Hiking enthusiasts take note — Brazil is planning an almost 5,000-mile foot trail through its Atlantic-coast forest.
The trail will find its way from Brazil’s southern border with Uruguay clear to French Guiana in the north.
The idea behind this project is to raise public awareness — among Brazilians and foreign tourists alike — of the second most diverse ecosystem on Earth (after the Amazon rainforest).
The Mata Atlantica is one of the planet’s most endangered forests, having lost 90 percent of its pre-colonial terrain, and it is still suffering an onslaught of threats from human development.
Proponents hope that the trail will get more Brazilians out into the wild, and spur more support for forest protection amid the anti-environmentalist administration of the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro.
Source: Phys.org