BRAZIL - Part IV

2008-10-12
Tha Pantanal is the largest swamp, and one of the richest places for life on Earth. Fortunately, it's hard to access, or there would be a thousand tourists per acre there. We had booked an SUV to get there (yes friends, the environmentalists booked an SUV), but suddenly the rental company did not have it, and substituted what they said was a "super-versatile, all-wheel-drive" Fiat. What they did not know was that the road in to the Pantanal is a rutted, slippery, one-lane dirt road, and that's on a good day. Fortunately, we entered on a decent day, and spent several hours bouncing and sliding and praying, and miraculously arrived at the road into the Xaraés Lodge. Little did we know the worst was yet to come, and remember, the rainy season had not even started. Some of the lakes we had to ford seemed they would swallow the car.

The Lodge was a very comfortable operation- nice rooms, relaxing atmosphere, accommodating staff, and good, simple food, most of it from the large ranch, of which the lodge is a sideline. After a delicious lunch, we had a safari ride on the back of a Toyota 3/4-ton pick-up, which took us deep into the property, and then a canoe trip on a river. The wildlife is indescribable: birds of every type, capybara, caiman, amazing sunset, beautiful landscape, and most absent for those from a city, no mechanical noise; just paddles on water, and the occasional caiman snapping at a fish.
One could almost retire in this halcyon setting and forget the natural world is under siege. Almost. Even this seemingly endless landscape is in dire danger: cattle ranching, sugar cane for biofuels, soybean plantations, and mining are all carving out hunks of land and contaminating the remainder with their respective byproducts. The first problem is the conversion from "worthless swamp" to a "higher and better use" (such as any of the above). Each of them has additional compounded insults over and above the disastrous conversion from wild lands. What can we do, you might ask (I was hoping you might)? The easy answer is stop eating meat; a large part of the conversion is for cattle ranching, and another large part is for soybean plantations, most of which go to feed cattle. What does the Pantanal do for me, you might ask (I was hoping you would)? Aside from one of the coolest places in the world, which provides us with clean air and water, and species whose benefits to humanity we have not even begun to uncover, it provides habitat for some of God's most beautiful creatures.

2008-10-13
The alarm clock at the Xaraés Lodge consists of a cacophony of the most interesting variety of birds once can imagine, some musical, some not. I resisted, then relented and, wanting some audio, grabbed my video camera and ventured out to greet the avian cornucopia. Birds are hard to shoot, and I purposefully did not intend to try, simply walked around the lodge trying to capture some of the music. A pair of toucans, though, insisted on their "15 minutes," and who was I to refuse? They are so comical with those tremendous trademark bills, which they use for breaking open fruit and, rather maliciously, stealing eggs from the nests of other bird species deep in the trunks of trees. No audio from them, but a bit of good video. Breakfast was a delight with local fruits, good coffee (the best Brazilian coffee is exported, and the locals are accustomed to a swill not better than we in the USA), and home-made bread.

A good thing this sustenance, as we had to be well-fortified for the sleigh ride out, Allen providing dramatic commentary the whole way, a true New Yorker, unaccustomed to dirt roads. Our destination was Corumba, a city on the Paraguay River, the far western frontier of Brazil, adjacent to Bolivia, truly the "Wild West" of Brazil. This is the outpost for fishing holidays of wealthy Brazilians, and a great spot to get another impression of the Pantanal. Our intention was to hire a small plane for the aerial view, the only way to see something as vast as this paludal paradise. The pilot promised to remove the door, and upon our arrival at the airstrip, concocted a lame story why he couldn't; I was reduced to shooting through the windows, very non-ideal. Several companies are mining in the Pantanal region, and are pressing the government to expand operations, there being rich deposits of iron, manganese, clay and limestone.


The Pantanal is vast, and the good news is there is that musch is still untouched. Cattle farming is an impact, as is the mining, but the main distress seems to be activities in the Cerrado, which is above and thus upstream. The vast soybean, sugar cane, cattle, and cotton, with their fertilizers, water use, and genetic modifications, are a gross negative impact. The region we overflew is gorgeous, waterways branching and serpentining through it, wooded mountains jutting out of the wetlands- there is a lot to save here.

The city of Corumba was once one of the most important ports in Brazil, being the conduit for all of the farming products in the western part of the country; now, it is a bit dilapidated, though seemingly on an upswing with the new mining traffic and continued farm production. Many old colonial era buildings were in renovation, and the Paraguay River running through it is quite majestic.

2008-10-14
Tremendous trucks lumber beside us on the road from Corumba to Aquiduana, laden with charcoal for the steel mills. There is a deadly synergism in the charcoal production: farmers hire the charcoaliers to come and cut trees to make the charcoal, the cleared land is then converted to pasture for cattle or crop, another blow to biodiversity. We pass forlorn marsh deer by the side of the road, squeezed between habitat loss and hunters, Jabiru Storks, the largest flying bird, looking for food, unconcerned with our presence.

At Aquiduana we meet Pita, a great pilot, who will fly us over a different part of the Pantanal to Bahia das Pedras, an eco-tourism lodge at a large ranch. Pita has no problem with removing the door of the plane so I can shoot unobstructed, adding that it will require him to fly a bit slower, which is fine with me. Flying at treetop level with no door is exhilarating (and loud), and a completely new way to see something. Cattle (which are in abundance here) and wildlife mingle, some dashing from the sound of the plane, others gazing placidly as we zoom by. We fly up rivers of water, with their increased vegetation and activity, and rivers of grass, called "vazante," which are actually sub-surface waters that move and behave like waterways.

2008-10-15
Well, after two weeks of moderately (not so) careful eating, Allen and I both had unhappy stomachs. Bahia das Pedras, our last stop, is a family ranch in a vital, remote area of the Pantanal. Our hosts put us up in their house, sharing meals, conversation, and outings. After we landed, they served a wonderful lunch of local vegetables and meat raised on the ranch. Our pilot left just before the arrival of a storm that raged with a viciousness I have never witnessed. Braced by a short nap, we climbed aboard the land rover in search of the wild and mysterious. Of course, wild to one is mundane to another; by this point, Allen could almost name the birds as fast as the biologists that were guiding us. None of it helped our discomfort - one just keeps going. Allen had a western drug - Immodium, I think. The family suggested guava leaf tea, some of the vilest potion I have had the fortune to imbibe (tasted as bad as peyote without the good side). My recovery seemed to be a bit faster. The next day we awoke early and took a trail ride around the ranch - quite a spread. Saw a wonderful variety of birds and animals, tracks from a cougar, aside from the simple pleasure of riding a horse in the outback. Of course, I am as fair as they come; the direct sun exposure was brutal for me, and they say that sunblock stops absorption of vitamin D. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

2008-10-16
Today we flew back to Campo Grande and began our sojourn home. The small plane skims over the seemingly vast Pantanal until we approach a most abrupt transition to a plateau, several hundred feet higher than the wetlands. It was as if the Pantanal had been stomped down by a giant and puddled over. Campo Grande was hot and exhausting as any big city when coming in from the pristine country, but the people were pleasant as we wrapped up the last of our business, found a nice restaurant, and prepared for return to the USA. One last meal with Sandro, Nati, and Julia before we slept a short night and hit the road for New York.

We, from the “developed world,” have an impression of ourselves as somehow more worldly and erudite than the rest of the world, a self-image belied by the fact that we are the culprits of our dilemma. I was impressed with Brazil’s environmental laws, if not with their enforcement, the environmental awareness of the general population, and their currency with trends and technologies.

An interesting occurrence during our trip brought home to me the interconnectedness of us all. While we were there, the value of the Real against the US Dollar fell by half, giving us twice the buying power, and wreaking havoc on the economy of Brazil. Interestingly, Aracruz, the partner in the pulp mill we had visited at the beginning of the trip, had made what seemed like a sure bet on exchange rate derivatives, and suddenly they were potentially out of business. The markets that drive our world are essentially gambling casinos in which our futures are bought and sold on the rumor of earnings and the ratio of price to sales. The raw materials of the earth, part of the planetary organism, are dispensed as assets of the various conglomerates, the consequence and future cost of their extraction.

Thankfully, the economic collapse has slowed the mastication of the planet, allowing us to reflect on the consequences of our consumption. Buying on credit things we don’t need from lesser developed countries that are poisoning and exploiting their populations to produce merchandise we will discard on garbage heaps that will leach into our groundwater, which we won’t be able to afford to filter, and thus will be forced to buy from a conglomerate that had the foresight to buy the source is what we are gifting our children.

BRAZIL - Part III

2008-10-08
Early flight to Porto Seguro in Bahia, a charming little town off the beaten track, where Chris Holvorcem from Instituto BioAtlantica told us about its efforts to save the Atlantic coastal forests, another hot spot, which have been reduced to a fraction of their original expanse. The main cause is conversion to cattle ranching, another reason not to eat meat. She introduced us to a delightful restaurant called Portinha (the little door), where delicious food was served up, buffet style, with local charm, plenty of vegetables, and cheap.

2008-10-09
Stora Enso, the Swedish-Finnish paper conglomerate, one of the world's largest, in partnership with Aracruz Paper of Brazil, has created an ultra-modern pulp plant called Veracel for export, mainly to the USA. They welcomed our visit with a complete tour of the facility and explanation of their cutting-edge practices. We began by meeting with the production manger, a Swedish engineer, Hans Lindberg, and several others. Paper is one of Allen’s specialties, and he was intent on getting the skinny on this place, asking many questions that required our hosts to call the various experts. Paper is, by definition, an environmentally nasty business: trees are cut, trucked to the plant, cooked in a toxic chemical soup, lots of clean water used, lots of emissions created, more shipping, massive amounts of carbon produced in the whole cycle. So use it wisely. That said, Veracel seems to be doing it as well as it can be done. One of the biggest issues in Brazil is the conversion of natural lands to agricultural uses, which inevitably produces a lot of carbon, destroys habitat, reduces biodiversity, and pushes species into extinction. Paper production uses a lot of trees, and they are planting eucalyptus for this purpose, due to its fast growth and strong fiber characteristics, saying they are not converting the disappearing Atlantic coastal forests here, but using land that was already cleared for furniture making and cattle ranching.

Also, they say they are reforesting areas, a vital step toward a sustainable future, and abiding by the very progressive Brazilian Forest Code, which mandates strict natural buffers between agricultural land and all water bodies, and a variety of other measures. The governing body for sustainable forest product harvesting is the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council), and companies hire auditors to verify their compliance, a process Veracel is pursuing now. I have always been fascinated by paper production, so the opportunity to go through a pulp mill (the first step in the process) was fascinating.

After the mill, we went to see the eucalyptus farms- a non-native species that sterilize monocultures, as one would expect, then to a regeneration project of a forest that had been cut in the 1970s for furniture and charcoal (for production of pig iron). Of course a forest is an extremely complex system that will take a long time to regain its diversity, but we must start somewhere…

2008-10-10
In our era of trans-continental homogenization of everything from money to dress codes to verbal expressions to sushi, how will we know if it's Tuesday in Bangkok or Friday in Berlin? Cultural extinction is as worrisome as species extinction. Our culture and language define the way we think, and if we all subsist on a diet of Disney, CNN, and McDonalds, the world becomes a very small place, and then who really cares about those sea turtles off the coast of Brazil? We see them on Animal Planet, so everything must be OK. The irony is that we value diversity, but principally as novelty, instead of as the vitality that sustains us. The Pataxo Indians on the coast of Bahia, Brazil are determined to keep their heritage using a variety of approaches: eco-tourism, natural forest products based on their traditions, and a creative melding of the modern world and their inheritance. It was fascinating to meet people that were educated, intelligent, and aware of the modern world while simultaneously celebrating their legacy. We learned about their resuscitation of traditional remedies, reforestation programs, eco-tourism ideas large and small, the plans to preserve their language and culture, and had a glimpse into their way of life.
And, did I mention that they were beautiful, charming, and graceful? You can go visit them as well, an hour north of Porto Seguro, enjoy that small beach town, and eat at Portinha.

2008-10-11
A slow day in Porto Seguro, caught up on work, walked along the beach to Portinha, then flew to Sao Paulo and back to Campo Grande. Sandro Menezes (the CI biologist) and his lovely wife Nati met us at the airport (bless them) and we rented a car for the trip to the Pantanal Swamps the next day. Funny the negative connotation of the word swamp, when it is actually a rich place, teeming with biodiversity.

BRAZIL - Part II

2008-10-05
We were supposed to fly a chartered plane from Campo Grande to Emas National Park, a journey that would have afforded us an aerial view of the Pantanal, but bad weather forced us to travel by car. We met Mario Barroso, a Conservation International biologist, specializing in the Cerrado Region, an extensive savannah, rich in biodiversity, with the Emas in the center. Mario is as knowledgeable and sharp-eyed as Sandro, able to spot a baby fox in a den from a speeding car. The Cerrado seems monotonously endless and unvaried, revealing itself to be fantastically diverse and fascinating only to those with patience and curiosity. The Cerrado has been declared one of the world’s 25 environmental hot spots by Conservation International, due to its unprotected incredible riches. While the world fixates on the Amazon, the Cerrado, just as biodiverse, is rapidly being slashed and burned for cattle ranches and sugar cane for biofuel (56 refineries are in construction or planning, each of which will require 40,000 hectares of sugar cane to feed).

On the road we saw a carcara (falcon) trying to kill a rattlesnake (young female); Mario rescued and I photographed her.

We all have this biblical fear of snakes, but like all predators, they play a vital role in their ecosystems, and the fact is that human deaths by snake-bite are extremely rare. Of course, we were actually just depriving the poor hawk of a meal; getting in the way of the natural order again.

We were met at Emas by members of Oreades, a local environmental group, and ate a great meal with lots of vegetables and delicious barbecued beef and hung out with park staff. That night we walked in the park and drove to see bioluminescence of termite mounds. Lampiridae larvae luminesce to attract prey and grab them with a pincher.

2008-10-06
We woke up at 6:30am and walked to Formoso River, where we saw some birds which were, unfortunately, hard to shoot. At 10:00am, we left the park to go to the recycling station at Chapadao do Ceu. Good effort separating the garbage, simple things like glass and metal are repurposed, a lot is buried, much of it will be burned in a simple incinerator, and the thought of all that plastic being burned improperly is frightening. Burning garbage is a science, or a virtual pandora's box of dioxin, acid gasses, heavy metals, chlorinated organics, and the list goes on. According to Allen, an expert on solid waste, time, temperature and turbulence are the keys to successful incineration. The smell was not so pleasant. Back to Emas for lunch; on the way in, we were graced with a bunch of blue and yellow macaws on a termite mound. So beautiful. Fantastic complaining voices. It's a crime that they are kidnapped and shipped to North America and Europe as pets for misguided people. Filmed, photographed and listened to them for a nice while.

We hung out with the park staff over lunch, then headed north for a meeting with Oreadas, a local environmental group. On the way, we went to the Avoador River Mirante (within Emas), an overlook from the plateau down into the river valley. Eventually one uses all of the synonyms for beautiful, and you start again.

There had been a fire nine months before that was arrested along the road. The fire area had trees with burned trunks, but the vibrancy of the vegetation was amazing: brilliant green shoots, a multitude of colorful flowers with fascinating bugs happily exploring; birds chasing the bugs, and so on. Immediately upon leaving the park, Mario, our Conservation International scientist (what an eye), spotted a crab-eating fox in her burrow with a kit (from a speeding car). I got good photos of her trying to lead us away, but the kit stayed in the burrow, and all I saw was a nose and one eye.

2008-10-07
In the morning, we went to a nursery in Mineiros, which Oreades is building to propagate native tree species in the Cerrado, and then the long bumpy drive back to Campo Grande, where we would fly to Sao Paulo. Ecosystems can recover from man-caused devastation, but it is a long process, even with the help of well-meaning humans. Hats off to Oreades. Then a long slog back to Campo Grande where we would take another series of flights to the Atlantic Coastal Region, meet an indigenous tribe, and investigate a “sustainable” paper mill.

BRAZIL - Part I

In October 2008, I went to Brazil for three weeks with Allen Hershkowitz, senior NRDC scientist, on a fact finding mission to explore some of the vital, but less-known, ecological “Hot Spots.” (Brazil might be the most important place in the world from a biodiversity standpoint.) Some examples: The Atlantic Forest is one of the most biodiverse regions of the world, even after having been 90 percent deforested. The Cerrado, the central plateau, is also rated as one of the world’s great biodiversity hotspots. Emas National Park is an oasis, rich in a plethora of species, sandwiched between sugar cane and cattle ranches. The Pantanal “swamps” (funny how negative the connotation, and, am I being repetitive here?) let’s just say it’s the place where the knowledgeable wildlife watchers come.

Being south of the Equator, springtime, the rainy season in much of the area we would see, was just beginning. As “Yanquis,” we went armed with the best western vaccines and preventatives known to “man,” which usually turned out to be detrimental to our salvation. One thing that amazes me is the ubiquity of the modern electronic realm; the world is shrinking, especially the “great unknown.” Ironic that western man and his religions spent so long “subjugating the beast,” and suddenly we realize that our vanquish is our own detriment. The “beast” is what gives us our clean air, clean water, and more important, though entirely ethereal, our spirit.


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2008-10-03
Our flight from New York to Sao Paulo was uneventful and, after a cautionary check on our luggage, we went on to Campo Grande, capitol of Mato Grosso do Sul, a booming ranching state. Since the time zone is the same as New York, we had minimal travel weariness.

The next day we connected with Sandro Menezes, Pantanal program manager for Conservation International. It's always a joy to meet people that are experts in their field and can give you the nitty gritty on the ground, and we would meet many on this trip; dedicated, experienced, knowledgeable people working on the issues. Sandro took us to meet with Neo Tropica Foundation at its office in Bonito; this is a group that is working to save the Pantanal (largest swamp in the world), which stretches across three countries: Bolivia, Paraguay, and Brazil. They are doing good work, but due to the lack of a donor base, must accept money from corporations whose activities might conflict with the goals of the foundation.

We stayed at the Hotel de Cabanas, a delightful eco-tourism lodge with a friendly, dynamic staff. That afternoon, we did their Canopy tour, essentially a Marine Corps obstacle course, 30 feet off the ground. Imagine tight-rope walking through the trees. It's quite a thrill to be in the tree-tops, but not for the faint of heart, and the end is a zip ride into the water, a finale we all declined as it was late and cold.

2008-10-04
Distances are long in Brazil, prompting an early departure the next morning for the drive to Jardim. The cowboy culture created in Hollywood and revered around the world actually exists in The Pantanal. Cattle-raising has been the main industry in the region for hundreds of years.

The Cabecira do Prata Cattle Ranch was inherited by a maverick son with a passion for the environment, and an obstinate will. In spite of the protests of his family, he created Rio de Prata Eco tours, the main attraction being a snorkeling tour down the Olho Dágua River to the Prata River. Visitors are outfitted with a wetsuit, mask and snorkels, introduced to their very knowledgeable guide, and then take a walk through the remaining cattle operation down to the river, during which a history of the ranch, and the local environment is imparted. By the time one gets to the river, a bit of perspiration has developed (wetsuits don't breathe well), so the water is a welcome refreshment. Strict rules are in place so as not to disturb the river ecosystem, and off you go. The experience is like flying in a dream: the river takes you, passing over an amazing variety fish, underwater springs resembling volcanoes of sand, under fallen trees, and through rapids. Afterwards, there was a delicious lunch, much home-grown organic fare, and the joyous camaraderie of having experienced a once-in-a-lifetime thrill.

Our guide, Marcos, urged us to go to Buraco das araras (hole of the Macaws), a limestone sinkhole which is a haven for red and green macaws; what an amazing site, a pair of macaws, who mate for life, alighting on a tree just in front of us and engaging in a wonderful display of play and grooming behavior. We also saw a toco toucan and a peach-fronted parakeet.