Mata Atlântica

Golden lion tamarin conservation site, Brazil. Photo Credit: Ylfa Muindi

I am a current Project Dragonfly graduate student.
In May 2019, I joined Project Dragonfly’s Brazil Earth Expedition.

These are some memories from the experience.

“Art Imitates Nature,” quoth Aristotle. “Wrong, sir!” quoth Augusto Boal.

Boal points out the inadequacy of this translation of Aristotle’s famous phrase. The artist does not imitate; the artist re-creates. Nature is not a completion of all things; nature is the principle of creation itself (Boal, 2000).

So, the more adequate translation of Aristotle’s statement would be “Art recreates the very principle of creation itself” (Boal, 2000).

This distinction is important for naturalists and conservationists. Nature is not complete. Nature is not perfect. Nature aims for perfection, but the very act of creation generates imperfections. Conservation, in its very essence, strives to maintain a perfect whole. While in the Mata Atlantica of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, I was so deeply overcome with the giddiness of rampant creation to the point where I no longer consider myself a conservationist. I am a naturalist - I strive to recreate the principle of creation.

The Mata Atlantica is a writhing, crawling, soaring, leaping, shining bastion of biodiversity. It contains high endemism, species found nowhere else, immense tree diversity (many of the trees have yet to be identified by science), and also significant species richness (Martini, Fiaschi, Amorim, Da Paixão 2007). As one of the oldest rainforests on the planet, its creativity and potential for creation knew no bounds… until recently. Much of the land not taken over by the cities of Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo is cattle-burnt.

Native plant nursery. Photo Credit: Ylfa Muindi

Only 5% of this once vast, dazzlingly complex forest remains. A wonderfully charismatic and fascinating creature who defies expectations unwittingly served as the mascot for this remaining forest - the golden lion tamarin. Through a combination of adaptations and the primate’s own sexual selection, they created a rather unique way for a monkey to raise a baby. They tend to live in groups with one dominant male and one dominant female who tend to be monogamous, and, when there is a baby (or two, as twins are common), everyone from the dominant pair to the rest of the group helps care for them when they cry out, when they are hungry, when they are cold. To watch the families is to marvel at their ability to communicate to their needs. When they hold out their little Da Vinci-esque black hands as if to take a delicate cup of hot tea, others rush over to accept the offer to be groomed. They bird-screech out an alarm, and the rest rush to back them up, leaping furiously through the branches. By sharing images and stories of these incredible monkeys, local conservationists were able to spread love for the forest and a desire to protect what remains. That creativity paid off, and the population rebounded after near extinction. There is now not enough forest for the tamarins to expand into.

Associação Mico-Leão Dourado (AMLD or Golden Lion Tamarin Association) is creating new forest for these monkeys to expand into, and, in turn, for sloths, toucans, and jaguarundis to expand into. To create a forest, it takes a community. AMLD partners with local women and their families to generate viable economic alternatives to cultivating land for livestock or logging; women who have, through necessity, learned how to forage and harvest from the forest itself are now tasked with discovering the secrets of how trees grow and produce offspring. The acts of propagating seeds, nursing seedlings, and planting new forest is a profound mode of creation. To see the look of pride in the greenhouses brimming with green sprouts is to know that the action took an enormous amount of research, dedication, and trial and error. These reforests are creating a new community for the human occupants of this ecosystem to expand into, as well. Expansion of the spirit, of the mind, is unavoidable in these forests.

Such daring creativity is present throughout Brazil. Like the United States, it is a big, complicated country rife with cultural diversity. You hear it as you stroll through Rio de Janeiro, where musicians are paid to play live music from all corners of Brazil in bars, on beaches, or in storefronts. You taste it as you sample your way through the cuisines. You see it in the architecture, the fashions, and the art.

To be in Brazil was to experience the optimism of creativity and imagination. It was to see how recreating the creative principle inspires us to grow as people and as community members.

WORKS CITED

Boal, A. (2000). Theater of the Oppressed. Pluto Press.

Martini, A. M. Z., Fiaschi, P., Amorim, A. M., & Da Paixão, J. L. (2007). A hot-point within a hot-spot: a high diversity site in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. Biodiversity and Conservation, 16(11), 3111-3128.