Deforestation Threatens Brazil Forest, Golden Lion Tamarin That Lives There
High above the ground in Brazil, the fate of an endangered species depends on the fate of its endangered habitat. The Atlantic rainforest is one of the planet’s most threatened biomes, more than 90 percent of it was deforested and destroyed. What’s left is fragmented and terrible for some species and the ecological balance. Luis Paulo Ferraz works for the Golden Lion Tamarin Association, an organization aiming to protect at least 2,000 of the monkeys. He says the tiny primate faces an existential crisis. It’s a species that only lives in a very specific kind of forest in a state of Rio de Janeiro. Forest that is very hot, very steamy and only 2 percent of that kind of forest is left. Trees once covered these rolling grasslands, but widespread deforestation for settlements and energy resources destroyed the natural habitat for animals like the golden lion tamarin. The stupidity and ignorance of humans has destroyed most of the trees and continues destroying them. Maria Moraes is known locally as Dona Graca or miss grace. She owns a nursery in the state of Rio de Janeiro where she mixes soil, limestone and clay to grow saplings from seeds of local trees. So I’m trying, I can’t do much, but I do what little I can to rescue those trees. Workers carefully plant saplings like the ones Dona Graca grows at her nursery. While the golden lion makes its home in the trees, the trees make the area liveable for others. We used the golden lion as an umbrella as we’re trying to save the species, but we know there are benefits for other species mainly humans, because it’s better to live in a region with a preserved forest than live in a place where you only have asphalt. For Dona Graca, preserving the disappearing ecosystem is just as much about preserving history. The next generation must know these trees, otherwise they exist only in books. They will only stay in memories. If I could, I would rescue and plant all of them. Brazil’s Atlantic forest extends over a million square kilometres and the World Wildlife Fund says only 7 percent remains. More than half of the tree species and 92 percent of the amphibians live nowhere else on earth.