The Wildlife Corridors Programme

In the area of Pontal we work in, land tenure is very diverse. Right next to the large private farms, there are settlements of small farmers from the Landless Workers’ Movement, a social movement fighting to secure land rights for rural workers.

With small farm plots and limited economic opportunities, settlers struggle to earn a decent living. WeForest engages local communities from the Landless Workers’ Movement in the restoration of the Atlantic Forest. Our local partner IPÊ gives training to members of this movement to build capacities within the communities and empower them to become entrepreneurs.  Training ranges from nursery activities to agroforestry. Locals set-up their own tree nurseries and business units to plant trees, and take care of the land.  WeForest then partners with those community-established nurseries to collect native seeds and nurture the seedlings for planting. We also contract members of the Landless Workers’ Movement to carry out the tree planting and forest restoration.

As a result of the project, local people receive a steady income, learn valuable skills and become key environmental stewards. In total, the project engages 177 local people. There are 115 nursery workers from 23 families and 62 restoration contractors. The minimum wage in Brazil (as of January 1^st, 2016) is US$ 228 per month, and the average wage in Pontal is US$ 625.  The nursery activities bring each family an additional income of US$ 450per month, which amounts to a 72% increase in a family’s income.  Similarly, the planting contractors have generated US$ 410,000 of local income in the past 24 months. This represents a mean extra income of US$ 1,137 per family per month, or five times the national minimum wage. The graph below illustrates the substantial increase in income that the project brings to the participating families.

In addition, 76 families were trained in seedling production at the project nurseries. The Alvorado nursery has recently been offered co-financing through a local partner as a practical training platform in community agroforestry seedling production and planting techniques. The project also offers educational services to local school groups to engage young people on the issue of environmental conservation. The training that takes place at the project nurseries, therefore, expands the impact of the project well beyond the small farmers.

WeForest and its partner IPE are supporting the restoration of forest corridors in the Atlantic Forest, in Pontal. The areas are critical for the survival of the black lion tamarin, as forest corridors will increase their habitat and improve landscape connectivity. Protecting and restoring the Atlantic Forest would mean conserving this species last remaining habitat and securing its long-term survival.

Around 800 of the remaining black lion tamarins live in the Morro Do Diabo State Park. In April 2017, a new group of black lion tamarins was captured in the North of the Morro do Diabo State Park. This is the second group that will be monitored through GPS tracking devices. The black lion tamarins get a collar with GPS tracking function, and the data gathered from these collars will be integrated in a study on the use of space, movement patterns, habitat preference and energy expenditure by the black lion tamarins in different fragments. The GPS technology is widely used for larger species, but it is the first time we are using this on small primates (<1kg). The first wild group with a GPS collar is being monitored since July 2016 and we will soon retrieve the data for the first results. With this technology, we can monitor a greater number of groups simultaneously, and increase the amount of information gathered from the field. "Our plan is to expand our monitoring work to even more populations and get a great amount of useful information to support the species conservation planning", explains the project coordinator Gabriela Rezende. The information gathered from wildlife movement allows us to further expand the forest restoration project and smartly decide where the next corridors will be located to enlarge the habitat of endangered species. A new area that we are discovering is a corridor in the North of the Morro do Diabo State Park, where isolated populations of the Black lion tamarins are still present.

It is the perfect timing to start working here and reduce the extinction risk of these tiny black lion tamarin populations!