Tijuca the story of nature recovery in Rio s astonishing urban rainforest.

I'm here standing in this magnificent tropical forest in Brazil. This is not the Amazon rainforest, that's the most famous forest of Brazil, but its sister, the Atlantic forest. This magnificent rainforest that stretches along the entire coast of Brazil and is rich in biodiversity. And over history has been reduced to around 20% of its historical area. Although in the last few decades that curve has flattened and begun to reverse. What's perhaps most remarkable about this particular patch of magnificent forest is that we're in the boundaries of the city of Rio de Janeiro, an urban sprawl of 12 million people just a few miles away from here. And yet we have one of the greatest urban forests in the world. And the story of this urban forest is quite remarkable and goes back quite a long time. And has many lessons, I think, about how cities and nature can coexist and thrive together. So I'm here with one of the pioneers of ecological restoration in Brazil, Bernardo Strasberg. And Bernardo, the story of this Tejuca forest is quite fascinating and it goes back to the 19th century. So tell me, what happened in the 19th century? What was here before and what changed in the 19th century? What I find fascinating about it is, not far from where we're standing in part of this forest, there was actually a coffee plantation back in the 19th century. And then, out of early recognition of ecosystem services, due to soil erosion and water quality and water availability, Brazil's then emperor, Peter II, ordered the restoration of the Tejuca forest. So over 150 years ago, this patch of forest inside the city of Rio began to be restored. So this seems like it was one of the first recognitions of the ecological and ecosystem value, Indeed. And if you do the calculations, the amount of people, as you mentioned, 12 million people in the surroundings, there's a lot of people today benefiting from these ecosystem services. And the story continues through the 20th century, and this was made into a national park in 1961. But then, there seems to be a really interesting story emerging in the 80s and 90s about communities and how the restoration of this biome started to be led by communities. Can you tell me about that? Sure. It's a fascinating story because it's a very community-driven and community also, they need to decide. So a community needs to raise their hands and say, we'd like to see some of our surrounding forests restored. Then, the city of Rio provides the technical assistance, but the actual implementation is again done by citizens of the communities. And by communities, are we talking wealthy, middle-class neighborhoods? No, they are the poorest areas of the city, the ones that occupy the slope of Rio, and over 300 of them have reached out and had this restoration project called the Mutirão And the total amount of area is quite staggering. The national park we're standing right now has 3,000 hectares. A similar amount of area has been restored in the future of Rio in the last three decades by this community-led project. That's amazing. I've seen these pictures of Rio in the 1990s when I first came here and the slopes are bad, and now you see them coated with blankets of forest. It's quite amazing. So we've got the top-down initial restoration, we've got the communities, and the third component seems to be, I think, the animals. And it seems to me that some significant changes in how we think of a forest, not just as trees, as a community of trees and animals, happened in the last 10 to 20 years. What's happened there? Indeed. And in the national park we're standing right now, there is a process of reintroduction of animals. So the howler monkey has been reintroduced alongside others, and they obviously reconnect many of the short-lived levels. And the sea dispersal has already been measured, including sea dispersal by some of the larger rodents that have been introduced as well. And if the animals aren't here, what would have changed about the future pathways of this forest? What difference could the animals make? A huge difference, particularly in the sea dispersal, but also that the herbivores want to control some of the distinctions, and the increase in energy flows in the ecosystem. And we hope this is only the beginning of the story. We're excited to see what lies ahead in the next decades. So with the animals, you'd expect the forest to be able to mature to these later successional species that require animals to disperse their seeds and produce the more complex forest environments. So the animals essentially liberate the past. This is fascinating as an example. What are the general lessons for nature recovery in cities over the biome that come from this story? I think it's a story of hope. The before and after pictures, they inspire people. It's hard not to be proud, literally, of what you see happening in this recovery journey. But also, I think a key lesson was the involvement of the communities. Obviously, a lot of the deforestation that happened in this area were driven by people trying to find a place to live. But through the engagement with the communities, this process has largely stopped. And now we're back. So it's a really nice story of how people and nature can flourish in a city. And Rio has been seminal in the entire global environmental movement for the Rio Convention. But it also seems like it's a real pioneer in these flourishing nature interactions. Thank you.