Degradation of the Rio Doce Valley

Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado and Sebastião Salgado have worked together for many years documenting the humanity revealed in the face of hardship through photographs. In their home town of Aimorés, they have witnessed the same forces of destruction and displacement that they have so powerfully chronicled around the world.

The Salgados’ parents farm, a 1,505 acre property known as “Bulcao Farm”, was used for cattle grazing for the last century. Located near the town of Aimorés, in the state of Minas Gerais, the farm is a part of an area twice the size of Texas, which was originally covered with exuberant forests contributing to the Atlantic Forest biome. However, the colonization process provoked timber exploitation and widespread deforestation.

Agricultural activities, such as coffee growing and cattle breeding were developed without any heed to the preservation of natural resources. Within the last half-century, this rapid degradation has resulted in 93 percent of the Atlantic Forest being completely destroyed.  The degradation since the 1950’s was repeated throughout the forest and, dramatically so, in the Rio Doce Valley. The forest was cut down to make way for cereals and cattle. Since the land could no longer absorb the heavy tropical rains, erosion weakened its fertility.

The lack of water and the environmental decimation of the Rio Doce Valley forced approximately forty percent of the valley’s population of 3.8 million to migrate out since 1960. By the 1980s, the Lower River Doce had silted up, while two streams crossing the farm dried up. The Rio Doce Valley had become a veritable ecological disaster zone.

The property is now dedicated to Instituto Terra and over half of the land has been restored back to its original Atlantic Forest composition.

Bulcao Farm Becomes Instituto Terra

Restoring the environment and strengthening the community of the Rio Doce Valley became a personal issue for the Salgados. They refused to be mere spectators amidst the rapid degradation happening to the land and its communities in the region. The Salgados could no longer turn away and accept the situation as an inevitable consequence of development.  They transformed their farm into a permanent reserve and founded the Instituto Terra in 1998.

Instituto Terra is a registered private nonprofit organization and the organization’s property enjoys the status of a Private Reserve of Natural Heritage under Brazilian law. The aim of the Institute is to create long-term social change through raising ecological awareness, restoring and preserving degraded Brazilian rain forest, promoting education and hands-on learning, and mobilizing the surrounding communities.

Instituto Terra seeks to reforest and restore the farm and a surrounding 520 square miles of degraded forest areas. The mission is to use the farm as a “laboratory” to restore and protect the Atlantic Forest (Mata Atlântica) and its ecosystem, and create an environmental recovery management model for the entire Doce River Valley which is about the size of Portugal. The Salgados’ vision is to return the land to its once rich diversity in a sustainable manner and to establish the Institute as a leading center for environmental education and sustainable development.