
Adventure Travel / Brazil - The Earth’s
biologically richest
and most threatened places, so - called biodiversity hotspots, are areas with high endemism, harboring many species found nowhere else.
Conservation International identified
34
hotspots
worldwide, where 75 percent of the planet’s most threatened mammals, birds, and amphibians survive within habitat covering just 2.3 percent of the Earth’s surface.
Brazil offers two biodiversity hotspot eco travel destinations: The
Mata Atlântica and the
Cerrado.
With approximately 20.000 plant species (8.000 endemic) and 2.300 mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and freshwater fishes
(725 endemic), the
Atlantic
Rainforest is among the
top 5
biodiversity hotspots, in terms of number of species and in terms of endemism.
Particularly impressive is the density of biodiversity in this biome. A
biomap
of the University of Bonn from 1999 shows more than 5.000
vascular plant species per 10.000 sqkm in the
tropical rainforests
of Brazil's southeast Atlantic coast.
According to
UNESCO, more than 450
woody plant
species per hectare can be found in some spots of the
Atlantic Forest South-East Reserves
World Heritage Site.