Social and Cultural Projects
Ecolog creates new areas for conservation in the Amazon
New nature reserves will be created in Rondonia, inside Ecolog’s area of forest management. The idea is to protect areas that are fundamental for biodiversity conservation and part of the portion of land that is not explored in a sustainable way to harvest native wood. Beside the creation of areas that will remain intact, the objective of the research is to investigate in-depth the impact of timber extraction that follows guidelines of sustainable forest management, for the dynamics of forest regeneration. It will also focus on the mapping of rare and endangered wildlife, such as jaguars and royal hawks. “Our area works as a refuge for wildlife species that are threatened by the agricultural frontier,” says Fabio de Albuquerque, Ecolog’s owner. “Now we want scientific guarantees that they will be protected.”
A partnership for the creation of 50 permanent conservation plots was signed by Ecolog and the Forest Science Department of Luiz de Queiroz Superior Agriculture School of the University of São Paulo (USP). The project initiated under the coordination of forest engineer Jose Edson Vidal. “These areas will be protected even with the forest management forest implementation,” says Albuquerque.
Ecolog intends to become a pole for the expansion of forest management in the region and give support to the creation of a new conservation unit corridor. The discussion about these new protected areas happened during public debates in 2006. The project of the federal Government is to create a buffer zone to protect the forest against the impact of the improvement of BR-319 federal highway. The focus of the new 5 million hectares corridor will be the creation of protected areas for sustainable use, such as national forests and extractive reserves. Ecolog can act as a sustainable forest management pole.
