Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
in Southeast Asia. Those that fall to some new pathogen will probably be replaced by acacia
trees for pulpwood or return to rubber. The commodities are never stable, but the pressure
applied by the growing human footprint is mounting. In the meantime, programs designed to
enhance wildlife-friendly certification of major cash crops—whereby consumers know that
production of the crop has avoided the conversion of natural habitat to produce it—is still
years away.
The Cerrado story helps us put countryside biogeography, or matrix conservation—or
whatever term we create to describe the landscape approach to conservation that considers
species both in parks and in the human-dominated areas outside of formal protection—into
a larger context. Many species that do fine in wild habitats can persist in adjacent farmland
dotted with pockets of natural vegetation. This is especially the case where riparian zones are
protected from development. But for how long? Perhaps our assumption that various species
will persist in agricultural lands is an ecological mirage: it may be that they will merely hang
on for another decade or two and then start to decline as a result of pesticide residues, stress,
or other sources of mortality. Furthermore, species that survive in human-dominated land-
scapes tend to be generalists, not the specialists or the rarities that this topic portrays. Carly
believes that upholding the Forest Code of Brazil is key, that it is these scattered remnant
habitats that enable species to use the landscape as a whole. The future challenge of agroeco-
logy is to identify the opportunities for mutual accommodation and its limits—in the Cerrado
and elsewhere as well.
The scale at which the face of Earth is being converted from natural habitats to cultivation
and the pace of it are truly staggering. Global projections are that with 9 billion people on
board Earth, world food demand will double by 2050, and the Cerrado will play a key role.
Yet most people are unaware of the enormity of agriculturalization and other habitat en-
croachment. Various small-scale local accommodations, even if increased in number, may
not be enough to protect wild nature. A hidden aspect of this problem is the scale of buy-ups
of land in the tropics and elsewhere by corporations and nations as they position themselves
for the future of their food supplies.
So the problem grows larger: wholesale conversion of land not only threatens to make no
small number of common species rare through human activity; it also threatens the very ex-
istence of what is now rare. One has to hope that the rare species of the Cerrado and other
areas of intensive cultivation are more adaptable than we think and that efforts to enable co-
existence on working lands, by habitat protection and then by best practices on and near ag-
ricultural lands, will enable persistence. It would be a shame for others to lose the chance to
observe the remarkable silhouette of a giant anteater or the outline of a graceful maned wolf
on a moonlit night in the Cerrado.
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