Frontier town becomes ecotourism pioneer

The town of Alta Floresta, in Brazil’s state of Mato Grosso, would like to be the ecotourism capital of the southern Amazon. This is quite remarkable considering that just a few short years ago, this frontier community epitomized the forest’s destruction.

So new it still doesn’t appear on many maps, Alta Floresta was settled in the 1980s by gold miners, called garimpeiros. These were wild and dangerous times, when the local airstrip was busy with planes bringing in miners, supplies, prostitutes, and drugs. As the forest fell to chain saws, the rivers were poisoned with silt and mercury from the miners’ operations.

Something of Alta Floresta’s pioneer past remains today. Several neighborhoods are made up of 90 percent former garimpeiros. Though the nearby forests have long been replaced with cattle ranches, local sawmills still keep busy with logs trucked in from elsewhere. Smoke rises from the charcoal burners on the town’s outskirts.

But for the rest, Alta Floresta could be any prosperous Brazilian town, the very epitome of the country’s motto “ordem e progresso.” Visitors admire its broad avenues lined with neatly planted trees, their bases painted white, the busy streets, shops, theaters, and even a music conservatory. At a rodeo marking the town’s 25^th anniversary, leathery cowboys shared the stands with teenage girls wearing designer jeans and holding cell phones.

Now Alta Floresta is carving out a leadership niche for itself in the new field of ecotourism. As anchor of an “ecotourism pole” for the IDB-financed Proecotur program, Alta Floresta will be hosting increasing numbers of tourists wearing comfortable shoes and toting binoculars and field guides.

Alta Floresta has a head start. One of the members of the local Proecotur steering committee is a leading citizen who manages an ecolodge, has created an environmental foundation, and is planning to bring scientists to a new Amazonian research center (see A businesswoman with a mission).

For its part, Alta Floresta is set to capitalize on an enlightened town plan that includes parks containing remnants of the original natural forest. The town has set aside a parcel of land for an ecotourism visitor’s center, and will turn an undeveloped park into a nature sanctuary with an interpretative center and a network of trails. In a municipal building, a temporary exhibit shows paintings by school children on the effects of forest fires (see Environmental art...).

It’s a place where an ecotourist can feel at home.