A potential demand to boost the ecological restoration of the Pampa grasslands

Abstract

The Law for the Protection of Native Vegetation (Law nº. 12,651/2012) reaffirmed concepts and obligations for the maintenance of Legal Reserves and Permanent Preservation Areas in Brazilian environmental legislation, and instituted the Environmental Regularization Program (Programa de Regularização Ambiental - PRA) for the recovery of environmental deficits in rural properties. These deficits have not yet been confronted, as the Rural Environmental Registry (Cadastro Ambiental Rural - CAR) has not been analyzed and validated by environmental agencies, the PRA has not been implemented, and consequently ecological restoration does not occur on the expected scale. In Pampa, despite political attempts to create distorted concepts of a consolidated rural area, federal legislation requires the maintenance of a Legal Reserve, with a minimum percentage of 20 % of the rural property, with the need to recover deficits where the percentage is not reached, except for exceptions provided for by law. This article presents a possible demand for restoration: public lands under government management. We collected the date by interviews with managers and literature review. As in other countries, government programs can be inductors to strengthen the productive chain of ecological restoration, and in the Pampa, as well as in Brazil, the demand for public lands can be opportune as the implementation of the PRA is affected by the lack of state political will. Our survey indicated that more than 70,000 hectares of public land could be a potential demand for ecological restoration in Rio Grande do Sul state.