Restoring the Mata Atlantica

I hope you didn't find my last blog on the destruction of the Mata Atlantica/ Atlantic Rainforest too depressing. Well, here is the counter weight to help restore your faith in humanity!


My over-long bus journey ends in a 30 minute ride in a rickety, old bus along a dirt road, heading into the mountains. The rivers are now clean and bordered by trees and green pastures. The driver indicates with a hand gesture that I have reached my destination, so I duly jump off. The bus trundles on trailing a cloud of dust, and then I am in the quiet zone, suddenly alone, in the middle of apparently nowhere.

A blue gate behind me and a faint sign tell me that I have reached my destination and I haul my enormous sack up the track towards some buildings hidden behind some tall trees. There is no-one around in the surprisingly tidy farm buildings, the overhanging arboreal giants festooned with bromeliads and orchids. I see movement through a window and happen upon a hive of student activity. Thankfully one of them speaks English (my Portuguese is non-existent and I am deliberately trying to avoid learning even a few words as my small brain can only concentrate on acquiring Spanish at the moment). The student directs me to Eric, an American volunteer, with whom I am to share digs for a couple of nights in a building that used to be a shed for calves on a cattle ranch. Today, the farm is known as REGUA (or Reserva Ecologica de Guapiacu) and is an eco-tourism destination, particularly for people interested in stalking the stunning birdlife in the mountain forests, and also operates a public education and ecological research facility.

Volunteer accommodation in converted cow sheds. Eric's and mine is the white hut on the left.

The converted farmhouse, now a lodge for bird watchers

The project is the brain-child of Nicholas (English, but has lived here for most of his life) and his Argentinian wife, Raquel. They have carefully and thoughtfully restored the buildings and lands of the old cattle farm, which has been in Nicholas’ family for a century. The old farmhouse is now the lodge for paying tourists with panoramic views over mountains clothed in steaming jungle. Humming birds suck sugar solution in front of the outdoor dining table. What was once a wetland and was drained to become farmland has now been restored back to wetland complete with wallowing capybaras and water birds, and a back-drop of newly planted forest from REGUA’s own tree nursery. I also meet George, the ecological brains behind the operation. During the evening I also meet Richard and Sally (English). Richard works for the RSPB and he’s been working at REGUA for a month as a volunteer and his wife, Sally, is from Hull near my home town of Scarborough – so we literally talk the same language!

Very early the next morning we arise to participate in a day’s (or in my case half a day’s) bird-watching in the jungle. We are due to leave at 6.30 a.m., however, I am inadvertently left behind for 30 minutes as a call of nature just at the wrong time means the lift goes without me! I’m not a bird-watcher (although I love forests), but the birds are spectacular, once I can see them through a briefly loaned pair of binoculars (my free National Trust opera bins don’t really cut the ornithological mustard). To me, watching the people watching the birds is as interesting as watching the birds themselves, but most of all I am fascinated by the guide. He is a REGUA employee who knows every leaf in the forest. He imitates bird calls Dr. Dolittle style – and the ones he can’t manage are played back through an ipod with speaker attachment. I speak with him later. He used to be a hunter in the forests, but now earns a much better living showing tourists birds. And this has inspired him to start learning English.

From deep within the forest on a rough, wet track we hear the sound of a motor engine coming our way - distant at first then gradually closer. We expect to see a Land Rover or 4WD Nissan bouncing around the bend, so we are all stunned into silence when a white Volkswagen Beetle careers towards us. Who or what is that? Apparently it's a visiting professor and his wife who are studying the forest's unique orchids - they park up and stroll off into the green.


Anyway, I tramp back through the jungle with Bart – not a yellow-haired satirical cartoon character, but a tall Dutchman with a passion for wildlife photography. He suddenly leaps several feet into the air, forcing me to do the same, as a long, green snake slithers over the spot where our now airborne feet were.

That evening, Sally, Richard, Eric and I make the essential Brazilian cocktail – caipirinhas – by mashing limes/ lemons with cachaca (sugar cane rum) and sugar. Served with ice, it is highly refreshing on a humid, Brazilian evening. Maybe I was over-refreshed as the effect compromised my table tennis ability meaning that Richard gave me a good thrashing.

The next day I am with Roberto and Katia in another fragment of the Atlantic Rainforest, on the other side of Rio de Janeiro, near Valenca, in an area that seems altogether even more denuded and damaged. The land here is hilly, with steep slopes and thin grass. The grass burns regularly putting paid to any young trees fortunate to have gained a root-hold. Roberto used to be a vet and now works on a 200 hectare piece of forest that has been in his family for around a century.

We take his four wheel drive Lada car on a steep and slippery forest dirt road. Still in one piece, we arrive at the nerve centre of his property in this remnant of the Atlantic Rainforest – which is living up to its name as the rain falls heavily. Roberto is a driven man and inspects the building work that is underway on a couple of simple new structures on the only area of flat land for miles around. This flat area, possibly quarter of a hectare, was originally built by 19^th century slaves lugging massive boulders to build a high retaining wall and back-filling it to create flat land for processing coffee. Now Roberto's project, the Santuario de Vida Silvestre da Serra do Concordia, is creating an environmental education and eco-tourism facility and uses the surrounding forest to demonstrate his agroforestry ideas (i.e., growing crops under trees) to others. He is growing a range of different potential crops, including fruits and vegetables and palmetto palm – where heart of palm comes from. We explore his land, projects and ideas, in the pouring rainforest rain. We need to leave before the dirt road back becomes impassable, even to a red, four-wheel-drive Lada.

Palmetto palm (source of the delicious palm heart) agro-forestry plantation

Roberto and yours truly with very strong coffee

Roberto is a driven man and has won prestigious prizes for his conservation work. He believes strongly that in order to conserve the Atlantic Rainforest we need to find and demonstrate ways that can unite conservation, restoration and reforestation that can also deliver incomes and profits for people to improve their lives. The world needs more people like Roberto.

A couple of days later I arrive in Itu, a couple of hours’ bus ride outside the megalopolis of Sao Paulo. (I almost didn’t get there as my Sao Paulo taxi driver to the bus station almost kicked me out of his cab in an unsavoury part of the city because I couldn’t understand what he was saying – if my Spanish is bad, my Portuguese, the language of Brazil, is non-existent!)

I am met by Rafael Fernandes of the environmental charity SOS Mata Atlantica, who takes me to his workplace – a former coffee plantation then cattle farm. The old farm buildings have been sensitively converted into offices, meeting rooms and public environmental education areas. SOSMA runs a range of formal and informal education programmes and works with local farmers to increase the number of trees on farmers’ land and protecting water courses – rebuilding the Atlantic Rainforest tree by tree. To date, the organisation has planted 24 million trees in 10 years over 2,500 hectares. And the pace of work is picking up as more and more people are taking an interest in recreating a former forest.

In the baking midday heat, Rafael gives me a guided tour of their native tree nursery which produces around 400,000 seedlings of 80 to 100 different species per year. They are evidently healthy as the fresh green of their new leaves looks almost artificial. SOSMA is currently working to expand this output to around a million per year. The nursery employs four people full-time. They are local people who receive further education and training on the job.

Rafael with a back-drop of young Atlantic Rainforest

He then takes me on a tour of the former farm’s land, upon which thousands of trees have been planted in the former pastures, showcasing to others what can be achieved. In this climate, trees grow quickly and within three years they are taller than me.

 The three Atlantic Rainforest restoration projects inspire me – all are different in all kinds of ways, but ultimately similar in trying to rebuild a forest that benefits people and enhances the natural wildlife value of the land. The Pacto Mata Atlantica is a new organisation established as an over-arching co-ordinator of these discrete, on-the-ground projects, and aims to enable the planting of 15 million hectares of trees by 2050.

These projects, and many others like them, will not recreate a once great forest overnight, and the new forest that is created will be different to its progenitor – the world is a different place now, and environmental concerns need to work within this changed world. But nothing will happen without the likes of the generous, inspiring, dedicated people that I have met on this journey through the Mata Atlantica.