LETTER FROM RIO DE JANEIRO
Crouching on the ground, Miguel Bezerra, 10, delicately places a young plant of quaresmeiraa large tree with violet flowers, in a hole 60 centimeters deep that he carefully covers with soil with his hands. Once the tree grows, “It will help attract animals!” »the little boy with the blue rectangular glasses says proudly to his father who is accompanying him.
Like Miguel, about thirty children from a school located about fifteen minutes away came, this sunny morning, with their parents and teachers, to participate in the reforestation of a small hill in the west of Rio de Janeiro organized by Refloresta Rio. (“Reboise Rio”). Launched by the city council in 1986, it aims to restore the biome that entirely covered the city: the “Atlantic forest”.
This vast tropical forest, which is home to nearly 20,000 species of plants, including 8,000 endemic, as well as 850 species of birds, 370 of amphibians, 200 of reptiles, 350 of fish and 270 of mammals, including the jaguar, the puma and numerous monkeys, once covered the entire Brazilian coast, or approximately 15% of the country’s territory (1,306,421 square kilometers). But, after the arrival of the Portuguese settlers, in the 16th centurymy century, was gradually destroyed in favor of logging, agricultural crops and, more recently, urban expansion.
“This is the most degraded biome in Brazil”says Jerónimo Sansevero, assistant professor at the Forestry Institute of the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro. Today only 24% of the original forest remains, according to official data. And 70% of the Brazilian population lives in regions that were once covered by it.
More forests restored than destroyed
In Rio de Janeiro, the restoration of the Atlantic forest was initially intended to avoid tragedies related to deforestation. In the 1980s, the loss of vegetation cover on the hills that beautify the city, in favor of informal constructions with anarchic development, caused “Numerous landslides during the rains, destroying precarious homes and causing the death of many people”explains Camila de Souza da Rocha, 38, who organizes the reforestation actions of Reforesta Rio, which has already allowed the reforestation of 3,500 hectares.
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