Wildlife friendly smelter park

THE Alumar Environmental Park on Sao Luis Island in Maranho, Brazil, is home to a wide variety of wildlife, including alligators, birds, monkeys, racoons and wildcats, which roam the large, forested area. What seems to be unique about this ecological park is that it’s all part of Alumar’s “smelter in the park” model which includes the corporation’s smelter plant, port and refinery.

If granted a Certificate of Environmental Clearance by the Environmental Management Authority, this is the type of industrial model that Alumar’s parent company, Alcoa, would like to establish in Trinidad and Tobago.

According to Alumar’s Brazilian biologist, Maria Cristina Friere, the smelter in the park model encompasses 5,600 hectares.

There are also 1,000 hectares of mangrove in the Alumar Environmental Park.

Friere and Alcoa officials Wade Hughes and Kelly O’Toole, along with the Trinidad and Tobago representatives and Brazilian translators travelled along the Cachorros (Dog) River, a large tributary of the vast and mighty Amazon River, on two boats last week. It was early morning low tide when the visiting group left the bustling Alumar Port to see what the smelter in the park looked like.

“We have three kinds of monkeys in the park and the slow moving mammal called the sloth,” she said through translator Silvio Gerude Ferreira. “Another mammalian species that we have in the park is the Cutia which runs along the forest floor and deer, but there aren’t any wild pigs or otters in the park,” she said. Friere said that what Brazilians call wildcats are a smaller feline species to the jaguar.

“Wildcats can attack and hurt a man but they can’t necessarily kill a man like jaguars can,” revealed Friere.

Friere said mangroves were destroyed in the building of the Alumar port, but it was done with a Brazilian Federal Environmental Agency permit.

“A very small area was destroyed compared to the rest of the park that remains untouched,” she stated.

She continued, “As a matter of fact, the mangroves are expanding, not shrinking.”

According to Friere, hunting is not allowed in the park and there are unarmed, mounted Alumar security guards on patrol to protect the wildlife.

Friere said while the threat of poaching in the park was a reality, she stressed that anyone caught within the park’s boundaries is taken to the nearest police station by the Alumar security guards.

“The Alumar security guards,” she added, “have the right to protect the park because they regard it as being their own property. While the park patrol guards are unarmed, the ones in the administrative section are armed as well as those in other areas.”

The Alumar security guards must use horses to patrol the huge park.

“The guards live in the park in small houses with their families, and this is important because everyone knows them and they are respected by the people,” said Friere.

However, she said, a major environmental problem in the park is the illegal removal of trees by persons for firewood and house building.

“Sewage going into the mangrove forests from people living in the mangroves is another serious problem in the park because the sewage destroys the mangrove.”

She said Alumar holds environmental education classes to educate the Sao Luis public about what they can and cannot do in the Alumar Environmental Park.

A number of fishermen were seen fishing on the river in their canoes. One of them had his seine stretched across one end of the river to the next.

Gerunde Ferreira said this is a poor fishing practice done by some villagers in the area.

The fisherman was forced to remove part of his seine to allow the boats to pass through or his net would have been ripped apart. Two egrets were stealthily walking on the muddy river bank, snapping up and devouring tiny insects with their beaks. Schools of little fish jumped at the side of the boats as we continued upriver.

When asked if the Charros River was polluted by Alumar’s industrial activities, Friere said Alumar’s personnel, as part of corporate policy, are trained in conducting a permanent water monitoring and collecting programme. She said this involved the collection of vegetation, air, river and underground water and soil and testing by Alumar personnel to determine their qualitative state.

When the passengers disembarked back at the Alumar port, they boarded the bus which took them to the park’s huge administrative building which is situated in the heart of a rainforest which appeared untouched by industry.

In the main hall, there is a large model scale of the Alumar smelter in the park under a wide glass dome. On the clean, white painted walls, are hung pictures of the park’s flora and fauna.

The Alumar Environmental Park receives about 10,000 visitors annually, according to the supervisor of Alumar Environmental Park Marilia Gabriela. She presents environmental workshops to schoolchildren and members of the Sao Luis community.

Friere noted that the park administration also develops ecological programmes for the people of Sao Luis.

Increasing urbanisation, said Friere, has forced many animals into the park.

“Almost 1,000 families were relocated before the smelter in the park was built, and Alcoa paid for their relocation, each tree on their properties, and their houses,” she said.

Friere continued, “Some of the residents were happy to leave and others were not, but they all received cash as part of the Alcoa relocation process. Some of them went to nearby communities and others to far off places.”

The group then went on a tour of the Alumar Environmental Park along a forest track with tropical rainforests on either side of the path. As silence was necessary to avoid frightening the animals, the group spoke in whispers. Then, there was the sound of rustling tree branches above their heads and they looked up to catch a glimpse of a monkey. It quickly disappeared.