Foto: Rita BrauneThe team from the FIOCRUZ Institutional Program for Biodiversity and Wildlife Health (PIBSS) conducted the final phase in the project Wildlife Health and Digital Inclusion: community participation in monitoring biodiversity in the Tapajós-Arapiuns Extractive Reserve in Pará State and in the municipalities of Uruçuca, Ilhéus, and Itacaré in southern Bahia State. The objective of this stage was to identify local decision-makers to involve them in the search for solutions to improve quality of life and health and preserve biodiversity.
In these territories, the project identified local residents’ perceptions concerning the risk of transmission and emergence of zoonotic diseases from biodiversity and the various environmental, social, and situational factors favoring such disease transmission. The team submitted to the local communities a proposal for monitoring wildlife with local citizens’ participation, including training community collaborators in the use of the SISS-Geo App (Wildlife Health Information System). The training features the app’s evaluation and improvement for use in vulnerable and remote areas.
Pará
Over the course of 17 days of work, the team covered 2,195 kilometers by boat along the Tapajós and Arapiuns Rivers. A total of 53 workshops were held in 27 riverine and indigenous communities, with some 1,500 people participating. The project’s results were shared with specialists, NGOs, and partner institutions during the seminar on Biodiversity and Health in the Tapajós-Arapiuns Extractive Reserve: challenges for conservation and quality of life, held in the auditorium of the Federal University of Western Pará (UFOPA), in Santarém. The closing event of the project on the Tapajós-Arapiuns Extractive Reserve took place at the Experimental Center for Active Forests (CEFA), of the Saúde Alegria project in the community of Carão, Pará, on June 30.
Southern Bahia
In southern Bahia, workshops and rounds of conversation were held with indigenous health agents and community health workers living in traditional and quilombola (slave-descendant) communities located in the Serra do Conduru State Park. Park rangers from the regional conservation units, health professionals, community leaders, undergraduate and graduate students, and troops from the Bahia State Forest Brigade discussed the importance of wildlife health for human health during four courses with 200 participants. The project concluded with a party in Uruçuca on July 9.
Recognition
Three collaborators from Pará and three from Bahia recorded the most wildlife sightings with the SISS-Geo app and received certificates of recognition. The project manager for the Brazilian Biodiversity Fund (Funbio), Alexandre Ferrazoli, joined the team during the expedition along the Arapiuns River in Pará.
“I had already followed this project with great interest for two and a half years, and I finally had the pleasure to spend two weeks on the 4th Arapiuns Expedition. I witnessed firsthand the dedication, professionalism, and warmth with which the team carried out the project. I was proud to be part of this team, who made me feel the reality firsthand and learn a lot,” Ferrazoli said.
The multidisciplinary team consisting of biologists, veterinarians, an anthropologist, computer scientists, a geographer, and communications, design, and administrative professionals carried out the project for two years and seven months. In May this year, the initiative received the 2017 Brazilian National Award for Biodiversity.
Source: CCS and Institutional Program for Biodiversity and Wildlife Health (PIBSS).
