Our Blogs
We have reorganized 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. Read 0 Comments... >> |
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| 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. |
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