José Maria Cardoso Da Silva Inara R. Leal Marcelo Tabarelli Editors The
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José Maria Cardoso da Silva Inara R. Leal Marcelo Tabarelli Editors Caatinga The Largest Tropical Dry Forest Region in South America Caatinga José Maria Cardoso da Silva Inara R. Leal • Marcelo Tabarelli Editors Caatinga The Largest Tropical Dry Forest Region in South America Editors José Maria Cardoso da Silva Inara R. Leal Department of Geography Department of Botânica University of Miami Universidade Federal de Pernambuco Miami, FL, USA Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil Marcelo Tabarelli Department of Botânica Universidade Federal de Pernambuco Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil ISBN 978-3-319-68338-6 ISBN 978-3-319-68339-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68339-3 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017962101 © Springer International Publishing AG 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Printed on acid-free paper This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Foreword For decades, the fate of the two species of macaws endemic to the Caatinga has drawn my attention to this region, which is a unique semiarid region of Brazil that is surrounded by two of the world’s richest tropical rain forests, Amazonia and the Atlantic forest, and the world’s most diverse savanna region, the Cerrado. The first of these is the Spix’s macaw, a wonderful blue macaw that once lived in the gallery forests dominated by Caraibeira trees (Tabebuia aurea) in the valleys of the São Francisco River and its tributaries, but was exploited for the rare bird trade. It has been extinction in the wild since 2000, but fortunately more than 120 still exist in captivity, most of them in the Al Wabra facility in Qatar, a long way from Brazil. The second species is Lear’s macaw, a larger and equally spectacular bird that is a true flagship species for the Caatinga. It has been the subject of intense research and conservation efforts by my friends from Biodiversitas, one of the oldest and best biodiversity-focused non-profit organizations in Brazil which dates back to the late 1980s. The poor state of conservation of these two species two decades ago made me worry about the fate of the biodiversity of the Caatinga overall. To learn more of this region, I traveled there in 2000, accompanied by my two sons, John and Michael, and by the late Ilmar Bastos Santos, one of the founders of Biodiversitas. Indeed, my son John’s interest in the Spix’s macaw was a major reason for this visit, since he was already a hard-core ornithologist at that time, and is now finishing his doc- torate at Oxford. We were extremely fortunate in that we were able to see the last wild Spix’s macaw twice in one day, an individual that had been the only wild rep- resentative of his species for a decade and that lived in the company of a much small Illiger’s macaw. We were also able to see Lear’s macaws flying back to their roost- ing sites late in the afternoon in the Toca Velha Canyon. This trip made clear to us the enormous challenges that the low-income local population of this region faces during the long droughts that hit the Caatinga periodically. My conclusion from our time there was that any sound conservation strategy for the Caatinga should recon- cile biodiversity conservation with poverty alleviation, a path that I had already been exploring in Madagascar for decades in order to protect that country’s biodiversity. v vi Foreword Since then, I have followed and supported the efforts of my Brazilian colleagues to conserve the biodiversity of the region and helped to highlight the importance of the Caatinga for global conservation, including the addition of the Caatinga as one of the world’s wilderness regions in our 2004 book entitled Wilderness. What is more, I continue to have a strong interest in those two macaws, hoping to see the captive population of the Spix’s macaw reintroduced into the wild at some point in the near future. Given my deep interest in and concern about the Caatinga’s biodiversity and its people, I very much welcome and strongly recommend this volume organized by my friends José Silva, Inara Leal, and Marcelo Tabarelli. They have coordinated a superb collective effort by 61 scientists, most of them working in Brazil, to intro- duce the Caatinga to an international audience. The chapters cover all themes rele- vant to the region, including biodiversity, ecosystem services, threats, solutions, and prospects for a more sustainable future. I have even learned that the Caatinga is richer in species than I originally thought. I was amazed to find out, for instance, that 52.9% of the region’s fish species are found nowhere else. At the same time, I was sad to learn that at least 63.6% of the Caatinga has now been modified by human activities and that the region’s protected area system is still far from ade- quate to protect the incredible biodiversity that has been revealed by biologists in the last 20 years. I consider this book an excellent example of how scientists worldwide can mobi- lize their efforts to propose sound solutions for one of the biggest challenges of the modern times: how to protect the world’s natural ecosystems while improving human well-being. I am sure this book will inspire more research and conservation action in the region and perhaps encourage other groups of scientists to produce similar syntheses about their regions. In the end, I am a strong believer that the glob- ally enormously important issue of biodiversity conservation ultimately can only be successful if it fully engages and works with local communities. Conservation International Russell Mittermeier, PhD Arlington County VA USA IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group Gland, Switzerland Global Wildlife Conservation Arlington, VA, USA Preface vii viii Preface This is a book about the Caatinga, the New World’s largest and most diverse seasonally dry tropical forest (SDTF). Scientists outside Brazil know very little about the region, as no synthesis on it exists in English. In news magazines and liter- ary fiction in English, the Caatinga is usually depicted as a hostile semiarid environ- ment in which a few species of thorny trees serve as a background for an impoverished rural population, whose small-scale agriculture and livestock are ruined by the long and recurrent droughts that hit the region. However, the Caatinga that emerges in this book is very different. Occupying an area of 912,529 km2 in the hinterland of northeastern Brazil, the Caatinga is better described as a rich and complex socio-ecological system that still harbors a unique natural and cultural heritage of global importance. On a global scale, the Caatinga is part of the SDTFs, a global biome that was not recognized by the scientific community as distinct until a few years ago. In general, most SDTFs still remain poorly studied and protected compared with the adjacent tropical rain forests and savannas. However, they are home to almost 1 billion peo- ple worldwide and are among the ecological systems most vulnerable to climate change. The mismanagement of SDTFs can lead to biodiversity loss and a reduction in the flows of the ecosystem services that sustain millions of low-income people. Failure to address this challenge can exacerbate social conflicts and massive migra- tions. Therefore, SDTFs are socio-ecological hotspots that deserve very close atten- tion from three major international groups: the scientific, conservation, and development communities. The Caatinga is composed of at least 135 geo-environmental units and nine dis- tinctive ecoregions. This significant environmental variation sustains at least the following species numbers: 3150 plants, 276 ants, 386 fishes, 98 amphibians, 79 reptiles, 548 birds, and 183 mammals. Several of these species are found nowhere else. The proportion of endemic species ranges from 6% in mammals to an astonish- ing 52.9% in fishes. These numbers—very impressive for a semiarid region—are not definitive though. In all biological groups, new species continue to be discov- ered, and many places still remain to be sampled by scientists. Biogeographical studies have indicated a complex evolutionary history for the Caatinga’s biota in which periods of intense biotic exchanges with the adjacent ecological regions are followed by periods of biotic isolation and species production. As a consequence of these dynamics, endemic species have been accumulated over an extended period. Such species, based on DNA analyses, date from the Early Holocene to the Mid- Miocene.