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.
The natural fauna continues to be pushed away from the flat areas where machines can come in and taken away everything that was there. The pasture land, which, in spite of being blamed for eliminating the forests but still keeps intact the food chain of many mammals and birds, is being crowded out. Looking at the amount of birds that are arriving in the walled or gated communities (the condominiums), where people have planted an incredible number of decorative and fruit trees, we see that the advance of the sugarcane is implacable. The birds are being displaced from their habitat and urban areas are seeing an increase (temporary?) in species diversity and population size.
There is clear evidence that they are landing in the condominiums looking for the food they cannot find anymore in the rural areas. They are being pushed out of the fields and as a reaction, in a desperate battle to survive, they are moving to heavily populated areas where they can find shelter, shade, water and food. You can see the Crested Cara-cara in flocks messing in garbage bags, and big parrots eating palm tree nuts in the front and backyards. You can observe the cerrado native Curl-crested Jays screaming and coming to the gardens. Even Gallinules, birds that never come to urban areas are seen in the gardens. Tanagers of many different species come for water and meals, and big Great Kiskadees, Cattle Tyrants and many others, running away from their homes which are now being destroyed to make space for the new big wave of sugar cane, the same cycle that once made a few very rich at the cost of most of the beautiful Atlantic forest.
Along the route we could see bushes and trees that bloomed with wonderful colors and shapes, where sometimes hundreds of birds ate the small fruits. Many of these trees have mysteriously died. We saw wild grass where seedeaters of many species came to delight themselves and us, busily eating seeds. In the dry season they would come down to the ground by the banks of little creeks to bathe, keeping the heat out of their small and delicate bodies.
The big herons used to graze along with cattle in perfect harmony and in the marshland there were the flocks of Yellow-rumped Marsh birds and Chestnut Blackbirds.
The trunks of the giant painera trees (kapoc) whose flowers attracted hummers and other nectar eaters like the Dacnis and Bananaquits, whose old trunks fed insects which fed those gorgeous woodpeckers. They all died suddenly without any logical explanation, like they had been “roundup'd”.
The wild flower exhibitions which were one of the most completely beautiful creations in nature lost their space to the sugarcane too. Also the mammals: deer, armadillo, and little monkeys have had to move away. They were all there but not anymore.
Big and powerful interests keep pushing the expansion of the gigantic and continental sugarcane plantations. We are returning to the first centuries of the colonial period, when the Atlantic forest in Pernambuco was destroyed by the sugar culture as it was practiced then with an uncounted number of slaves.
Actually there are many culprits for Global warming, from deforestation to the increased use of coal and other fossil fuels, but it is like we were blaming the poison of a snake for killing the prey, and not the serpent itself.
We never point a finger at the greed of the ones who can make decisions to make things better, like the governments and corporations. We don't think why in a country with a continental territory like Brazil, we don´t use mass transport, why the railroad system was allowed to decay and not expanded, why in a country without roads, do we need so many car companies? Why in a world at risk of being destroyed by global warming, there is nobody looking at this problem? Is the car industry more important than global warming? Are the interests of a few so much more important than the future of the next generations? The ones who could help the planet are investing in the extinction of beautiful creatures, with colorful wings. Creatures that give happiness to all and that spread the seeds of those incredible trees so necessary for them, so necessary for mankind, so necessary for the climate balance. Look at the pictures before and now, they speak the facts. Give us some feed back, tell us what you think.
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