Ecologists Trying to Restore Brazil's Dwindled Atlantic Forests

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/

2/22/97

OVERVIEW, SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE

The Atlantic Forest ecosystem of Brazil is amongst the most diverse

assemblage of species in the world, as well as the most fragmented and

impacted upon by human activity. Following is information related to

a unique World Bank sponsored program to gather seeds from the

significant forest remnants for the purpose of forest restoration.

Pockets of surviving Atlantic Forest in the southernmost state of Rio

Grande do Sul are to be linked with corridors of regrown native forest

species. The only hope for heavily diminished forest ecosystems such

as Brazil's Atlantic Forests may be forest restoration ecology

exercises which seek to expand and link remnant forest patches.

g.b.

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Ecologists Trying to Restore Brazil's Dwindled Atlantic Forest

February 22, 1997

MAQUINE, Brazil (AP) -- High in a tangle of creepers and branches in

the Atlantic Forest, Maria Luiza Klippert strikes "green gold" -- the

fruit of a heart-of-palm tree.

It has taken Klippert, a geneticist, several days to find a fertile

heart-of-palm, a once plentiful but now dwindling species prized for a

soft, rich core that is often served in salads.

Using long shears, Klippert prunes hundreds of red fruits that contain

the precious seeds she needs to grow new heart-of-palms. Then she

climbs down a ladder 30 feet to the forest floor to gather her catch.

"As long as there's a seed, there's hope for a species," she says.

"Now we can reproduce the heart-of-palm, and, with some luck, use them

to regenerate the Atlantic Forest."

The seeds will go to Brazil's first "endangered tree bank" -- a

laboratory where scientists will reproduce species nearly wiped out by

encroaching loggers, farmers and miners.

The tree bank is the centerpiece of an unusual World Bank project

aimed at restoring Brazil's Atlantic Forest, one of the world's most

diverse -- and endangered -- ecosystems.

The Ecological Corridor Project is to link pockets of surviving

Atlantic Forest in the southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul with

"corridors" of new forest regrown with native plant and tree species.

The corridors will connect patches of public and private land that are

registered as "ecological protection zones" for tax breaks, said

Daniel Gross, a task force manager for World Bank environmental

projects.

"The old thinking was that you could only get some kind of ecological

benefit from a forest if you set aside huge, unbroken chunks of land

and kept people off them. But the government usually can't afford to

do that," Gross said in a telephone interview from Washington.

"Now we see that if you link pieces of forest -- public and private

land that are managed by locals of the area -- you can get the same

environmental effect at a lot less cost."

The $1.28 million project represents a major shift in World Bank

funding away from immense projects drawn up by federal bureaucrats to

smaller programs designed and implemented by scientists in the field.

"With those huge, centralized projects, we were losing a lot of money

in bureaucrats' salaries, workshops, planning and studies," Gross

said. "The studies are all right, but we really need action."

The Atlantic Forest is, indeed, running out of time and trees.

When Portuguese explorers arrived in 1500, the wilderness spanned

4,500 square miles along Brazil's eastern seaboard. It covered 40

percent of what is now Rio Grande do Sul state.

Over the years, loggers, ranchers and farmers gnawed at the forest.

And the more it shrank, the faster it was devastated. Between 1985 and

1990, government studies showed the Atlantic Forest was razed at a

rate of 13 football fields an hour.

Today, just 3 percent of the original forest remains nationwide. In

Rio Grande do Sul, a breadbasket built on cattle ranching and farming,

just 2.3 percent is left.

Paradoxically, the more the Atlantic Forest disappears, the more

scientists discover how biologically rich it is. In November,

botanists in Bahia state discovered 476 types of trees in a 2.5 acre

plot -- a record for biodiversity.

A federal law was passed several years ago prohibiting logging of the

forest, but enforcement was spotty and money was always short.

Then in 1995, the World Bank made $65 million available for ecological

programs in Brazil. This time, it asked the federal government to

solicit project ideas from Brazil's 26 states.

To qualify for funds, each state was required to show it had

environmental laws, an enforcement arm to punish offenders and a

budget that was increasing outlays for ecological protection.

Rio Grande do Sul and five other states adopted environmental

legislation just to qualify. The state proposed 18 projects, and six -

- including the Ecological Corridor Project -- were approved.

The State Agricultural Research Foundation in Maquine, 90 miles north

of the state capital of Porto Alegre, has been renovated to be the

heart of the tree bank. It has a new dry chamber to preserve tree

seeds up to four years and a laboratory will test seed fertility and

purity.

Starting in March, biologists will test each batch of seeds for 10

months before germinating them, said Alan Cirino Rodrigues, director

of the center.

This year, 18 species will be stored at the bank, including coveted

trees like the grandiuva, guapuruvu, acoita-cavalo, canjerana,

ipe-amarelo and inga-feijao.

The project expects to produce at least 180,000 saplings the first

year and triple that by 1999, Rodrigues said.

Some of those saplings will be put into fruit orchards and hardwood

groves. These projects will help employ locals and deter loggers from

cutting trees in protected zones, Klippert said.

The project will also provide municipalities with free saplings for

parks, sidewalks and hilly residential areas plagued by soil erosion,

and offer farmers 30 tons of organic fertilizers a year.

In addition to tax breaks, private landowners who permit the state to

reforest their lands will receive "ecotourism" licenses and be allowed

to attend courses on how to farm without burning down trees.

"The locals have to see some benefit," Klippert said. "What good are

rare, beautiful trees around communities of jobless people?"

Even if everything goes smoothly, experts say it will take more than

50 years before anything that resembles a forest sprouts from Rio

Grande do Sul's degraded pastures.

But Thomas E. Lovejoy, a leading expert in reforestation and an

ecological consultant at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, is

optimistic.

"The new forest will be missing some animal and tree species," he

said. "But the original forest's biodiversity will spread out and make

the new forest infinitely richer."

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