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Situated deep in the middle of Brazil, Xingu Indigenous Park encompasses some of the most biodiverse rainforest in the country and is home to dozens of Indigenous communities and a multitude of wildlife. It also sits in the country’s infamous “Arc of Deforestation,” a vast swath of land heavily degraded by industrial agriculture that stretches […]
Big dream: NGO leads in creating 1,615-mile Amazon-Cerrado river greenbelt
by Jenny Gonzales on 17 February 2021
The Black Jaguar Foundation plans to reforest 1 million hectares (2.4 million acres) along Brazil’s Araguaia and Tocantins rivers in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes. The 2,600 kilometer (1,615 mile) long natural corridor will require the planting of around 1.7 billion trees. Tens-of-thousands have already been planted.
This natural corridor will be established on private lands, and it will have dual ecological and economic goals, resulting in both land conservation and sustainable agroforestry production. It would cross six Brazilian states (Goiás, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Tocantins, Pará and Maranhão).
Deep in the state of Mato Grosso, in the heart of Brazil’s vast Xingu National park, the inhabitants of the Indigenous village of Typa Typa can be heard day and night.
From their palm-thatched huts, perched on the southern banks of the Tuatuari river, some five kilometres (three miles) from the Leonardo Villas-Boas Post in the Upper Xingu, the Yawalapiti people of the circular village are mourning the death of their ancestral leader.
Chief Aritana Yawalapiti, 71, led his ethnic group for five decades and fiercely defended its traditions, lands and culture. For his family and Xingu supporters, he was a “living library” of the Yawalapiti people, one of the first tribes from the Arawak family lineage to have arrived in the region around 1100 AD.