Spare these trees! WWF's Forests for Life Campaign combats deforestation

Wildlife conservation in Namibia

New national organization in Brazil

What is a forest?

WWF's forests for life campaign targets

"Don't buy trouble"!





header: New National Organization in Brazil


Safeguarding the environment in South America's largest country

With the latest evidence of the threat to tropical rainforests, Brazil is once more in the environmental headlines. So it's very good news that this vast country - embracing several of the world's most important ecosystems - now has its own autonomous WWF organization.

President Jos Roberto Marinho and the board of directors took office on 30 August. Besides the environment, they represent a wide variety of business, media, and other interests. Public education and partnerships with industry are key factors in the new organization's policies.

WWF has been active throughout the country for 25 years already. Now WWF-Brazil, with some forty projects currently in hand, plans to meet the millennium in the vanguard of the Living Planet campaign.

Preserving the rainforest in Paragominas

Twelve per cent of Brazil's Amazon rainforest has already been lost to development, farming, and logging. Since the construction of the Belem-Brasilia highway, timber companies have advanced widely into the Paragominas region in the north-east state of Para. Now, with 245 sawmills, it has the largest logging operation in the country. Already 55 per cent of the Paragominas area is affected, and the damage done to biodiversity is incalculable.

This situation will get worse in the next decade or so, as the international timber market, running out of stocks in the Far East, increases its demands on the Amazon rainforest. It is nevertheless unrealistic to stop logging altogether - for one thing, almost half the human population of Paragominas depends on it for survival. The way forward, therefore, is to establish sustainable forest management practices that are acceptable to the loggers themselves.

WWF's Paragominas timber project is run in partnership with IMAZON, a Belem-based organization expert in timber research. The project has designed and tested a management methodology to be promoted as a model for the region. Training workshops for loggers play an important role. Results are encouraging. It has been shown that wastage of valuable trees can be cut by half, and that forest regenerates faster in a managed area. Best of all, private logging companies are already replicating the IMAZON model in other localities throughout the Amazon basin.

Saving the golden lion tamarin

Destroying a large tract of virgin forest takes only a few decades, and with it go the plants and wildlife that have flourished there for thousands of years. Less than a tenth remains along Brazil's eastern seaboard of the once-magnificent Atlantic Forest . To save what's left of it, and the species within it, is the goal of WWF's oldest project in Brazil.

The flagship of this endeavour is the golden lion tamarin, a beautiful small primate at great risk of extinction. Its natural habitat, the lowland forest in the State of Rio de Janeiro, is no longer large enough to ensure its survival. Of a mere 575 recently identified in the wild, half were living in the Poo das Antas Biological Reserve. Such a small population, liable to inbreeding and disease, is unlikely to survive

WWF's project combines the latest expertise in conservation biology with its aim of protecting and regenerating the forest habitat. Animals bred in captivity are being carefully reintroduced into the wild. Environmental education, and encouraging ecotourism and local community support play an important part in the project. Local landowners have begun to protect the forest and some have created private reserves.

There has been a significant increase of 25 per cent in the wild golden lion tamarin population. In 1995, for the first time, numbers in the wild exceeded those of the captive population.