Word: pontal
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...Brazilian homestead, Suzana Padua looks with pleasure at the grove of trees that Valdomiro ("Miro") de Castro and his wife Ireni have planted near their farmhouse and, in the distance, the chartreuse fringe of saplings growing alongside the Morro do Diabo State Park. "Look around you!" she exclaims. "The Pontal is greening...
That's a remarkable statement, since the Pontal, a once heavily forested area in the far west of Sao Paulo State, has long been devastated by logging and ranching. But nature is making a comeback in this impoverished region, thanks largely to the Instituto de Pesquisas Ecologicas (Institute for Ecological Research), an organization co-founded in 1992 by Padua and her husband Claudio, a primatologist at the University of Brasilia. IPE's mission is as simple as it is ambitious: to protect--and insofar as possible--reconnect the last precious remnants of the Mata Atlantica, the great forest that once...
Initially, IPE was an extension of Claudio's work with black lion tamarins, a gravely endangered species of New World monkey found only in the Pontal and its vicinity. Soon, however, the couple realized that to save the tamarins, they would have to save the forest that sheltered them--and that turned into a huge challenge. In 1995, Brazil's Landless Movement decided to resettle thousands of poor people on land bordering the Morro do Diabo park and smaller patches of forest nearby...
...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...
...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...
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