Academic literature on the topic 'Atlantic forest - Sao Paulo'

Eight friends were seated around the dining room table, two bulging photo albums at the ready, about to start a round of that curious adult version of Show and Tell known as Our Summer Vacation. Donna and Stanley had begun their album with pictures of Stanley delivering a lecture to clinical psychologists at the Catholic University of Campinas, in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. This was followed by page after page of lush, colorful South American scenery: snapshots of the mighty Iguazú Falls taken from the river below; towering walls of green vegetation along the Rio Paraná; a thick growth of native trees overtaking the exotic plantings left behind by the celebrated botanist Moises Bertoni at the remains of his agricultural experiment station in the Paraguayan province of Alto Paraná. Then there were pictures of Stan-ley and Donna with their Brazilian hosts, flanked by stately palms; pictures at their friends’ beautiful beach house in Ubatuba; pictures of costumed samba dancers; and more pictures of scarlet and blue macaws, gaudy toucans, purple bougainvilleas, brilliant butterflies, and the rich magnificence of one of the last remaining patches of Brazil’s Atlantic coastal forest. The album provided a breathtaking display of natural and human exuberance painted in a profusion of vivid reds, blues, yellows, and, above all, greens. I could almost smell the myriad fragrances borne on the tropical breeze and hear one of my favorite sounds, the chattering of parrots far above in the treetops. As the pages turned, the phrase “hot spots” came into my mind, that graphic term for those patches of exceptionally high biodiversity—many of them in the tropics—that receive the lion’s share of attention from conservation biologists and others dedicated to the preservation of endangered species. I thought of the conservation argument that says if we want to preserve life, look first at the places where, acre for acre, the most kinds of life exist—where an acre can yield a hundred species of trees instead of a handful, and more species of insects than most of us can imagine.