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In 2005, while graduating from the University of Biology of the USP, botanist Ricardo Cardim had the idea to travel through deforested areas of the Atlantic Forest behind giant trees that had survived amidst plantations and trees. pastures.
Research has progressed over the last 13 years and has become one of the greatest research on the history of the destruction of one of the world's most biodiverse regions.
In Cardenas's book titled "The Remains of the Atlantic Forest: The Tall Trees of the Early Forest and its Remains" (Olhares ed.), Published in November, Cardim documents the dizzying economic expansion of this biome which, in a little more than a century, has lost 90% of its original vegetation and divides the surviving zones into 245 000 fragments.
Cardim also draws with photographer Cássio Vasconcellos and botanist Luciano Zandoná an inventory of treasure troves resistant to slaughter, including centuries-old examples of Brazilian figs, perobas and sticks, described in six-state expeditions. from South. , Southeast and Northeast.
The tallest tree identified in a former cocoa farm in Camacã (BA) was a 58-foot-tall jequitibá with a trunk 13.6 meters in circumference – extraordinary dimensions, but without giant biome trees in the past, as a jequitibá from the region of Campinas (SP), whose stem reached 19.5 meters in circumference at the beginning of the twentieth century.
In an interview with BBC News Brazil, Cardim states that the conditions that allowed the development of the giant trees of Atlantic Mata are no longer. Compartmented and surrounded by crops, many remaining forest areas have been depopulated animals – essential for plant renewal – and are suffering from the invasion of exotic species and climate change.
He claims, however, that future generations will be able to reconnect fragments of the forest and bring animals back, guaranteeing the survival of the biome, but without having the same initial wealth.
Cardim does not have the same optimism towards the Amazon – which, according to him, lives step by step the same roadmap for the destruction of the Atlantic forest. According to the botanist, while the deforestation of the Atlantic Forest seems to have been under control, the Amazon suffers from the action "of an arc of uncontrollable adventurers" and will fragment the biome before the society does not become aware of its importance. "Today, technology allows us to perform the destruction of the Amazon at the same speed, or even faster, than in the pristine forest of the Atlantic."
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BBC News Brazil – The book shows that, contrary to what many people think, the destruction of the Atlantic Forest has been a very recent process. Ricardo Cardim – Until 1890, in Brazil, a small piece of pernambuco aroused agitation, because of the sugar cycle in the seventeenth century and the Rio de Janeiro, because of the coffee plantations . The rest were closed woods, with Indians inside.
It seems incredible, but the destruction of the Atlantic forest took place even in the twentieth century, because greed was at the rendezvous for the humus that fertilized the soil of the Atlantic forest for millennia . Wood was a lot more of a drag than a benefit. It was only at the end of the process, when we already had a lot of lorries and means of transport facilitated by the railways, that the wood began to be exploited. Even in this case, the rate of use of wood was about 3% of all that had been reversed.
The order had been "cleaned up early enough so that we could start harvesting the green gold", namely coffee. We liked this guy who inherits a fortune and spends the night to spend all in drinking and waking poor. It took thousands of years to form this soil, create these ideal conditions, and in five or ten years, it no longer existed. The soils we are cultivating today are only cultivable because of the technology because they are already depleted.
BBC News Brazil – You underline in the book the destruction of the Araucaria forests, in the southern part of the Atlantic forest. How was this process special? [196459002] Cardim – The speed with which this happened. It is a forest that pbades from the 19th to the 20th century virtually intact. It was said that it was possible to cross the states of Paraná and Santa Catarina on the branches of the araucarias, so sticky that they were.
Until the First World War (1914-1918), Brazil imported lumber, which was surreal for a country that was destroying forests to plant coffee. But when World War I prevents this trade, the market begins to remember the arraucaria – a beautiful pine, very easy to cut. He begins a looting of the forest facing the wood as he had never seen him.
The arucaria becomes a big currency. All those who want to become wealthy go to the Araucaria forest to build their sawmill. This culminated in the 1950s and 1960s. They cut so much wood that a good deal of this rotten wood would be sold at the market. In the 1970s, the forest was over. There was a general break in sawmills. Very rich families have become poor.
The Araucaria is simply over. What we have today are araucarias, a new brand. (19459006) Cardin – (The anthropologist) Darcy Ribeiro was talking about the history of the Atlantic Forest. that there were between 4 and 6 million Indians living here on the territory. I think it's possible, but I do not think their impact on the forest was as important as the American historian Warren Dean talked about "Iron and Fire: The Story of the Devastation of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest "(1996).
I think the Indians had the ability to change the environment, but with very primitive tools – stone axes, fire – and also had heavily pulverized populations. The coyote they did to burn and plant crops was not enough to cause extensive landfilling. I think the Indians left the big trees in the middle of the coivara and planted them under them. And I do not think that they managed to exploit the whole territory to the point of changing it.
When forests are cleared, change the local climate. Remember that São Paulo was the country of the drizzle. Today, we have no more drizzle because the green has disappeared in and around the city. Winds, ecological changes such as lice infestation, a series of ecological imbalances caused by man's invasion of the forest endanger the few giant trees that have survived the biome – both in the forest and pastures, urban environments.
Our generation is perhaps one of the last to be able to see these giant trees because they are disappearing. And it is difficult for new trees of this size to not reconnect forest fragments.
BBC News Brazil – Is it possible to reconnect these fragments, given current economic and political forces? Cardim – I was born in 1978 and grew up in a house where there was a record phone, a television with a tipped gun and a father who was signing a newspaper. The world has changed a lot, not just in technology, in the vision of the planet, in society. Children come with another look at nature. I am hopeful that they will provoke a revolution and that technology will solve many problems, producing a lot of food without needing vast territories. The time will come when we can have the harmony between modern comfort and economic production, and we will be able to restore a part of the natural territory.
In 2100, the Atlantic forest will be reconnected, surviving in harmony with the cities and activities. I am optimistic Cardim – If the human being disappeared from the Earth at this time, the Atlantic forest would recompose everything.
your space. What would prevent it are the invasive plants. We brought a lot of foreign plants. When you bring something, it can be very harmful to those who were here before. We see it in Trianon Park (in São Paulo) and in the Tijuca Forest (in Rio de Janeiro).
The abandoned forest, unmanaged, would become a hybrid of the Atlantic forest with of Pinus elliotti (native to North America), with palms seafortia (Australian species), with trevallies (native to Asia). ), which could compromise much of the biodiversity until it reaches a point of equilibrium. We would have a poorer forest than that of the Portuguese found in 1500.
BBC News Brazil – The geographer Altair Sales often says that the other portions of Cerrado are similar to photographs of the Past interactions between insects, plants and animals that have allowed the development of these landscapes have ceased to exist as the biome deteriorated – and in the future these landscapes will disappear. – Yes, today we have forests in the Atlantic forest that are relics and remnants of a time when muriki monkeys walked from branch to branch of Rio Grande do Sul. North of Rio Grande do Sul, when we had tapirs, jaws and catheters, jaguars everywhere.
Insects are fundamental to planting and pollinating the forest. In the 1930s, the man came into the woods with a machine gun, chasing everything he saw there. Tropical vegetation is closely linked to its animals, one evolving with the other, with complex interactions that can not even be imagined.
In the Atlantic Forest, we have today the figure of the empty forest, the forest zombie, like that of Trianon Park, which can not be renewed. For the seed of a jatobá to germinate, the dormancy must be broken by the intestine of the tapir. Without this, it does not happen anymore, the seed falls to the ground and does not germinate.
So when we invest to reconnect the fragments, we have to raise the animals so that they can return to the forest and rehabilitate the forest.
BBC News Brasil – Rather than homogeneous, the Atlantic Forest is described in the book as a multi-faceted biome. Cardim – People tend to think that the Atlantic forest is this forest ridge, as in the Serra do Mar. They think that this only happens on the coast without knowing that it is going in Paraguay. She was really big. Another interesting thing is the diversity of landscapes.
In the Atlantic forest, we find, among the sandy restinga, an area tree with islands of bromeliads, cacti, small shrubs, pitangueiras, real gardens ready – not for nothing that Burle Marx was inspired by these landscapes as in Itatiaia or Serra dos Órgãos, which are fields with small plants at the top, monstrous forests like those that existed in northern Paraná and southern Bahia.
Compared to the Amazon, its biodiversity is greater, because it concentrates varied landscapes and species in a relatively small territory, thanks to the proximity of the ocean to certain places and to its relief, which is quite busy and creates different conditions for the vegetation. BBC News Brazil – We have already suffered irreparable losses of giant tree species in the Atlantic Forest?
Cardim – I imagine that yes. For example, pink peroba covered hundreds of miles of forest. It has been so severely cut, so little left, that we wonder how much it has suffered from genetic engineering to the point of becoming viable. A disease may be able to kill everything else. They are the last of the Mohicans. I have the impression that many trees in the Atlantic Forest are the last of the Mohicans.
During the expeditions I did during the production of the book, I aimed to see the original forest, but I think I could not. The great truth is this. I saw some forests that were perhaps close to that, but I had the impression that there was more of the original forest than my back Great-grandfather might have seen when the farms opened.
BBC News – When they criticize deforestation in Brazil, some representatives of the agri-food industry often cite the destruction of forests in Europe and claim the right to do the same here. What would our society look like if the Atlantic Forest had not been destroyed? – This argument is as odious as saying that since there was the Holocaust in Germany, we can make one here as well. Cardin Europe today is very concerned about the restoration of its forests and will never restore it as it was, because forests have been cut down since Roman times.
If we had found other ways to generate wealth, through education and technology, we would now have a wonderful heritage. I am not against journaling. Without wood, we would not have any orchestras, for example. I love noble wood furniture. But if we had explored in a lasting way, we could have jacaranda furniture for the rest of our lives.
We would have an incredibly large gastronomic potential, as some have already begun to realize, as chef Alex Atala. We would have a lot of potential in biotechnology, in medicine. And also tourism, because it is impossible to remain indifferent to these giant trees. It's like someone in front of the Quepos Pyramid. Cardim – The large balcony of this book is intended to show that we have been doing In the past 100 or 150 years, the Atlantic Forest looks exactly like what we are doing today in the Amazon. What changes, it is the proportion, because of the extension of the Amazon and technology. Today, technology allows us to destroy the Amazon at the same speed or faster than in the Atlantic Forest.
BBC News Brazil – What were the stages of the destruction of the Atlantic forest that are now being repeated in the Amazon?
Cardim – First, create an economic incentive to access the forest. At the time (presidents) Costa e Silva and Medici, in the 1970s, the idea of the land without men of the Amazon began to appear for the landless man of the Northeast. This road to the interior of the Amazon, which begins with the Transamazônica Highway, is parallel to the entrance of the railways in the Atlantic Forest because of the coffee. The railway has entered and torn the Atlantic forest – comes the axis of penetration, there are vicinal roads to loot the forest and seize the land.
This is what is happening today in the Amazon: the man has to loot wood, then he burns to seize the earth, the fire will fertilize this land and will plant it. grbad for cattle to trample forest debris. In two or three years, this forest disappears and transforms into carbon and then enters the soybean. In our case, it is the coffee that came in. We have documents in Campinas (SP), in 1840, of the presence of cattle among the ruins of colossal trees in the Atlantic forest. It was a way of taming the earth for coffee.
BBC News Brazil – Can we stop deforestation in the Amazon?
. I do not think it will take time. The Amazon will be fragmented before future generations can understand its importance.
There is a group of adventurers – politicians, grileiros – who are uncontrollable. They will fragment the forest before we can change society.
BBC News Brazil – Have Technologies and Legislation to Prevent Deforestation Not Progressed? [196459002] Cardim – Certainly, but I still think that they are weak in front of what is going on there. What happened in Rondônia is emblematic. The state forest has disappeared in ten years. And today, the last frontier is the state of Amazonas, because Pará has already been very touched.
They flip as far as we put fines. There are many people out there who have nothing to lose and will get there. Maybe in 40 years, someone will make a book like this, telling how the Amazon has been destroyed.
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