NGOs acquire land in Brazil to create wildlife corridor

Brazil’s Atlantic Forest is one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. However, over the last 500 years its extension has been dramatically decreasing, and today it occupies roughly 15 percent of its original area and 7 percent of its original forest cover. The remaining forest areas are severely fragmented, causing habitat loss and increasing the pressure on the remaining species. Conservationists have found that a way to alleviate the impact of fragmentation is to implement wildlife corridors that connect interspersed patches of remnant forests. On April 9, three conservation NGOs announced they had acquired land for one such corridors – also known as a land bridge. The area will be created in the vicinity of the Biological Reserve of Poço das Antas, in the state of Rio de Janeiro. The corridor will include a bridge overpass over a large highway that runs north of the reserve and will allow animals to circulate beyond the limits of the reserve. Among the species that will benefit from the corridor is the endangered golden lion tamarin (Leontopithecus rosalia), endemic to the region. The golden lion tamarin’s protection has been at the core of the project. SavingSpecies is one of the three non-profits that have joined efforts to create the corridor. The other two are the Associação Mico-Leão-Dourado (AMLD), a Brazilian NGO that has been working on the conservation of the golden lion tamarin for the last 25 years, and the Netherlands-based DOB Ecology, a philanthropic organization that supports restoration and conservation programs in Africa and…

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