News
Students visit Veracel Station during Environment Week - 06.09.03
During Environment Week, held June 2-6, hundreds of students from the local region and the state of Minas Gerais visited the Veracel Station, the private Natural Heritage Reserve owned by Veracel in Porto Seguro and Santa Cruz Cabrália. So many people wanted to visit the site that the management of the Reserve decided to open the gates during the entire week so that more people could participate in the environmental programs being run. The visitors received 300 native Atlantic Forest tree seedlings to plant back in their hometowns.
Normally, visits to Estação Veracruz take place on Tuesdays and Thursdays. “However, because it was Environment Week, people tended to want to take ecological walks,” said Denise Balbão Oliveira, the Veracruz coordinator. She and her team of guides received the visitors, who were given environmental education talks, visited the Wild Animal Management Center and went on ecological trail walks through the forest. Since 1997, approximately 25,000 people — 20,000 of them students — have taken Estação Veracruz’s guided visits.
Estação Veracruz is the largest private Atlantic Forest nature reserve. It contains 6,069 hectares of forestland and is used for research, the establishment of a gene bank, environmental education programs and ecological tourism. A total of 271 different tree, 63 mammal, 64 amphibian, 50 reptile and 325 bird species are found there. Visitation is free.