The Golden Lion Tamarin - Leontopicuthus rosalia is one of the Atlantic Forest's many unique and highly endangered inhabitants -Thank you to Guppiecat for this photo The Atlantic Forest I must confess I hadn't even heard of the Atlantic Forest before I started writing about rainforests. This could be because it had almost ceased to exist. After decades of logging, land clearing for agriculture and urban expansion, there was only around 12% of it left, with the remainder being highly fragmented. This is a shame because after the Amazon it is the world's second richest biodiversity hotspot. It runs along the east coast of South America from Brazil to Paraguay and Argentina and covers approximately 15 different eco -regions including tropical rainforests. Having evolved separately and earlier than the Amazon, it contains thousands of unique species - one in fourteen plants and one in twenty of our known animals, including the golden lion tamarin and the brown throate...
Practising Geographer - nature culture places people