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Not too far in the distance, the Atlantic Forest crests along the horizon, bobbing in and out of misty clouds in emerald green lumps above the sea. I trace its irregular contours from a water taxi as we cut through waves alongside Guiana dolphins, traveling from the Brazilian town of Cananéia to a state park on Cardoso Island.
Cardoso has six communities of Caiçaras—subsistence farmers and fishermen whose culture (like Brazil’s itself) is a mix of European, African, and Indigenous influences. Otherwise, it’s a fantastically feral place full of marshes and mangroves, beaches and waterfalls, woodlands and estuaries.
I hike along a wooden boardwalk in search of regal egrets and flamboyant scarlet ibises. Deeper into Cardoso’s forest, brown howler monkeys fill the viscous air with their guttural moans. This, my guide Amanda Selivon explains, is how much of the Brazilian coast looked before Europeans arrived in the 1500s.
“The Atlantic Forest was destroyed at a moment when people didn't really have a culture and consciousness that this natural resource could run out,” says Selivon, founder of the tour company EkoWays, which specializes in regenerative tourism in the Atlantic Forest. “Yet, it’s nearly as diverse as the better-known Amazon and actually has more species per square meter.”
If you’ve seen any photos of Rio de Janeiro then you’re already familiar with the loamy hills of the Atlantic Forest, which run through 11 Brazilian states—from the state of Rio Grande do Norte in the north, to Rio Grande do Sul in the south of the massive country. Some 70 percent of all Brazilians—and a third of all South Americans—live within its midst. That fact helps explain why 85 percent of its original canopy has been deforested over the past 500 years—a process linked to the history of Cananéia: It was from this small port, now marked by cobblestoned streets and crumbling colonial-era homes, that the Portuguese launched their first conquest along the coast in 1531, replacing the immense forest they found with cities and farmland.
Fast forward to 2022, however, and the Atlantic Forest is now the setting of one of the most uplifting stories in global conservation. The Trillion Trees initiative, which has mapped global forest regrowth since 2000, found that over the past two decades, the Atlantic Forest has gained 10.4 million acres (an area the size of The Netherlands), making it one of the most successful examples of forest restoration on earth.
John Lotspeich, Executive Director at Trillion Trees, explains that much of the forest regenerated naturally after farmers abandoned rural land for city jobs in the early aughts. “Of course, this doesn’t just happen on its own,” he clarifies. “There’s a real movement around the Atlantic Forest right now.”
Part of the reason Brazilians are rallying around the Atlantic Forest is because it is, quite literally, in their backyards. The largest stretch of protected land lies just an hour outside of São Paulo, the largest city in the Americas with 22 million residents. When the pandemic canceled faraway vacations, urbanites rediscovered what they’d long overlooked: They listened to the bleating calls of songbirds, inhaled the citrus-like fragrance of orchids, and many felt a renewed desire to defend the place.
But a campaign to unite the public and private parks southwest of this metropolis first gained steam back in 2018, with the creation of the Atlantic Forest Great Reserve—covering 11.1 million acres between the states of São Paulo, Paraná, and Santa Catarina. This protected stretch alone is home to 15,000 species of plants and more than 2,000 species of vertebrates, including the critically endangered southern muriqui, a potbellied primate that’s the largest monkey in the Americas. It spans the high sierras of the Serra do Mar, which are speckled with umbrella-like araucaria trees and lowland rainforests, like those I saw at Cardoso.
The reserve initiative has brought together members of the public and private sector, as well as non-government and academic organizations to promote conservation, research, and sustainable development. It's also brought much-need visitors.
The mosaic of parks covered in the Great Reserve includes PETAR Park, to which many visitors make the 200-mile trip from São Paulo for a myriad of adventures: searching for neon green bioluminescent mushrooms with the scientist-guides at Reserva Betary at night; tromping past thousands of bromeliads along the Betari River (which you can also white-water raft by day). There are the flooded forests of Legado das Águas, 60 miles outside São Paulo, where local guides take travelers kayaking atop a jade-green mirror in search of pumas and jaguars. Then there are the dark abysses of Caverna do Diabo State Park, where visitors rappel 130 feet into one of the largest caverns in South America (there are 400 other caves nearby, too).
That's just a sliver of what the region has to offer. Yet it's clear, here, that ecotourism–long an undervalued concept in Brazil, by many Brazilians' accounts–has suddenly become a force for good just outside one of the most densely populated urban corridors on earth.
This is no accident, says Guilherme Miranda, vice-secretary of tourism for São Paulo. The local government has invested over $250 million in the region, much of which went toward developing sustainable tourism within its patch of the Atlantic Forest, which is home to some of the poorest people in Brazil’s richest state.
“When you talk to locals, they’re passionate about what they have here–they’re proud to live in a place that’s so well-conserved–so we believe ecotourism is a way for them to generate income,” Miranda says. “The problem is the region hasn’t got the promotion it deserves, and that’s what we’re trying to do now because, in terms of natural beauty and importance, this is just like the Amazon.”
Currently, the Atlantic Forest is growing faster than just about any other forest on earth. Lotspeich, of Trillion Trees, believes it’s vitally important to celebrate achievements like this—even if the larger picture for global forests is alarming.
“If you can take a deep breath and look at where we are, things are getting a little bit better,” he says. “And that should give you cause for hope.”
