Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
The plight of the Brazilian Amazon grabs headlines, but the status of its neighbor, the
Cerrado, remains veiled in obscurity. This omission is a pity because the savannas of South
America hold the key to reaching a balance between safeguarding rarities and growing the
food we eat. Few environmental journalists are familiar with the Cerrado, which represents
about 21 percent of Brazil and where both the total amount and annual rate of habitat con-
version is higher than in the Amazon region. Over the past fifty years, more than 55 percent
of the native habitat of the Cerrado has been cleared to make way for crops and livestock.
Only about 2 percent of the region receives formal protection from the federal government,
and Brazil's Forest Code, at least on paper, requires protection of habitat on 20-30 percent
(depending on the Brazilian state) of private lands.
The Cerrado borders the Amazon rain forest to the west and the green ribbon of the Atlant-
ic Forest to the east. To the south lies the vast seasonal swamp known as the Pantanal. The
Cerrado ranks as the world's most diverse tropical savanna, even richer than the miombo, a
similar habitat in southern Africa. The miombo's infertile soils and tsetse fly infestations re-
pel agriculturalists, whereas the Cerrado can be farmed for commercial crops after some soil
modification. It has become the world's largest producer of soybeans and beef and soon will
be a major producer of sugarcane. The Cerrado has the dubious distinction—along with the
previously mentioned Indonesian provinces of Sumatra and Kalimantan—of being among
the most biologically diverse landscapes being converted most rapidly to agriculture.
This endangered tropical savanna features an unusual trio of rare mammals—the giant
anteater, giant armadillo, and maned wolf. Very few tourists travel to Brazil explicitly to see
them, even though the Cerrado offers the best chances of a sighting anywhere in the world.
The ecotourism value of these species per hectare is far below the return that ranchers receive
for beef cattle, soy, and sugarcane. So how do these rare species, along with jaguars, pumas,
tapirs, and other wide-ranging Cerrado vertebrates, cope with massive landuse change driven
by human economics?
Biologists who point out that a number of species can coexist in environmentally friendly
cultivated zones have coined the term “countryside biogeography” (“matrix conservation”
in Europe) to characterize the study of this phenomenon. This new discipline is essentially
the study of which species persist in agricultural landscapes, assuming that interspersed with
intensively used farmland are patches of natural habitat. To explore this issue and its relev-
ance to the preservation of rarity, our next stops include Serra da Canastra and Emas National
Parks in Brazil, at the edge of an expanding agricultural frontier that threatens to plow under
rarity. Here, biologists are using a startling field technique that, along with the global posi-
tioning system collars worn by jaguars and pumas in the Peruvian Amazon (see chapter 3),
could revolutionize the study of rare vertebrates.
