Relacionando políticas públicas, dinâmica da paisagem e conservação da biodiversidade

The Millennium Development goals propose that we reduce poverty and hunger while caring for environmental sustainability. Conservationist now face the challenge to reconciliate human development to biodiversity conservation. Brazilian Zero Hunger scheme is a flagship initiative worldwide, and its implementation in the highly degraded and biodiverse Cerrado and Atlantic Forest pose a unique opportunity to study the potential of public policies to affect positively both sides of the equation. Through a case study in Mário Campos, Minas Gerais, we used medium and large mammals as indicators of biodiversity conservation and analyzed stepwise the effects of one of Zero Hunger policies on farmers, agricultural practices, land use change and deforestation and, finally, on biodiversity. Our methodology included interviews, remote sensing and camera trapping and occurred between 2012 and 2013, allowing for a 10-year timespan since the policy started (2001). We found no effect of the policies on agricultural practices, mainly due to the limited amount of produce sale allowed annually by farmer and to the hesitation of farmers to participate. Little has changed in Mario Campos landscape in the period, with different patterns of land use observed between 2001-2005 and 2005-2011, an increase in cropland, vegetation and fragmentation followed by a slighter decrease in favor of pasture. The only use with continuous increase was Pasture/Grassland, which may be associated with land abandonment and land division for housing estate. We registered 14 species in camera traps and 26 in interviews, with Cuniculus paca and Galictis sp. as the most frequent for each methodology, respectively. Species generally seemed to prefer locations near croplands to other uses, and to respond more frequently to fragmentation than to habitat loss. Our results suggest small cropland areas have potential as alternative habitats for mammal species, and can be managed to become corridors for dispersion. Meanwhile, policies to stimulate small farmers need to have their regulations improved in order to keep food production and slow down land abandonment.