Pantanal: Volunteer Travel Program Helps Save Jaguars |
Earthwatch runs more trips to the Fazenda Rio Negro in the Pantanal each year than any of its many global destinations. Little wonder, given that the 210,000-square-kilometer haven of lakes, rivers and waterways teems with one of the greatest concentrations of tropical wildlife in the whole of Latin America.
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Getting to the Palm Heart of Development |
Home to 150 families at the end of a long stretch of dirt road, Guapiruvú sits astride Intervales State Park in São Paulo state. Two other state parks lie adjacent. The three reserves protect a bit of what’s left of the Atlantic Rainforest. By promoting community-based, environmentally-conscious economic development, including ecotourism, a local organization is helping to offer alternatives to predatory hunting and gathering.
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Pantanal Life: Sparkplug Ignites Cross Border Activism |
To the uninitiated, Porto Murtinho may seem like the middle of nowhere – or simply the end of the road. A well-paved Brazilian interstate ends here. No bridge connects it across the river to Paraguay. A few bait shops and the squalid shacks of a displaced Indian tribe dot the opposite bank. Beyond the reservation lies the vast expanse of the Gran Chaco, a bioregion as remarkable for its diversity as for its hostility to humans... Yet many consider this paradise – or at least the gateway to it. Clemencia Bitancourt Donatti found another reality and went about changing it.
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Bento Gonçalves: Living Museum of Italian Immigration in Brazil |
Adjacent to Brazil’s wine country is a living museum called the Caminhos de Pedra (Stone Trails). The name is derived precisely from the remarkable stone buildings built by settlers – many of which survive.
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Pantanal: Me and Teddy Visit the Wilderness |
Theodore Roosevelt inspires my answers to two questions I often hear: “Where’s the best place in the Amazon to see wildlife?” and “Where’s the best place in the Amazon to go fishing?” On the 1913-14 expedition that became known as his Amazon journey, the 26th president of the United States first traversed the Pantanal. So I reference him to justify my singular answer to those Amazon travel questions: “The Pantanal,” I respond.
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Rio São Francisco: Brazilian River Threatened |
The São Francisco River runs through a culturally rich but economically impoverished and drought-stricken region called the “sertão.” The struggle of subsistence farmers to eek out a living under such conditions has been captured in Graciliano Ramos’ novel Barren Lives, with a film version by director Nelson Pereira dos Santos. For decades politicians have used the suffering of smallholders like those that populate Ramos’ novel to convince taxpayers to throw money at the northeast. President Lula appears bent on pursuing a questionable irrigation project that activists say could further exacerbate the river’s environmental troubles.
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| Refúgio Ecológico Caiman |
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