Atlantic Forest: Fragments that Persist
Once stretching across nearly a tenth of South America, the Atlantic Forest is now reduced to scattered fragments. Yet within these remaining patches of forest, communities, producers, conservation teams, and local organizations continue working together to keep one of the planet’s richest ecosystems alive.
For decades, the Atlantic Forest has been shaped by deforestation, cattle ranching, sugarcane expansion, and land-use change. Today, more than 80% of this biome has disappeared, leaving behind isolated forest remnants that still shelter extraordinary biodiversity — including hundreds of bird species found nowhere else on Earth.
But the story of the Atlantic Forest is not only one of loss. It is also one of persistence.
In northeastern Brazil, BirdLife International recently came together with its Partners — Aves Argentinas, Guyra Paraguay, and SAVE Brasil — as part of a regional workshop focused on advancing the Atlantic Forest Action Plan through three shared priorities: protection, restoration, and sustainable land use.
Conservation and Livelihoods Growing Together
Beyond meetings and technical discussions, the experience was grounded in the territory itself.
Across forest fragments in Alagoas and Pernambuco, the team visited the people and projects sustaining conservation efforts on the ground every day. Among them was João Evangelista, a local producer whose family transformed their land into a living example of agroforestry rooted in his father’s legacy.
In a region historically dominated by cattle ranching and sugarcane, João’s work offers a different path — one where production and conservation are not opposing forces. Banana trees grow alongside native vegetation, cacao and coffee diversify the land, and the forest gradually returns to spaces once cleared.
For João, restoring is also about protecting water, improving crops, reducing pests naturally, and creating opportunities for younger generations to remain connected to rural life.
“Where there are trees, there are birds,” he explained during the visit. “And where there are birds, the land becomes healthier.”
People Keeping the Forest Alive
The group also visited the Reserva Particular do Patrimônio Natural Pedra D’Antas, a private reserve protected by SAVE Brasil for more than twenty years. Hidden among the remaining forest fragments, the reserve shelters more than 250 bird species — 14 of them globally threatened — alongside mammals, amphibians, and endemic plant life that continue resisting despite decades of fragmentation.
There, local guides, park rangers, researchers, and surrounding communities shared how conservation has become inseparable from livelihoods, tourism, restoration, and long-term stewardship of the territory.
In places like Pedra D’Antas, conservation is daily work — carried out by people who know these forests intimately and who continue protecting them even as pressures on the landscape grow.
The Atlantic Forest may survive today in fragments, but those fragments remain deeply connected through people, partnerships, and collective action across borders. And within them, something larger than biodiversity persists: the decision to resist.
©All photos by Juan F. Ricaurte.