COLÍDER, Brazil — Not too long ago, the plot of land that Maria Ivonete de Souza inherited was barren, the soil hardened by years of cattle ranching. When the family had arrived to the Amazon from southern Brazil four decades earlier, her father had swiftly cleared the dense rainforest to make way for pasture. “He razed it all by hand, with a saw and an ax,” Souza said on the porch of her wooden farmhouse on the dusty outskirts of Colíder, some 393 miles (632 kilometers) north of Mato Grosso’s state capital. “It’s horrible to be talking about this. Because I’m recalling things that bother me deeply today.” Cattle ranching is a key economic driver in Mato Grosso, Brazil’s agricultural heartland. In Peixoto de Azevedo, forest has given way to pasture and soy fields at a breakneck pace, putting pressure on Indigenous territories like Capoto/Jarina. Ana Ionova for Mongabay. Now, decades later, Souza is fighting to turn back the clock on destruction in this region. In a bid to reforest, she has planted seeds from species that are native to the rainforest but have begun to vanish from here, as soy and corn production expand at a frenzied pace. “If people knew how difficult it is to plant trees, they would never even dream of cutting them down,” said Souza, who leads the community organization Coletivo Agúa Vida. “Here, we want to do things differently. We want to restore the forest to health.” A key part of this dream is…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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