In the nearly 800 kilometers of road from Uberaba (MG) to Alto Paraíso de Goiás (GO), the landscape is the same: monoculture plantations, mainly soybean, extend across the horizon.
This land use is intensified to the north of Brasília, about 230 kilometers from the entrance to the largest Cerrado conservation area in the country, the Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park. Fragments of native vegetation are sparse, and the local fauna is constantly threatened by both the advance of agriculture and the intense movement on the highways.
The park has more than 240 thousand hectares of extension and includes several endemic species (which only occur in a certain region).
But even this biodiversity is not fully protected, say scientists and environmental activists in the region.
The cerrado is the Brazilian biome that suffered the most area loss, with about 50% of its distribution lost in less than 30 years. Recently, the biome faced the highest amount of fires since 2012, a device used to open areas for agricultural production. With the drought, the fire loses control and touches areas of environmental preservation, such as the APA (environmental preservation area) Pouso Alto, next to the Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park.
For biologist Vívian Braz, a professor at the Evangelical University of Goiás, the typically savannah landscape of the cerrado makes it often considered “less worthy of preservation”.
In fact, the cerrado has several physiognomies, among which the dirty fields and clean fields —today restricted to some national parks—, the gallery forests and buritizais, the rupestrian fields. The latter is the one that undergoes the most modification to form pastures for cattle.
It is in some of these vegetative formations that the endemic species of the biome live, only found there. Braz analyzed, in 2008, the distribution of bird populations found in the park area.
“The modification of the landscape, without a doubt, puts even more pressure on these populations”, he explains, saying that more than 300 species of birds live in the park. “What I saw is that, in the last ten years, the advance of monoculture is putting pressure on the park, which was already threatened.”
This pressure, even in the surroundings of the protected area, can lead to the extinction of some species even within the conservation unit.
Back recently, she still doesn’t have concrete data, but she already notes that some species that were frequently observed in the park area are no longer seen. One of the species is the Brazilian Merganser, which today has only three unconnected populations in the region.
In addition to the advance of monoculture, the fires that have occurred in recent years threaten biodiversity. “One of the species that I monitor is the cockerel (alectrurus tricolor), which lives and breeds in native grasslands, one of the vegetation that suffers most from fires”, he says.
According to the ecologist and technical director of AVE (Association Amigos da Chapada dos Veadeiros), Nicholas Saraiva, the lack of physical continuity between the cerrado fragments and the park, the so-called buffer areas, should also be preserved.
“Today we have some municipalities in Chapada such as Cavalcante [norte do parque], which lost the most cerrado area in 2020, according to MapBiomas data: more than 25 hectares. And soy plantations are sticking to the park,” he says.
The ecologist believes that the policies that have weakened the inspection capacity of Ibama and the Ministry of the Environment in recent years also make concrete actions against illegal deforestation difficult. “People are encouraged daily [a pensar] that environmental protection is an obstacle to development, but they forget about the benefits, the generation of biodiversity values, carbon, water production”, he says.
When contacted, IBAMA did not comment on the illegal deforestation that took place inside and outside the park area.
According to the Goiás Secretariat for the Environment and Sustainable Development (Semad), the government is carrying out operations to contain real estate speculation throughout the state, including in areas such as Vale da Lua, around the park, with increased efforts from January this year. “In all, four buildings and a total area of 1.7 hectares were embargoed with a notice of infraction in the amount of R$ 80 thousand, on January 13 of this year”, said the agency.
Also, in 2020, the secretariat said it had fined more than 30 irregular subdivisions with fines in amounts exceeding R$ 5 million. “This type of action generates a very expressive environmental impact, either by the disorderly expansion of the urban area, or by indirect consequences, such as soil sealing and reduced water availability”, said the Secretary of the Environment of Goiás, Andréa Vulcanis.
Another problem faced by the local fauna is trampling. Annually, according to a study carried out by Braz in 2016, almost 900 animals are run over just in the area around the park, most of them reptiles, birds and mammals, such as the maned wolf, a symbol of the cerrado.
To try to reduce deaths from being run over, the NGO Associação Amigos da Floresta launched a campaign called Eu Desaccelero na Chapada. In 2021, she obtained one in court forcing the concessionaire responsible for highways GO-239, GO-118 and GO-010, to put signs to reduce speed, radars and also create passages for animals.
According to a multicenter study published in November 2021 in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography, the populations of animals most vulnerable to extinction due to roadkill in the next 50 years are large mammals, such as the maned wolf, which are at risk of becoming extinct. 34%, and the ocelot, with a risk of extinction of up to 75%.
“In addition to signs and reducers, our actions aim at educational blitzes, community events and projects, such as one organized by the Federal University of Brasilia, for the appropriation of residents for the conservation of local biodiversity”, says Flávia Cantal, vice president of Associação Amigos of the forest.
For Braz, the local community knows the importance of keeping the cerrado standing. “There are many people who live off tourism and sustainable production. Although the pressure from agribusiness is strong there, perhaps it is because of the population that the park still resists”, he says.
