Iracambi Forest Futures: Adopt A Plot - Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest Conservation

The people of Iracambi share a vision: To recreate Brazil's Atlantic Rainforest, one of the world's richest areas of biodiversity, teaming with rare animals and plants, many found nowhere else on earth.

FOREST FUTURE?

The Atlantic Rainforest (Mata Atlântica in Portuguese) stretches between the Rio Grande do Norte and the Rio Grande so Sul, along the east coast of Brazil.

About 93% of the Rainforest has gone, and the remainder is dotted in patches along the Brazilian coast.

The Atlantic Rainforest is 60 million years old, 20 million years older than its neighbour the Amazon Rainforest. The Rainforest is reduced in size mainly due to industrial development, sugar-cane and cattle farming, logging, and coffee cultivation.

Rainforests survive because of the relationship between the trees and plants and tiny micro-organisms that help give them the nutrients and minerals to grow. When the forest is cleared, all these micro-organisms die quickly.

The Rainforest & its Species

The Atlantic Rainforest is quite different from its neighbour the Amazon rainforest, with higher altitude and a broader range of temperatures. These factors make the Atlantic rainforests bio-diversity much greater. It is home to 80% of the species classified as endangered in Brazil thus increasing the importance and urgency with which we need to conserve what remains.

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When the Portuguese arrived in Brazil in 1500, the Atlantic Rainforest covered more than 1 million square kilometres; eleven times the size of Portugal. Now only 8% of the area remains reforested, and just 10% of that is still primary, the rest having been logged at least once. Despite official protection, the rate of destruction is still increasing.

Victim to lumberjacks, sugar and coffee planters, gold miners and cattle ranchers, today the great forest is reduced to isolated forest fragments, too small to support the exuberant life that once flourished there. Much of the forest is owned by small farmers who struggle to make a living on fragile soils and is frequently forced to cut the forest to make new fields. The Atlantic Rainforest is disappearing because so many local people live on the edge of survival and has few economic alternatives.

There are 750 bird species in the state of Minas Gerais alone, where Iracambi is located, and 21 species and sub species of monkey, 14 of which are endangered. There are believed to be only 500 woolly spider monkeys alive today, making them in greater danger that the mountain gorilla.

´Adopt a Forest Future and Save a Future Forest´

The Threat of Bauxite Mining

In November 2003 Iracambi discovered by chance that a mining company is seeking a license to mine bauxite in the Serra das Aranhas, on Iracambi's western boundary. Two of the deposits they have located are on the land directly next to Iracambi, in one of the plots we hope to acquire as part of our Forest Futures Program, and is less than 500m from Iracambi's border. The whole area designated by the mining company has 22 deposits, which the company expects to yield 3.7 million tons of bauxite that they intend (according to the Environmental Impact Statement) to extract over a period of 78 years. The bauxite will be taken to their plant in Cataguases for processing and sold on to another company in the same group that produces aluminum silicate for use in water filtration plants, amongst other things.

This is a terrible threat to the Mata Atlântica. The potential impact on the biodiversity, particularly wild life, water resources, farm families and Iracambi's potential as a Research Center would be devastating.

A group, that includes Amigos de Iracambi, has been formed to study the issue. The need to exploit this potential valuable resource is understandable in terms of both the local and national economy but we want to ensure that the protected areas of the environment and its biodiversity is not destroyed in the process.

With almost 93% of the Rainforest gone, and the remainder at risk it is the perfect time to make a difference before the Rainforest is lost forever...