Brazilian researchers from the Federal Universities of Rio Grande do Norte, ABC (UFABC) and USP (University of São Paulo) joined in a work to map the caatinga, an exclusively Brazilian biome that already has 13% of its area in the state of desertification, according to association.
The study of the “Priority Areas for Restoration of the Caatinga” was carried out between 2014 and 2021 and published in early March of this year in the scientific journal Journal of Applied Ecology.
The lack of efficient public policies and climate change accelerate the degradation of the biome, which can see more than a hundred endangered species disappear from the map in a short time.
“The proposal to map the priority areas for restoration of the caatinga came when I coordinated the exercise to define the conservation areas, together with the Ministry of the Environment. We felt the need to also define the priority areas for restoration”, says Carlos Roberto Fonseca , associate professor at the Department of Ecology at UFRN and co-author of the study.
According to the professor, in order to define the priority areas for attention, the biome was divided into about 10,000 watersheds, classifying them according to three criteria: the value of each of these watersheds for conserving the biodiversity of threatened plants, the amount of vegetation in each of these watersheds and the importance of each of them for landscape connectivity.
According to the survey, 939 of the caatinga basins are considered high priority for restoration. And 86 were considered top priority for restoration.
“In the caatinga there are, in fact, 350 species threatened with extinction, according to the red book of threatened species in Brazil. Each basin may have no threatened species or even more than a hundred”, explains Fonseca.
“To give you an idea, a single watershed has 106 threatened species. These watersheds are already deforested. If we don’t restore them, these species will disappear.”
The study also points out that 50% of the caatinga area has been deforested. But the “good news”, according to researcher Marina Antongiovanni da Fonseca, a specialist in landscape analysis and conservation of tropical forests at UFRN, and who also participated in the research, there is still the other 50%.
On the other hand, the caatinga is a very jagged region, which makes it easy to enter. “She is very accessible to anthropic disturbances [provocadas pela ação do homem] chronicles. When it comes to deforestation, it is an acute disturbance. It cleared and it’s over. Chronic disturbance is quieter, less visible to the naked eye. Inside that remaining area there is exploitation, trampling of seedlings [plantas ainda pequenas]hunting, things that we don’t see without a more detailed field study.”
Marina cites cattle raising as an example of the easy access to the biome. “He starts trampling, defecating, and this all harms the regeneration and maintenance of the species in these caatinga areas”, says the researcher.
“On the other hand, man also accesses it very easily. He is able to hunt long distances into these remaining areas. If he can recommend actions to reduce the chance of loss of native species in the caatinga, one of them is to pay attention to these anthropic disturbances, which are quieter, and being able to understand how this is harming the local fauna and flora.”
The next step, according to the researchers, is for the federal, state and municipal governments to develop actions, such as the creation of conservation units for sustainable use or full protection.
“The federal government should also have restoration programs to ensure not only biodiversity, but also ecosystem services, water quality, air quality, pollination services, etc. We should be seeing actions in this direction,” says Fonseca.
The researcher says that today it is “easier” to restore the caatinga and that there are already projects that are giving good results.
One of the works is developed by professor Gislene Ganade, from the UFRN ecology department. It consists of placing seedlings in PVC tubes, which allow the root to develop up to a meter deep. This, according to researcher Marina Fonseca, ensures that the plant can survive in an adverse condition.
The caatinga encompasses the nine states of the Northeast and a strip in the north of Minas Gerais. According to the Caatinga Association, there are about 28 million people living in the Brazilian semiarid region.
“When compared to other semi-arid regions around the world, it is the most biodiverse area, which has the largest set of fauna and flora species, including some endemic, which only occur here in the caatinga”, says Daniel Fernandes, general coordinator of the association.
“This loss of vegetation, of biodiversity, causes a series of problems, among them the expansion of areas in an advanced state of desertification. Today we already have about 13% of the territory of the caatinga in an advanced stage of desertification.”
Fernandes also highlights climate change as a factor that accelerates the degradation of the caatinga. He points out that longer periods of drought will occur.
“Climate changes directly affect the caatinga. We will have problems with water supply, soil fertility, and this affects economic and environmental aspects as a whole.”
Biome left aside
For researchers, the caatinga is left out when it comes to public policies. The main problems are the lack of investment, denial and inefficient supervision.
“We’ve had major setbacks in recent years. First, this denial of super-transparent official data, which until then were considered official data, with a lot of credibility around the world. This campaign to belittle this data is terrible. inspection and conservation bodies, such as Ibama and CNBio”, says Marina Fonseca.
Researcher Carlos Roberto Fonseca compares the attention given to the caatinga with the Amazon, for example, which can be evaluated in real time using satellites. With the caatinga there is a need to use the official bases of the Ministry of the Environment, which are not so current.
For Daniel Fernandes, the absence of public policies and the action of the public power directly affect the degradation of the caatinga. “As soon as the government and the authorities see the potential that our country has in terms of sustainable development, we will have all the conditions to transform ourselves into a global power based on nature conservation.”
In Rio Grande do Norte, the Secretary of State for the Environment and Water Resources says that it is formulating environmental policies, involving the creation of the Decree to create RPPNs (Private Natural Heritage Reserve), as well as spring recovery projects.
“The government is creating the RN + Verde program, which aligns economic development and the increase in vegetation cover in Rio Grande Do Norte. The program will involve encouraging and supporting the conservation of priority areas with the recovery of native vegetation in degraded areas. “, says Robson Henrique, coordinator of the folder.
The Ministry of the Environment was approached for comment on the study, but did not respond until the publication of this report.
