic, exposing the protected wildlife to its
first human contact in a dozen years. At the end of the road, the ferryboat is
back at work, also illegally.
A federal judge has ordered the residents removed from the entrance, but in a
presidential election year the government is reluctant to force a showdown. At
one point, demonstrators threatened to set fire to the park. Conservationists
are calling for an international boycott of the falls until the road is closed.
Iguacu Falls is Brazil's most popular natural tourist attraction, drawing a
million visitors a year. Designated by UNESCO as part of the World Patrimony,
the park's waterfalls forms one of the planet's most stunning borders, between
Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay.
But while the falls is open to visitors, this section of the Iguacu National
Park was designated a wildlife refuge. Brown jaguars and black jaguars, deer,
monkeys, armadillos, birds and other animals roam without fear of humans.
On the river bank, a spectacular variety of butterflies -- with velvety wings
of blue and black, big black wings tipped in coral or hot pink, or Pop-art
wings of asymmetric black and white spirals -- cover the rocks and soil.
Eugenio Santini, one of the demonstrators, said the residents wanted an
entrance much like the main entrance to the waterfalls, with an admission fee
and controlled access.
"We agree that without the forest, we'll all die," he said.
But others among the demonstrators complain of a loss of business when the road
closed, and say protecting the wildlife is depriving them of a living.
"The fear is that vehicles will cause damage," said Joao da Costa, 40, a father
of two. "Can it be that a car causes damage to animals but not to the people
inside the car? Are animals more important than people?"
And Colombo, the state legislator, said, "A little commercialization is always
feasible."
On the other side, conservationists have been demanding that the army force the
road's closure once again.
"The park is our national treasure, our safe," said Teresa Urban, a spokeswoman
for the environmental groups in the region. "You can't invade Fort Knox."
Tempers flared when two congressmen visited here with a local environmental
official, who had earlier warned that the military would be called in to
restore control over the park.
"This is an ecological symbol in Brazil," Ricardo Soavinski, the federal
environmental agency's chief of ecosystems, told the angry protesters. "It
could be a much smaller problem than any other thing that's happening in
Brazil, but it's a symbol. The park belongs to humanity, to everybody."
"Then it belongs to us, too," said Romeo Carlos Falkenbach, one of the
protesting residents.
After the meeting, the likelihood that the military would remove the protesters
receded, and Colombo said he believed that the road would be permanently opened
but that it would take a year for the question to be settled.
Conservationists, who noted that trees have been felled right up to the border
of the park, charged that the protesters were using "emotional arguments" when
their interests were purely commercial.
"We're in a very grave situation," Ms. Urban said. "If this happens in the
second oldest park in the country, imagine what could happen in the rest.
What's missing is a greater sense of responsibility."