Start of the conservation project

The time has come, the first ÖVVÖ conservation project is starting.

See also the ÖVVÖ conservation project and the March issue of the ATA. Here you can also read the complete article.

Threatened, the Atlantic Coastal Rainforest, the Mata Atlántica

The current concern of aquaristics to preserve the naturalness of species and their diversity should serve as the primary goal of every aquarist. Many habitats in the natural biotopes are highly endangered. Environmental disasters and extreme weather events along and near the coast of Brazil in the past 10 years are on the increase. Catastrophic weather events such as floods, heavy rainfall, storms and also extreme dry periods are scarring nature, leaving brown scars in the rainforest of the coastal mountains and affecting people.

Major disasters, such as the one on the coast of Espirito Santo, cause considerable damage to the environment. Around 500 kilometres north of Rio de Janeiro, a tailing dam dike broke in a mine on 5 November 2015. Millions of cubic metres of sludge polluted the approximately 800-kilometre-long Rio Doce. Around 62 million cubic metres of mine tailings poured into the valley, turning the Rio Doce (Sweet River) into a dead river. Mine tailings containing zinc, arsenic, mercury, lead and other toxic heavy metals! Brazil is thus threatened with one of the worst environmental disasters in the country's history. The population living there and the animals that live in and from the river are affected. This catastrophe will also cause irreparable damage to the Atlantic Ocean, into which this river flows.

What is the Mata Atlántica?

Rainforests are classified as tropical forests if they are located in the tropics (thus on the equator). However, rainforests are not only found in the tropics, but in different climate zones all over the world. But no matter where these forests are located, they are all threatened. And so are all the animals and plants of these species-rich forests. The largest and best known is the Amazon rainforest, which in 2010 covered 8 million square kilometres. An older rainforest is the Mata Atlántica. Cut off from other forests, a unique ecosystem has developed there. A variety of species found nowhere else on earth live in this coastal rainforest. In the state of Bahia alone, 450 tree species have been found on a single hectare! The Mata Atlántica is a rainforest of superlatives. It extends along the entire east coast of Brazil from Rio Grande do Norte to Rio Grande do Sul, but also into the interior of the states of Goias and Mato Grosso do Sul, and in the south it reaches as far as Argentina and Paraguay………..