In 2012, a meeting sent by the Chico Mendes Institute for the Conservation of Biodiversity (ICMBio) came to a sad conclusion: the tapir (A terrestrial tapir) which became extinct Caatinga.
According to the conclusions of experts, the most mammal earthly from South Americaconsidered the “gardener of the woods” (understand the reasons through the report)have stopped living on this typical Brazilian biome, which extends over about 10% of the national territory, in the North-Eastern States and in the northern part of the country. Minas Gerais.
The biologist Patrícia Médici was at that meeting and she helped to find out the issue. But she was left with a wound behind her ear.
“I felt that we had made a very important decision, by listing this animal as regionally extinct, based on very little information,” admits the expert, founder of the Brazilian Tapir Conservation Initiative of the Ecological Research Institute (Incab/Ipe).
This first discomfort turned into a desire: to travel throughout the Caatinga in search of historical reports and current evidence, to make sure that the tapir had disappeared there (or not).
11 years after the fateful meeting, the plans came true: in 2023, Médici gathered a team to make the trip through the Caatinga in search of the “lost tapir”. In 2024, the team repeated the dose.
“We made the first trip through the states of Minas Gerais, Bahia and Piauí with two main goals: to recover people’s memories of the presence of the tapir in the area in the past and to find out if the animal still existed – today. ”, details the biologist.
The 2023 mission covered 10,000 kilometers for 31 days and interviewed residents of local communities – especially elderly people, who may have collected memories of the tapir during its decades of life.
In 2024, the researchers covered 7,000 km and focused on two specific regions: the Environmental Protection Area of Rio Preto, in the west of Bahia, and the Serra das Confusões National Park, in the southeast of Piauí.
These places are considered to be ecotones, that is, they are on the edge between biomes and represent a transition between the Caatinga and the Cerrado.
With all the material collected on both trips, Médici can now say with confidence: the tapir has not disappeared from the Caatinga.
“These animals have not ceased to exist,” she notes.
“What happened is a reduction in the number of individuals of the species due to threats, such as hunting, lack of water, desertification of the Brazilian semi-arid region and loss of habitat for agriculture”, said the biologist.
The planters of the forest
As mentioned, tapirs are the largest land mammal in South America.
“They are herbivorous animals and they eat a lot of fruit, between 6 and 8 kilos per day,” explained Médici.
And it is this feature that makes tapirs known as the gardeners of the forest: by eating so many fruits, they spread seeds throughout the large area through which they travel.
As the seeds go through the whole digestive system, they come out together with the sack – which is a fertilizer for that seed to grow and change into a plant or tree.
“The forest where the tapir is present is completely more biodiverse and has a more complete structure compared to an area where this animal has disappeared”, compares the biologist .
Therefore, when experts concluded that the tapir had disappeared from the Caatinga in 2012, this was bad news not only for the species, but for the entire biome: after its -everything, the “jardineiras” who promise to distribute seeds would no longer exist. to fulfill this important role.
Over time, this would represent a loss of biodiversity, as new plants would not grow to replace those that were already older and were about to complete the cycles of nature.
Why did the tapirs disappear?
An important part of the visits made in 2023 and 2024 was to listen to the people who live in Caatinga.
“We are counting on the collaboration of experts in the social sciences to prepare the questionnaires and also to interpret the answers”, details Médici.
“We wanted to know if the tapir existed in the past – and, if people had this memory, what happened to the animal’s disappearance. “
The researchers also searched for historical records – and found representations of tapirs even in cave paintings made by the inhabitants of this region thousands of years ago.
“From this, we discovered the historical presence of this animal in interior parts of the Caatinga that were wetter in the past,” says the biologist.
credit, João Marcos Rosa / INCAB-IPÊ
During their travels, the researchers found signs of the current presence of the tapir in these places. They saw the animal’s footprints and feces, for example.
“In total, we found 38 places where the tapir was present in the past and we collected 53 places of this species recently”, points out Médici.
The team did not see a tapir in the flesh – this is because, despite their size, they are nocturnal and solitary animals, which makes it very difficult to meet humans.
“The evidence we collected is more than enough to conclude that the tapir is present in the Caatinga”, said the biologist.
The places with evidence of a tapir track are mainly located in ecotones, on the edges of the Caatinga which marks the border with the Cerrado areas.
The same cannot be said, however, about the ecotones between the Caatinga and Atlantic Forest regions, which are located near the coast.
“We found no signs of tapirs on the borders between the Caatinga and the Atlantic Forest on the coast of Bahia,” said Médici.
“We know that the situation of this animal in the Atlantic Forest is very endangered,” she laments.
In the future tapirs
The trips also tried to answer that explains the great reduction in the number of tapirs in the Caatinga.
“The decrease occurred due to threats, such as hunting, lack of water and loss of habitat due to agricultural work”, lists Médici.
For the biologist, this process that the tapir is going through in the Caatinga shows the dangers that the species faces in other biomes.
“With climate change, we have projections of an increase in temperature and a decrease in the availability of water. We are already seeing this in practice: the Pantanal is becoming increasingly dry and there is less water in the Amazon, even during great floods”, she explains.
“We know that these are some of the factors that have contributed to a significant reduction in the number of taps in the Caatinga.”
According to the expert, this information must be taken into account in order to plan actions and guarantee the survival of the “forest gardeners” in the future.
Médici’s team is considering a new expedition in 2024, but they are also working to provide the collected data to ICMBio – so that the tapir can be reclassified as a calling species Caatinga’s home.
2024-04-16 20:58:17
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