Brazil Indigenous Group Fights To Save Endangered Evergreen

Jos� Boiteux, Brazil, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 29th Mar, 2023 ) :Dancing around a campfire in bright feather headdresses, a group of Indigenous eco-warriors prepares the painstaking process of planting the Brazilian pine tree, fighting to save the critically endangered species -- and their way of life.

The Xokleng Indigenous group, who live on a threatened reservation in south Brazil, depend on the Araucaria angustifolia tree for food, use its medicinal properties to treat illness and consider it a central element of their spirituality.

But the majestic evergreen, also known as the candelabra tree, is dangerously close to extinction: just three percent of the forests where it was once found survive today, according to the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa).

"Without the araucaria, the Xokleng do not exist," says Carl Gakran, a 32-year-old resident of the Ibirama-Laklano reservation.

He is helping lead the effort to save the Brazilian pine by planting tens of thousands of seedlings.

If the tree goes extinct, "our people and our culture are at risk of extinction, too," he says, wearing a traditional headdress of red and blue feathers.

Standing up to 40 meters (130 feet) tall, with sweeping branches that fan out from the top, the tree lives to be about 400 years old on average.

Its seeds, which resemble large pine nuts, are a staple food for the 2,200 Xokleng.

But it is also prized by loggers for its quality wood -- helping drive it toward extinction, along with the clear-cutting of forests for farmland.

Alarmed by its decline, Gakran and his wife, Gape, founded an organization to save it: the Zag Institute, after the Xokleng word for the tree.

"This is our mother, our sacred tree," says Gape, 36, wearing a headdress similar to her husband's and nursing her baby daughter.

They estimate they have planted more than 50,000 seedlings so far.

It is a delicate, time-consuming and highly ritualized process.

The seeds take around a year to germinate. Once planted, a young tree takes 12 to 15 years to produce seeds of its own.

Before planting them, the Xokleng perform a ritual, singing and dancing around a campfire to call for the seedlings' protection.

Like many Indigenous peoples in Brazil, the Xokleng have suffered decades of persecution and the encroachment of farmers and loggers on their land.