Our Brazilian partner REGUA (the Guapi Assu Ecological Reserve) has successfully purchased a spectacular 1,700-acre property adjacent to the recently acquired Matumbo Gap properties. This now brings the area of Atlantic Rainforest owned and managed by the reserve to a grand total of 18,000 acres, which protects one of the last stands of tropical rainforest left in the severely deforested Atlantic Rainforest.

REGUA is home to at least 420 species of birds of which 120 are endemic to the coastal Atlantic Rainforest biome–as well as mammals such as Woolly Spider Monkey and Puma. It is part of a region that has long faced agricultural and hunting pressures and just an hour by road from the mega metropolis of Rio de Janerio–home to the 2016 Olympics.

This new area, acquired with the support of Rainforest Trust and our UK partner Rainforest Trust, fits within REGUA’s long-term strategy to create a corridor between their existing reserve to join with the International Primatology Center, located to the west of REGUA.

The reserve is actively developing a reforestation program for cleared land and also has plans to reintroduce certain key species that have vanished from the area– including include the Critically Endangered Red-billed Curassow–whose global population in the wild is thought to be under 650 individuals.