Biologist Fernanda Abra partnered with the Waimiri-Atroari Indigenous people to build bridges in the Amazon over highways to connect forest canopies, per Mongabay. The work is saving the lives of many animals, including at-risk primates, by allowing them to safely cross over busy roads.
Abra founded the Reconecta Project with the mission of studying the best road-crossing models for arboreal wildlife — those that live amongst treetops.
She's an associate researcher at the Ecological Research Institute (IPÊ) in Brazil and a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute in the U.S. She specializes in wildlife management, especially around roadways.
After receiving the 2019 International Future for Nature Award, she decided to produce a low-cost, simple solution to decrease roadkill.
Abra said, "I swore to myself that I wouldn't just study the impacts caused by roads and traffic anymore; rather, I wanted to save as many animals as I could by implementing mitigation measures."
Brazil has the world's fourth-largest road network, and about 40% of its primate population is at risk of extinction. Every year in Brazil, an estimated nine million mammals are killed by vehicles.
While choosing the roadways to work on, the Reconecta team discovered a 78-mile segment of BR-174 that ran through the vast region inhabited by the Waimiri-Atroari people.
The Waimiri-Atroari had already seen the need for wildlife bridges in the area and began implementing natural forest connection bridges about 30 years prior. When Abra started her work with them, they had established 30 bridges.
Working together, the Indigenous people helped the Reconecta group build artificial bridges and choose the most impactful locations to install them. In 2022, they set up 30 artificial bridges, trying different models, and attached two camera traps to each of them.
Footage from the cameras helped the team understand which animals were using the bridges, which decided not to, and which bridge models were preferable.
The project has seen great results. Eight different species were documented just within the initial 10 months of monitoring. Some of the mammals using the bridges were the golden-handed tamarin (Saguinus midas) and opossums (Didelphis sp.).
In May of this year, the success of the Amazon project was recognized internationally. Abra won a 2024 Whitley Award, also known as the "Oscar of nature conservation." The awards are run by the British organization Whitley Fund for Nature.
Abra pointed out that the achievements of Reconecta are the result of a joint effort by many partners, and at the heart of the Amazon project is the Waimiri-Atroari. She recognized their involvement by leaving her trophy with their community in the Amazon.
"We have to continue this project; without the bridges, many animals die. It didn't used to be like that; there were a lot of animals," commented Mario Paruwe, a Waimiri-Atroari leader. "But with the bridges, we see spider monkeys and robust capuchin monkeys crossing from one side of the forest to the other."
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