Photo by @jasperdoest | In Gabon’s Lopé National Park, the doughnut-shaped fruit of the Omphalocarpum procerum grows on its branches and trunk, which is common for rainforest trees. Scientists believe it’s an adaptation to promote pollination by insects, such as ants, found in the trees.
Like most of the plant species found in Lopé, Omphalocarpum trees rely on animals to disperse their seeds. Only elephants have jaws strong enough to crack open the hard, thick shells, swallowing—and passing—the intact seeds and making them more likely to germinate. The trees rely on these elephants for survival as much as the elephants depend on the fruits. In parts of Africa where poaching has eliminated forest elephants, Omphalocarpum fruits rot on the ground, leaving their seeds wasted and the trees unable to reproduce.
No species of animal or plant can survive alone. They are all part of an ecosystem within which a complex web of interactions exists. If any strand of that web is broken, it will result in distortions that are difficult to predict and may be impossible to repair. Follow me @jasperdoest for more on the relationship between humankind and nature. #gabon#forest#fruit#lopenationalpark
Eight women & their chief drove out of the Indigenous Xavante village of Ripá across a forested savanna in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso one muggy morning last December. After a few miles, the road petered out. They walked on in single file through the knee-high grass.
Ripá and another two dozen Indigenous communities in Mato Grosso sell their harvest to Rede de Sementes do Xingu (RSX), a wholesaler that, since 2007, has sold or given away enough seeds to replant 74 square kilometers (about 29 square miles) of degraded land.
But deforestation in their territories has been on the rise for decades, with loggers, miners and cattle ranchers clearing vast swaths of the Cerrado.
Images produced by @dadogaldierihilaea with support from @PulitzerCenter.
Read the full report via the link in our bio.
#brazil#matogrosso#indigenouspeople#indigenouspeoples#indigenouscommunities#harvesting#seeds#cerrado#forest#replanting#conservation#biodiversity#environment#nativeseeds#conservationsolutions#traditionalknowledge#indigenous
Photo by @jasperdoest | Forest elephants spend most of their time within the lush undergrowth searching for fruit, which forms a large part of their diet. But because fruit availability can be strongly seasonal, there are times when the elephants may need to leave the forest interior to seek alternative foraging sites.
The grasslands in the middle of the equatorial forest in Lopé National Park are remnants of arid periods since the last ice age 12,000 years ago. Covering more than 1,900 square miles in central Gabon, the uncommon mosaic of savanna and tropical rainforest is rich in biological diversity. Named Gabon’s first wildlife reserve in 1946, it became a national park in 2002.
Follow me @jasperdoest for more on the relationship between humankind and nature. #gabon#forest#elephant#lopenationalpark
Deforestation-neutral mining? Madagascar study shows it can be done, but it’s complicated.
The Ambatovy mine in Madagascar achieved no net forest loss by curbing deforestation in its biodiversity offsets, an analysis in the journal Nature Sustainability concluded. Project developers create biodiversity offsets, sites where they undertake conservation work, to make up for environmental destruction caused by their extractive operations. Ambatovy, which operates an open-pit nickel mine in Madagascar, carved out four biodiversity offsets to make up for biodiversity loss in its mining site, located in the species-rich eastern rainforest of the island nation. By slowing deforestation in these four offsets, the mine made up for forest loss in its mining concession; however, there isn’t enough data to ascertain how the measures impacted biodiversity, and previous research indicates that the mine’s offsets reduced impoverished communities’ access to forest resources.
Read about it via the link in our bio.
#madagascar#mining#deforestation#forest#forests#biodiversity#conservation#environment#localcommunity#localcommunities#environmentalconservation
Photos by @sofia_jaramillo5 | Last summer I spent 10 days in Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks with ecologist Monica Turner, her team, and National Geographic writer Craig Welch (@craigwelch), working on a story about how lodgepole pine forests respond to fire. We walked through some woods that were so charred it looked as if they would never recover and others where hundreds of young trees flourished below canopies of burned pines.
Photos: (1) Ecologist Monica Turner counts lodgepole pine seedlings sprouting among pines that burned in 2016 in Grand Teton National Park. Fire opens seed cones, allowing lodgepoles to regenerate—but if another fire comes before trees mature, the trees may not grow back; (2) when lodgepole pines are burned their serotinous cones open up and drop to the ground to seed the forest. But it takes lodgepole pines decades to develop these cones. This in-camera double exposure shows an area where part of the forest, in the foreground, burned before it had enough time to grow serotinous cones. Tall Lodgepole pines that had enough time to grow them still stand after being burned. The Glade fire first burned this area in 2000 and then the Berry fire burned it again, in 2016; (3) a crescent moon rises above burned lodgepole pines in Grand Teton National Park.
To see more photos of the mountain west, follow @sofia_jaramillo5 and check out the May edition of National Geographic magazine. #forestfire#forest#fire#forestphotography