Threats and Conservation of Brazilian Wildlife
Brazil is home to a wide variety of plants and animals, due to its diverse climates and geographic regions. However, from early colonial times, conservation of the environment has been an important and severe issue. The Portuguese settlers who came to Brazil in the early sixteenth century heavily harvested the Brazilwood tree that was used to make red dye. This extreme logging pushed the species to near extinction, and it is only in recent years that the tree’s numbers have begun to recover due to the development of synthetic dyes.
Already more than one fifth of the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest has been completely destroyed, creating over seventy species of mammals that are endangered. This massive threat of extinction can be traced to several sources, such as deforestation and poaching. In the Atlantic Forest, extinction is an even larger issue, due to the fact that ninety-three percent of the forest has been cleared. There are two hundred and two endangered species of animal in Brazil and one hundred and seventy-one of them are located in the Atlantic Forest.
Brazil’s population and economy have been growing rapidly in the past years. This growth has lead to an extensive increase of both legal and illegal logging that destroy forests the size of a small country every year. Since 1970, more than six hundred thousand square kilometers of Amazon Rainforest has been cleared due to this logging. Between 2002 and 2006, the area of the Amazon cleared was equal to the size of South Carolina. The cleared land is used for raising cattle, cutting timber, and growing soybeans. It is estimated that by 2020, more than fifty percent of the species in Brazil will be extinct.
Poaching is another important issue in the conservation of Brazil’s wildlife, as it is one of Brazil’s most profitable illegal activities. About thirty-eight million birds, animals, and reptiles are taken from the rainforest each year. Another less well known problem is that of invasive species. There are over three hundred documented invasive species in Brazil, and it is estimated that these invasive species cost Brazil around forty-nine billion dollars. The most threatening of these species is the wild boar which destroys crops and local wildlife, and which can also transmit diseases to indigenous animals.
However, there are great biological and economical incentives to protecting the rainforests. Not only is it important to preserve the wildlife of Brazil, but one hectare of the Amazon Rainforest is estimated to be worth nearly seven thousand dollars if it is sustainably harvested for fruits, timber, and latex, but only one thousand dollars if clear-cut for commercial timber. Luckily, many steps are being taken towards conserving these important resources.
From 2002 and 2006, the amount of conserved land in the Amazon Rainforest has nearly tripled, and deforestation rates have dropped nearly sixty percent. More than one million square kilometers have been put onto to some kind of conservation program, bringing the total amount towards two million. These efforts are extremely important to the future of Brazil’s natural landscape.