Rio Botanical Garden highlights importance of Caatinga

In order to celebrate Caatinga Day on April 28th, the Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro is promoting until April 30th the Caatinga Week, aiming to value this biome, in which 27 million Brazilians live and which is home to a great diversity of fauna and flora. According to the organizers of the event, the biome needs to be valued and protected.

Therefore, the Botanical Garden has programmed a series of activities to show surprising aspects of this biome, with guided tours, conversation circles, games, and cartoons, among others. Brochures with information about Caatinga species cultivated in the Arboretum shall be distributed, and products will be available for sale at the Botanical Garden´s Friends Association store with prints created especially for the event.

According to data from the Environment Ministry, the Caatinga - one of the six Brazilian biomes, covers an area of 844,453 square kilometers, which corresponds to 11 percent of the national territory, including all the states of the Brazilian Northeast Region and the north of Minas Gerais state. As in other dry forest regions on the American continent, the plant species of the Caatinga have developed characteristics that allow them to survive periods of extreme drought. According to the Botanical Garden, there is still much to be discovered about the diversity of the flora of this biome.

The Caatinga Biome Week is part of the National Botanical Garden Program: Biomes, whose objective is to contribute to the conservation of Brazilian biomes through environmental awareness, and knowledge dissemination. The initiative also aims to promote interactions between society and the different biomes, through spaces, collections, and scientific-cultural practices in the Rio Botanical Garden.