Conservation in the southern Amazon basin
The Amazon rainforests are widely recognized as a cradle of biodiversity and as the ‘lungs of the Earth’. These forests have been under siege, particularly at their eastern and southern limits in the Brazilian Amazon, since the 1950s when the first of three major highways crisscrossing the Amazon was opened. The flood of colonists to the Amazon has held grave consequences for the native flora and fauna, and satellite maps of the region now clearly show what is known as the “Deforestation Arc” across the states of Pará, Maranhão, Mato Grosso, Rondônia and Acre.
Projects to pave the aforementioned highways (the Brasilia-Belém highway, a north-south axis from the national capital to the large port city at the mouth of the Amazon river; the Cuiabá-Santarem highway, a much-desired link from a major soybean producing area to a deepwater port; and the Transamazônica, an east-west axis from near Belém to the Peruvian border in the west) are planned or in progress. The majority of these infrastructure projects are scheduled for completion by 2025 at the latest, and a considerable level of environmental damage should be expected to come hand-in-hand.
Recently the Brazilian federal government has created a network of large reserves in critical areas on the southern fringe of the Amazon in an effort to curb the Deforestation Arc. These conservation areas now exist on paper as indigenous reserves, military areas, national and state parks, national forests, and sustainable development reserves. This is a commendable initiative which perhaps should have been developed together with major infrastructure projects rather than as an afterthought.
Private landowners also have an important role to play in conservation in Brazil. A federal law exists whereby landowners may apply to have their land protected in perpetuity if the area has proven conservation, cultural, educational or scientific value. These Private Natural Heritage Reserves are still few and far between in the Amazonian region of Brazil, but have already proven their importance for conservation in other threatened Brazilian biomes such as the Atlantic rainforest and the cerrado.
The Amazon is Not For Sale
Brazilians and the federal government of Brazil take a great deal of pride in their natural heritage, and the Amazon rainforest is a tremendous cultural and economic asset to the country. A great deal of concern has surfaced in the media and the general public over the involvement of foreigners in the Amazon. Some of this concern is based on misunderstandings, while others are valid – while the destiny of the Amazon rainforests will affect the entire planet, it is a resource whose management lies ultimately with the people who live there.
Savetherainforestforourchildren.org firmly believes that the remaining Amazonian forests must be managed sustainably, but we do not deign to try to influence or dictate policy regarding this incredible cradle of life on Earth. Instead, we have chosen to provide support to a partner organization in Brazil – an organization dedicated to understanding and preserving one of the world’s last remaining wilderness areas.
Fazenda Natureza – “Rainforest One”
 At the beginning of 2008 we were contacted by conservationists from Alta Floresta in the state of Mato Grosso. They had purchased an area on the Juruena river and were looking for orientation and support to ensure the protection of their forest. We agreed to help find a viable economic alternative to save the land from a forestry project or gold mining enterprise and to allow the owners to proceed with their plans to establish a small research station to study the little-known lower Juruena river basin.
Fazenda Natureza, or “Rainforest One” as we call it, is a pilot project for us all. Deforestation contributes about 20 per cent of the world’s man-made greenhouse gas emissions, underlining the importance of permanent forest reserves with concrete economic values placed on the carbon stored within. By ensuring the continuing protection of Rainforest One we also ensure that the carbon sequestered in the biomass of the forest is not released from the biosphere to the atmosphere where it might otherwise not be. Furthermore, the ongoing photosynthetic action of the forest also acts to sequester carbon – Rainforest One accounts for a tiny corner of the Earth’s mightiest lung.
Rainforest One on the Juruena river
Rainforest One lies on the lower Juruena river in the municipality of Nova Bandeirantes in the extreme north of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso. The forest reserve currently encompasses 240 hectares of undisturbed floodplain forest fronting 1800 metres of the right bank of the Juruena. The immediate surroundings are relatively pristine, but environmental damage from a nearby gold mining community is ongoing, and forest clearance for cattle ranching and illegal logging is rapidly approaching this corner of paradise. Over the past five years Nova Bandeirantes has consistently ranked amongst the top ten worst municipalities for deforestation in the state of Mato Grosso – this state and the state of Pará have accounted for more than half of all deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon during the same period.
View the interactive satelllite maps of the area.
Rainforest One in a Conservation Mosaic
A great deal of our enthusiasm for the future of Rainforest One lies in its strategically-important location. In a response to growing concern about the fate of the tall humid and dry forests of the southern Amazon, the Brazilian government has legislated a series of protected areas along the critical fringe of destruction known as the Deforestation Arc. This conservation mosaic will play a crucial role in the long-term survival of rainforests in the states of Mato Grosso and Pará.
Rainforest One lies in the centre-west of the preservation belt known as the Teles Pires-Tapajós Conservation Corridor, in the buffer zone of the newly-created Juruena National Park which protects nearly 2 million hectares of rainforest and cerrado (thus making it the 3rd largest national park in Brazil). The eventual incorporation of Rainforest One into the national RPPN scheme will serve to widen the conservation corridor and stem the tide of destruction from illegal logging, forest clearing for agriculture and gold mining operations.
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