REGUA

9/9/17

Imagine walking down a wooded path, darkly shaded by trees drenched in vines, bromeliads and moss. All around you, unfamiliar trills and whistles echo from unseen birds, hidden in shadows and behind curtains of foliage. A clear-winged butterfly sails by on panes of delicate stained glass. The air smells wet, maybe even a little musty. 

As you round a bend in the dim trail, you come upon what sounds like a 4^th of July block party hosted by miniature Star Wars LARPers, complete with firecrackers and light-saber battles. This exuberant chorus of snaps, pops, and wah-wah-wah-whirrs emanates from a gang of testosterone-driven White-bearded Manakins, billiard-sized birds who puff out their long snowy-feathered beards and snap their wings as they skip along the forest floor in a dance competition that has been going on for millennia.

Now imagine if 20 years ago, this wood was an open field grazed by zebu cattle, their heavy shoulder humps and long neck skin waddling as they trundled along well worn paths. This is not an imaginary place. And it did not happen without hard work and unpopular dedication.

Today, the Reserva Ecológica de Guapiaçu, or REGUA for short, snakes through bucolic farmland and scales the sheer faces of the intimidating, jungle-draped, ancient granite mountains called Serra dos Orgaos, that loom 40 miles northeast of Brazil's urban epicenter, Rio de Janeiro.  Covering over 10,000 hectares and still growing with the help of organizations such as Rainforest Trust and World Land Trust, this privately managed, community-centric reserve evolved from much humbler beginnings.

Nicholas Locke will greet you with a hearty laugh and smack on the back. Always dressed in preppy Englishman plaid button-downs, with a sweater draped over his shoulders and a small wool herders cap perched atop short salt-and-peppered hair, he skips from Portuguese to English without hesitation, seamlessly breaking his discussion with Brazilian researchers to welcome international visitors to his woodland empire. From there, the lovely Raquel Locke will take over with a warm smile and grace we haven't seen since classic Hollywood actresses. Hailing from Buenos Aires, Raquel adds Argentinian Castellano to her fluent repertoire, but her genuine enthusiasm shines through in all three languages (plus some French, seriously??). 

Over the last quarter-century, this power couple has transformed a humble agricultural dynasty into a conservation engine for an ecosystem that needs it more, perhaps, than any other on Earth. Stay tuned as I continue to learn about the power of tree planting, land acquisition, and unbridled passion to rebuild biodiversity from the ground up.