Neotropical Eco Foundation

We are reorganizing the web site to open up a place for our thoughts (blogs) and to create an opportunity for our registered users to post comments and replies. We are starting off with two blog categories: Backyard Birding and the Mantiqueira Journal, which we are republishing in this new format.

In the Backyard Birding blog we will be talking about the various species of birds we see in our backyard (over a hundred so far!) and some of the ideas and tips we have on how to enrich your Backyard Birding experience. Since our backyard is in the Neotropics most of the species we observe are fruit and nectar eaters, like Tanagers and Hummingbirds, most of which can not be seen in North America. I hope that you enjoy this new section.

The Mantiqueira Journal was started last year and we are going to pick it up again, when we are in the region. Due to this there will not be continuous entries, only when we are there. This region is a part of the "Mata Atlantica", a tropical and sub-tropical rain forest area that once stretched over two thousand miles along the Brazilian coast. By some estimates only 2% to 5% of this forest still exists, making it the most endangered eco-system in the neotropics - much more so that the Amazon forest.

The following article tells a story for children describing how a specific place can be transformed after being occupied by sugarcane plantations. After all, the future of this planet belongs to the children.

They used to be there, crossing the ecological route that connects the Joaquim Egídio district of Campinas to Itatiba. We traveled this itinerary many times and saw them among the cattle in the pastures and fields with bushes and wild grass, singing, jumping from one branch to the next. They are the seedeaters, among many others, like the Double-collared Seedeater, the Chestnut-capped Blackbird, the White-browed Blackbird, the Yellow-rumped Marshbird, the Siriema, the Whistling Heron and many other species that depend on the wild grass and marshland to feed themselves and their babies. And then, going back to that old dirt road, we were surprised to see the sugarcane plantations surging like a green desert that offers nothing to the native fauna, just more profit to those that already have so much but want much more. They don`t care about the animals, they never looked up in a tree to see the colors of a bird, they ignore the native flora and the future of the planet.