Word: forest
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Pontal had already been so rapaciously deforested that less than 2% of its native tree cover remained. So when the landless settled next to the remnants of forest, Claudio feared they would chop down the trees for fuel and lumber and destroy animal populations through hunting. Instead, when he and Suzana began to talk with local leaders, they found allies rather than enemies. The landless, they found, were in desperate need of almost everything, including wood. Yet they were willing to try to fill that need in ways that were not environmentally ruinous...
What evolved was a collaboration that benefited not only settlers but the forest and animals that lived there as well. "Whenever we came up with ideas, people were willing to try them," says Suzana. One IPE plan called for planting trees around forested tracts, creating an abraco ao verde (literally, green hug) to ward off assaults by cattle, fires and windstorms. Another envisioned linking forest fragments with broad corridors of trees, along which jaguars, tapir and tamarins could travel...
...park and started distributing free seedlings. It also began sponsoring courses in agroforestry. Miro de Castro is a graduate of the first of these courses, and to date he has planted 6,700 trees, from fast-growing cultivars (eucalyptus, acacia) that are useful for lumber and fuel to native forest trees that produce fruit and nuts...
...Suzana admits, when Claudio suddenly went back to school to study biology. She and their three children later followed him to the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he got his doctorate, and to Morro do Diabo, where they lived for 3 1/2 years. It was there, walking along forest trails bathed in emerald light, that Suzana underwent her own metamorphosis, from urban sophisticate to champion of environmental education...
...effort to save the Pontal's forest is still evolving, and much work remains. But thanks to the Paduas, the future of both people and wild animals in this ecologically fragile region is looking more hopeful than hopeless...