- Working together, the Reconecta Project and the Waimiri-Atroari Indigenous people build bridges that connect the forest canopy over the BR-174 road, which crosses the states of Amazonas and Roraima.
- Brazil has the world’s fourth-largest road network, while 40% of its primate species are threatened with extinction; being run over on roads such as BR-174 is a leading cause of death.
- The project was created by biologist Fernanda Abra, who recently won a Whitley Award, which is considered the “Oscar of nature conservation.”
“Weri, stop right here! We need a bridge here. See that fruit on that tree? mekys love it. When they see that fruit, they often cross the road. … Weri, stop right here again! Lots of kixiris are being run over. We need a bridge here.”
In the language of the Waimiri-Atroari Indigenous people, weri means woman. Meky is the robust capuchin monkey (Cebinae) and kixiri is the golden-handed tamarin (Saguinus midas).
That conversation, which mixed Kinja Iara terms with Portuguese words, took place in late 2021. Biologist Fernanda Abra was driving along the BR-174 road, which cuts through the Amazon Rainforest between the states of Amazonas and Roraima. Next to her, three Indigenous leaders indicated the best points for artificial bridges that would connect the tree canopy and allow arboreal mammals to cross the road without being hit by vehicles.
“It was one of the best days of my life. A wealth of knowledge and a wonderful learning experience,” Abra recalls. “Traditional communities know exactly what is needed to protect forests.”
Finding the best spots to install bridges was one of the most important actions of the Reconecta Project. The initiative, created by Abra, focuses on studying the best wildlife crossing models for these small to large animals that spend most of their lives on treetops, isolated in habitats fragmented by roads.
Brazil is facing a serious environmental dilemma. The country has the world’s fourth-largest road network while 40% of its primate species are threatened with extinction. Some of them are endemic; that is, they only exist here and nowhere else on the planet. An estimated 9 million mammals are killed by vehicles each year on Brazilian roads.
Abra has accumulated decades of work in this area. She specializes in wildlife management, particularly on roads and railways. She is a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute in the United States and an associate researcher at the Ecological Research Institute (IPÊ) in Brazil. When she received the 2019 international Future for Nature Award, she decided to create a simple, low-cost solution to reduce roadkills.
“I swore to myself that I wouldn’t just study the impacts caused by roads and traffic anymore; rather, I wanted to save as many animals as I could by implementing mitigation measures,” she says.
Until then, she had worked mostly on projects to prevent terrestrial species from being hit by vehicles; now the challenge was to focus on arboreal animals, since Brazil has the greatest global diversity of primates that move through trees.
The crucial partnership with the Waimiri-Atroari
When she started planning for Reconecta, Abra had three areas in mind for installing canopy bridges on highways that needed large forest fragments on both sides. The search was difficult since, to her surprise, it was almost impossible to find roads with fragments still intact — even in the Amazon.
After selecting three roads, her team found a 125-kilometer (78-mile) stretch of BR-174, which cuts through part of the 2.3 million hectares (5.7 million acres) of land inhabited by the Waimiri-Atroari Indigenous people. It is considered one of the best preserved areas in the biome, specially due to the exemplary governance of their territory (the Waimiri-Atroari suffered a historic genocide during the military dictatorship, when Brazil was expanding to the north, and 2,650 of them were killed).
Despite her extensive experience in building wildlife crossings, Abra had never worked in the Amazon, but she soon discovered why BR-174 would be the perfect road for the project.
“Almost 30 years ago, the Waimiri-Atroari wanted to establish artificial canopy bridges on this road,” she says. “And their efforts are so great and powerful that, thanks to the pruning on the BR-174 made with the National Department of Transport Infrastructure (DNIT) and the Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM), there are almost 30 natural forest connection bridges above the road.”
In 2022, after the locations were defined and the artificial bridges were made with the help of the Indigenous people, Reconecta installed 30 of them. They were around 7 meters (23 feet) high — in fact, there were 15 pairs, each a different model so the project’s team could learn which one the monkeys would prefer.
All bridges have two camera traps, one facing the crossing to record which animals are using it and another one toward the forest to observe which animals arrive there but decide not to use it.
“This way, we can understand acceptance and rejection rates for our canopy bridges,” Abra explains.
With the images provided by the cameras, it is now possible to celebrate good results. In the first 10 months of monitoring, eight different species were documented — not only monkeys such as the golden-handed tamarin and the common squirrel monkey (Saimiri sciureus), but also kinkajous (Potos flavus), mouse opossums (Marmosops sp.), and opossums (Didelphis sp.).
The videos also helped to show that local arboreal mammals prefer the bridge model that has just a single, thick rope weaved over a steel cable.
For the Waimiri-Atroari, protecting forest animals is essential to their way of life. Especially the golden-handed tamarin, or kixiri.
“Our story says that Mauá [the God of the Waimiri-Atroari people] made the kixiri. That’s why we don’t like to see them dying on the road. Because Mauá left kixiris to be free, to live and teach. They’ve got to be alive,” says Indigenous leader Sawa Aldo Waimiri.
International recognition with the Whitley Awards
Reconecta is a multidisciplinary project. In addition to Indigenous wisdom and biological science, other types of knowledge were needed to implement the bridges, Abra says. “We had to learn a lot about civil engineering, materials engineering, architecture and road regulations to finally create a solution that was suitable for that environment, complying with all legislation and, most importantly, replicable.”
In early May, the success of the Amazon project gained major international recognition. Abra was among the six winners of the 2024 edition of the Whitley Awards, which has been granted for the last 30 years by the British organization Whitley Fund for Nature (WFN) and is considered the “Oscar of nature conservation.”
She makes a point of saying that Reconecta is a set of joint efforts that include partnerships with several agencies and institutions such as DNIT, Brazil’s environmental agency, IBAMA, IPÊ, UFAM and the Smithsonian Institution. However, the Waimiri-Atroari are at the heart of the project. So much so that Abra will leave her trophy with the community in the Amazon.
“We have to continue this project; without the bridges, many animals die. It didn’t used to be like that; there were a lot of animals,” says Waimiri-Atroari leader Mario Paruwe. “But with the bridges, we see spider monkeys and robust capuchin monkeys crossing from one side of the forest to the other.”
In the coming months, Reconecta will be tested in other states and even abroad, in Suriname. In Brazil, sections of the BR-262 road in Mato Grosso do Sul will have wildlife crossings. In Alta Floresta in the state of Mato Grosso, five artificial bridges will also be placed on streets and avenues.
The municipality was not chosen at random. Eight species of primates live in its forests, five of which are threatened with extinction, and collisions with vehicles are one of the main threats. One of these species is the Alta Floresta titi monkey (Plecturocebus grovesi), described only five years ago, in 2019.
DNIT plans to install almost 100 canopy bridges on BR-319, the road that connects Porto Velho in Rondônia to Manaus in Amazonas.
“Forty percent of Brazilian primates are threatened! So, mitigating the impact of roads on this group is like closing the drain on the extinction of these animals,” Abra says. “A transport infrastructure that is more sustainable for wildlife is a great ally in combating the biodiversity crisis and species loss.”
Banner image: Golden-handed tamarin (Saguinus midas). Photo courtesy of Matthias Appel (CC0 1.0).
This story was reported by Mongabay’s Brazil team and first published here on our Brazil site on June 18, 2024.
Indigenous people and NGO grow a wildlife corridor in the world’s oldest rainforest