São Luís, Maranhão: Replanting the Urban Amazon Forest

This is a bit of a homecoming for Murilo Drummond. Two decades ago the professor of genetics and evolution first began to frequent this area, one of the few remaining sections of Amazon rainforest within the city limits of São Luís, a nearly million-strong state capital. He would bring students on field trips and lead research expeditions. Back then this section with the vultures would have been relatively pristine.

In 1980 the 3,200 hectares that surround us were set aside as Bacanga State Park. In theory the park designation restricted even further human intervention in the area; it had been a Water Protection Area since1944. Much of the city’s drinking water comes from reservoirs inside the park.

In the late 1980s, researchers stuck mostly to a section of the park called the Sacavém forest reserve, but each time they returned, scientists observed new signs of human encroachment. “You could see the degradation and the growing population in the vicinity,” recalls Drummond.

Professors and students protested to administrators at Maranhão Federal University. The dean called their leadership aside and promised to give them an area near the campus to conduct research if they’d cool it about the park. “He was trying to keep us quiet,” said Drummond. Drummond and his colleagues answered by founding an environmental group called Amavida to continue their activist work outside the confines of academia.

Down the steep grade of a dirt road, past an old convent and to the left, we reach the headquarters of the Maranhão state environmental police. With 70 men and two four-wheel drive vehicles, this office tries to enforce environmental law for the entire state - over 333,000 square kilometers, an area just slightly smaller than the entire country of Germany.

Behind the cramped barracks, Amavida has established a bee raising station similar to ones it helps locals operate in small communities in the semi-arid northeastern section of the state. With the sponsorship of a local company, Amavida provides beekeepers with native species and technical and marketing assistance. The project has won awards from the Brazilian-German Chamber of Commerce and the Ford Foundation.

The bee-raising scheme represents an important pro-active step for Amavida. Perhaps because there were so few environmental groups around when Amavida was founded in 1990, it began by running around putting out fires. Need to protest environmental damage caused by a shipwrecked tanker? Call Amavida. Need somebody to help implement a neighborhood tree-planting scheme? Amavida to the rescue. Need input to help write the state environmental code? Amavida would supply the experts. The group’s early years were marked by protests and ill-fated attempts to work in partnership with the public sector. Finally in 1994 it joined forces with a private company to establish a field station to research migratory birds. “That got us away from just protesting all the time,” recalls Drummond. The bee keeping initiative followed. Today Amavida activists continue to serve on sundry official commissions – besides operating as an informal incubator for fledgling environmental groups in the city and state.

Two officers decide to accompany us on our visit to Bacanga State Park, and we load into their jeep. I get splashed as we tread through puddles: looking down, I notice there’s a hole in the floorboard. Soon, on our left, I spot a half-dozen grazing cattle. Economic activity like grazing is formally prohibited inside park limits, but these cows aren’t alone. A truck loaded with empty chicken coops whizzes past, hardly taking notice of us. On the right a partially unfinished luxury home stands behind a security gate. A judge issued an embargo on further construction, according to the officers, but somehow the structure continues to creep to completion. Adds one of the cops: “There are soccer fields all over the place back here.”

The state set itself up for land disputes by going only half way when it established the park. It used the principle of eminent domain to claim ownership of private property but failed to compensate the former owners. Beyond the luxury home, a rock quarry operated openly for years. An asphalt plant occupies a large swath of another section of the park.

Soon, on our right, we approach a parched area dotted with seedlings, most about waste high. Here’s evidence of the first round of Amavida’s reforestation program. With the help of community volunteers, Amavida planted 15,000 seedlings of eight different species of native trees, including Ipê and Acácia. School children did most of the honors, though evidence remains of the volunteers from a local mental hospital who built a little rock fence around their seedlings.

Population growth in Maranhão stands at 1.5% a year. As elsewhere in Brazil, affordable housing remains scarce. So instead of trying to address the incursions, public officials periodically whittle down the size of the park to reflect the new human settlements. The original 3,200 hectares have already been scaled back to 2,800. “Now they want to redefine it again,” says Drummond. To win votes at election time, many politicians organize and sponsor invasions by the homeless. According to some estimates, the de facto size of the park is 30% smaller than when it was decreed 25 years ago.

Not many student researchers frequent Bacanga anymore. The district is now considered one of São Luís’ most dangerous. But Amavida hopes one million seedlings backed up with environmental education in the nearby communities will help begin to turn things around. Says graduate student Clarissa Moreira Coelho, an activist with Planeta Vida, an Amavida partner group: “We’re going to work with the communities around the park so that they come to defend it.”

Amavida

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