There are many species of plants and animals in the Amazon with pharmacological potential – that is, they can be used to make new medicines or cosmetics.
The species of frogs in the Dendrobatidae family, for example, are known to have skins rich in molecules that can be used to develop medicines such as painkillers.
The advance of deforestation, however, can eliminate these and other animals and plants from the planet before the benefits can be exploited.
In the specific case of the frogs of the Dendrobatidae family, one of its species, the arrow frog (Hyloxalus chlorocraspedus), has already lost 68% of its area of occurrence. It is found only in the municipality of Porto Walter, in the west of Acre, a region where the native forest has been losing ground.
The species is one of 486 evaluated by a recent study by WWF-Brasil and passed exclusively to BBC News Brasil.
Conducted by the consultancy Gondwana and financed by the European Union under the Eat4Change project, the survey crossed maps of deforestation in the Amazon and the cerrado up to 2019 with maps of the occurrence of threatened species or species that live in restricted areas to understand how the loss of vegetation native species affects this biodiversity.
Of the total, almost all (484 of 486) lost part of their habitat. Some have seen their ranges shrink by more than 90%, as is the case with the tree frog Dendropsophus rhea (93.1%), endemic to the cerrado, and the snake Typhlonectes wedge (93.6%), endemic to the Amazon.
Amphibians were the most affected: the distribution area of the 107 analyzed species reduced by 43%. For lizards and snakes, the percentage was 29%; mammals, 27%; and poultry, 26%.
Symbol of the cerrado, the maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus) has already lost more than half of its territory.
the cuíca (Gracilinanus microtarsus), a marsupial with great socioeconomic potential for agriculture as it is a voracious predator of insects, reduced its distribution in the biome by about 67% – a level close to that observed (68%) for the Brazilian Merganser (Mergus octosetaceus), a critically endangered bird that uses its slender beak to fish and is known to only inhabit areas with clear, crystalline rivers.
Animals that live between the two biomes, such as the chororó-de-goiás (Cercomacra ferdinandi), were especially affected. This is a bird found in the Araguaia River basin, with a significant area of occurrence –107,500 km² in the cerrado and 49,700 km² in the Amazon–, but which was not enough for it to be protected.
According to the study, the alteration of the Araguaia river’s flood cycles by dams and the replacement of native vegetation by pasture caused 74% of its area of occurrence in the Amazon and 35% in the Cerrado to disappear.
New agricultural frontiers
The analysis showed that, in both biomes, native vegetation has been giving way mainly to pastures and soybean plantations. MapBiomas data up to 2019 showed that these activities occupied 40.9% of the original area of the cerrado (33.8% pasture; 7.1% soy) and 14.6% of the Amazon (13.8% pasture; 0.8% soy ).
The most affected region is the cerrado, which for decades had been losing native vegetation with the advance of agriculture, especially the area that comprises the states of São Paulo and Goiás.
The most recent deforestation, after the 1990s, extended over the area known as Matopiba, an acronym formed by the acronyms for the states Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia.
The expansion of the agricultural frontier in this region has threatened, for example, the three-banded armadillo (Tolypeutes tricinctus), chosen as the mascot of the 2014 World Cup. In just five years, the species has seen a 9% increase in soybean crops within the limits of its habitat.
The survey did not distinguish between areas where deforestation was illegal or within the law. In this sense, Mariana Napolitano Ferreira, science manager at WWF-Brazil, points out that, unlike the Amazon biome, the Cerrado has few protected areas.
“Almost 50% of the Amazon are conservation or protected areas; in the Cerrado this percentage is 12%, very little. The legal reserve area [determinada por lei] for properties in the Amazon it is 80%. In the cerrado, it drops to 20%, in some places, to 35%.”
“There’s a lot of legal area to deforest in the Cerrado. It’s still very little protected by legislation.”
In this sense, the biologist considers it necessary to think of a “less aggressive territorial planning policy on the biome”.
In addition to creating protected areas, it is possible to think of a more intelligent use of the land, she says, with the expansion of agricultural production in areas of pasture that already exist, but which are known to be degraded and/or not very productive.
In the Amazon, deforestation is concentrated especially in the southern part, with a direct impact on animals such as the Rondônia marmoset (Mico rondoni), a species only found in the state that gives it its name and which currently accounts for one of the most deforested portions of the biome.
With an original area of occurrence of 72,000 km², the mammal had already lost 40% of it by 2014 and, in the 5 years until 2019, when deforestation intensified, it saw another 9% disappear.
Outside the most deforested region of the biome, species that are concentrated in small areas, such as the parauacu monkey (Pithecia cazuzai) and the Anavilhanas lizard (Loxopholis ferreirai) have seen the loss of their habitats multiply 10-fold in the last 5 years.
“Commodity production, especially soy and beef, are among the biggest vectors of environmental degradation today, and the way they are conducted today, threaten the planet’s ability to even produce food in the future”, says the text of the analysis.
chain effect
Loss of area causes imbalances that go beyond the individual impact on each species, Ferreira points out. In the case of predators, such as the maned wolf or the small wildcat (Leopardus guttulus), which has already lost almost 80% of its habitat in the cerrado, the impact extends throughout the chain.
“These species are regulating from the top down. If you take out the predator, there could be an exaggerated growth of a rodent population, for example.”
Some species, she recalls, are important for seed distribution. Their greater vulnerability, therefore, also has a negative impact on the biodiversity of the flora.
On a more macro scale, the deterioration of the Cerrado and the Amazon points to long-term consequences that spill over into biomes and could impact other regions of the country.
“The problem goes far beyond the loss of species. Biodiversity is an indicator of the health of ecosystems”, says the biologist.
“The decrease in biodiversity is linked to the loss of vegetation cover, to the degradation of water bodies. This has an impact on agricultural production, on the cycles of rain and drought, and can result in longer periods of drought, more fires, shortages. interconnected.”
The cerrado spreads across 11 states in the central region of the country and occupies about 25% of the territory. There are thousands of species of plants, some of them endemic, such as the baru and the pequizeiro, and hundreds of species of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and mammals.
The biome is also one of the most important sources of water for the country. It is the birthplace of river sources that make up hydrographic basins such as the Amazon, São Francisco, Araguaia/Tocantins and Paraná/Paraguay.
The Amazon is the most extensive and species-rich rainforest in the world, occupying more than 40% of the national territory.
Due to the phenomenon known as “flying rivers”, the region has a direct impact on the rainfall regime in the Center-South of the country. In parallel, it is considered a key factor in the fight against climate change and global warming.
This is because the vast vegetation cover of the Amazon removes large amounts of carbon dioxide (COtwo) of the atmosphere, one of the greenhouse gases. And, unlike forests located in regions further away from the equator, which in some cases go through harsh winters in which plants lose their leaves, the Amazon rainforest “works” throughout the year.
