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Restingas: Privileged view of the north fluminense regionThe first contact I had with a Restinga was near the beaches of Barra and
Grumari, which I visited since my childhood in the city of Rio de Janeiro. I admit that
even as a Forest Engineer, I always saw Restingas as ecosystems of repetitive and low
species diversity; however, fate would lead me to a long trail through the Restingas of
NPPR Rio de Janeiro region.
The first time I came to “Açu’s Restinga” was 2011. I was invited by a friend
who was working at the beginning of the Açu Port implantation studies, and who was
also responsible for a Restinga recovery project in the region. Despite my experience
of reforestation projects, I had never worked with this ecosystem, but I was always
exchanging ideas on this project and I accepted the invitation to visit the place. When
I first arrived at Caruara NPPR, which was not a protected area, I realized there was
something special over there. What really caught my attention was the unique beauty of
the lakes of Iquipari and Grussaí, which give sinuous and attractive curves to an area that
very few persons have the opportunity to glimpse.
The Caruara NPPR would become, in July 2012, the largest private Restinga
conservation area in Brazil. The casualness of life had created the opportunity for me
to participate in the birth of this conservation area, as well as the construction of a
Conservation and Preservation Program, where recovery and management techniques of
Restinga ecosystems are being developed. One of the premises of this major project was
the prioritization of absorbing the local labor force, which led us to conduct ethnobotanical
work where all empirical knowledge about the Restinga species was and is being
transformed into scientific knowledge. This labour force, formed by inhabitants of Mato
Escuro, Água Preta, and Açu in São João da Barra/RJ, brought historical knowledge from
the Northern region of the state, which was essential for carrying out this work.
Actually my ultimate job was to lapidate all raw and regional knowledge
about Restingas into true diamonds and make them available to everybody. We must
translate the importance of this ecosystem to everyone so they may know the necessity
of preserving this ecosystem, and that it may, culturally, rescue the relationship man/
Restinga. I believe that respecting the past practices is the best way to invest in the
region’s future development.
The Caruara NPPR, when acquired at the end of 2006, had only one-third of the
anthropic areas for agropastoral activities. However, two-thirds of the propriety remained
intact with places that man had never visited. Despite I have been working here for four
years, there are still unknown areas to me due to its large size, 4,235 hectares. In 2014,
the Brazilian Forest Service, an agency of the Ministry of Environment, conducted a newNational Forest Inventory and randomly
identified three points for Restinga
ecosystem sampling in Caruara NPPR. The
inventory coordinator commented that they
planned to accomplish the floristic surveys
in just three days, but they took more than
a week, showing evidence of the integrity of
resting fragments in the study.
The restoration work carried out
in the Caruara NPPR started over four
years ago and aimed to develop a recovery
technique that simulates the natural way
Restinga vegetation is distributed. Strategic
species were used and planted in hexagonal
rings, simulating the resting bushes.
Each ring contained 31 individual
plants from different successional groups,
where species that grow faster guarantee
favorable microclimate for the establishment
of species that grow more slowly. Over time,
this methodology has been improved, and
has been tested with numerous variations
between species within the rings. Today,
we count on the collaboration of several
universities that develop researches
in Caruara NPPR (UENF, UERJ, JBRJ,
ISECENSA, UFRJ, UFF).
These studies helped us model
the recovery techniques and produced
very positive results. We now have planting
areas with survival rates higher than 75%,
even during the dry season, which is very
good and closely aligns with results from
other recovery projects within different
ecosystems in the state of Rio de Janeiro.
The seedlings used in the recovery
work were produced at the Institutional