Neotropical Eco Foundation

Long before Europeans arrived in the Americas there was a large bird which foraged in the grassy marshlands and meadows, near the forests of the Alagoas and Pernambuco states of Brazil. The bird was beautiful, about the size of a small turkey. It had bluish black feathers with a big thick red beak. The feathers on the top of it's head formed a crest which was shown at times of fear or nervousness. The crest made it the king of the birds in that restricted forest area above the San Francisco river.

It was called Mitu by the native people in Brazil, today, we call it the Alagoas Curassow. It's call was short and low, almost like a cough, which made it hard to be heard and located. The bird was described by the German naturalist Georg Marcgraf in his book Historia Naturalis Brasiliae, published in Latin in 1648, the first important scientific work in Brazil. Marcgraf was brought to Brazil by Prince Mauritz von Nassau (1604-1679) who was Governor-general of the Dutch colony in Pernambuco. After being described by Marcgraf the Mitu Mitu seems to have dropped out of sight for about 300 years, putting in doubt the identification made by the scientist. In fact, the bird was probably hiding, since it is one of the most timid birds in the Brazilian fauna. In 1951 a Brazilian ornithologist, Olivério Pinto, rediscovered Mitu Mitu hiding in the forests of Alagoas.

(Click on the photos to enlarge)

Brazil, already in the midst of the soybean cycle, is regressing back to the colonial sugarcane cycle, showing the behavior of a compulsion to be the country of the future as described by Stefan Zweig in his 1942 book. Brazil is bringing back one of its original and damaging colonial extractive cycles, the sugarcane plantation, which devastated the most important forest on the continent, taking away species that will never be seen again, plants that may well not be used again. Looking at the economic aspect, a few "families" are again to be benefited with the profits of exports, forgetting the large majority of the population which was kept marginalized, exploited and under employed.

The legacy of sugarcane is the extermination of 95% of the Atlantic Forest. This forest was the biggest concentration of plant and animal species on the planet, much more important than the Amazon Forest. The Atlantic forest contains many different biomes (ecosystems) in the same forest - compositions like the Caatinga (White forest), the coastal forest, the mangroves, the Restinga (vegetation in the sandy coastal plain), and the highland biomes like the Mantiqueira mountains and the Serra do Mar.

The extermination of the Atlantic forest continues to the present time. The green desert takes its place, forming dry rivers, desertification, salinization and erosion, altering the climate and destroying the habitat of many avian, mammal and plant species in its damaging march forward.