Entering the Paru rainforest reserve, one of the most inaccessible and best preserved regions of the Amazon, is something truly special even for a seasoned veteran of the Brazilian jungles: “When I got there, my eyes shone like a child’s when they saw a sweet. I know other ecosystems, but this one is practically intact,” recalls forestry engineer Lucyana Santos in a video interview. Santos participated in a two-week scientific expedition last May that aimed to reach the tallest tree in the Amazon, a red angelin (Dinizia excelsa) measuring 88.5 meters (twice the height of Rio de Janeiro’s Cristo Redentor, a 30-story tower) discovered five years ago in the west of the state of Pará.
“We were unable to reach it because a waterfall prevented us from doing so,” says this engineer who works at Ideflor (the Institute for Forest and Biodiversity Development of the State of Pará). These are the inconveniences of doing research in the largest tropical forest on the planet, which means, in addition to enormous physical effort, being at the mercy of a thousand unforeseen events. They waited three days for the water to recede in order to cross the waterfall, but it was no use.
Although they never reached their original destination (a previous expedition managed to reach the 88.5-meter red angelin), along the way they discovered a new sanctuary of giant trees, where she and a handful of other scientists from the expedition collected samples in six plots converted into jungle laboratories, each one measuring 2,500 square meters. There, she says, they took soil samples, made an inventory of the flora and fauna, including fish from the Jaru River and its tributaries. They sighted birds and tracks of large mammals such as jaguars, without ever crossing paths with any. All with the purpose of expanding research with a view to increasing the legal protection of the reserve to ensure that it is preserved in the best conditions. Inspecting the crown of the giants has been left for another occasion.
The Paru reserve, which covers an area of 36,000 square kilometres (slightly less than Denmark), is located 800 kilometres west of the city of Belém, which is preparing to fulfil a long-held dream of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva: bringing the cream of the crop of climate change researchers to the Amazon. Next year, Belém will host COP30, the UN climate summit.
Engineer Santos explains that during the recent expedition they discovered that the giant trees are more numerous and more dispersed than they thought. It is still unknown what are the factors that make this corner of Pará give birth to specimens that are twice the height of the forest, the tallest in the Amazon. “We don’t know why and why here. Whether it is because there is a microclimate with specific conditions of temperature and wind, or whether it is because of the soil, or the proximity to water…” Their age is also a mystery: “We believe they are between 400 and 600 years old, but that is also an assumption.”
In this area, 38 giant trees have already been identified, including two that are over 80 metres tall. What is known is that these specimens play an essential role in maintaining biodiversity and ecological balance, as well as contributing to climate regulation thanks to their extraordinary capacity to store carbon (measured by laser scanning from the International Space Station). But they are also the historical memory of the forest, a door open to the past.
In exchange for reaching a place where few humans have ever set foot, these scientists must be prepared to live and work in arduous conditions. “The hardest part is the day-to-day work, the effort of collecting information and samples on a long journey, with high temperatures and high humidity,” explains Santos. First they took a plane, then a car, then a boat… and began the climb up the Jaru River towards the reserve of the giant trees.
They were accompanied by local guides who know how to navigate those rivers and the jungle. And by two press advisers. And, of course, they were loaded with scientific material, water, food, medicines, GPS, binoculars, ice, chlorine to make the water drinkable when the bottled water runs out. And they had to be prepared for long marches, under the sun and the rain, through very dense vegetation that is not flat. The climate changes a lot and suddenly. “Put on your raincoat, take it off, put it back on…”, he says. They set up camps to sleep, always in a hammock and protected by mosquito nets. In places like this even the toads are deceptive, they are beautiful, but poisonous. He remembers that one of his colleagues, Deisy, placed a mosquito trap, she wanted to know what they eat.
Santos recalls with emotion the moment of discovering a 73-metre tree with a three-metre-diameter trunk and another 63-metre-high tree surrounded by other very tall specimens. It is clear that without these exuberant trees, the ecological balance would be completely altered. The forestry engineer lists the potential damage: the river would advance, the temperature would change. If it no longer offered shade, the soil would be unprotected, large quantities of carbon would not be stored, the ecological niches it houses would be affected…
Protecting the giant Paru trees is a priority for the Pará authorities, who organized the expedition together with the Sustainable Amazon Foundation, the Andes Amazonia Fund (FAA) and the Federal Institute of the neighboring state of Amapá (IFAP).
They want the reserve to be given greater protection by law, so that not even the locals who currently exploit it sustainably, extracting chestnuts or other fruits, do so, but that the entry of all human beings is absolutely prohibited except for scientific expeditions. The purpose of this expedition was to gather information on the flora and fauna of the giant tree sanctuaries in order to, with this in hand, build the arguments to defend this legal change in the public hearings that will be convened to inform the residents of the municipality where the reserve is located, Monte Dourado, of the reasons for protecting the place even more zealously.
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