Back in 2004, Owen explored the vast wetlands of the Pantanal, where open skies and wading birds dominate the landscape. Twenty-one years later, he returned to Brazil, but this time, his journey (and the photographs you’ll see throughout this blog) came from a very different world: the Atlantic Forest. The Atlantic what? Yes, that’s right—beyond the more famous Amazon lies another rainforest, far older and every bit as extraordinary.
The Atlantic Forest once covered more than 1.3 million square kilometers, stretching unbroken along Brazil’s coastal and inland slopes from the northeast to Argentina. It is thought to be somewhere between 60 million and 100 million years old, its origins tracing back to the Cretaceous–Paleogene period, when the South American continent was drifting and coastal ranges like the Serra do Mar and Serra da Mantiqueira began to rise. This uplift created humid microclimates along the coast, isolating plant and animal populations from the interior forests, including the Amazon, which was still forming.
Today, however, just 12% of the original Atlantic Forest remains intact. This perilous state stems partly from its coastal accessibility and long coexistence with dense human populations, which made it uniquely hard-hit. Deforestation here began hundreds of years earlier than in the Amazon, whose destruction mainly accelerated from the 1970s onward.
Five centuries of intense exploitation, starting with colonial sugarcane plantations, timber extraction, and later coffee cultivation, have left only scattered, unevenly distributed patches along the Atlantic Forest’s original range, making it harder for wildlife to move, breed, and recover.
Because Brazil’s land laws historically encouraged ownership and development over preservation, much of the remaining forest survives on private land as smallholdings or larger estates. However, some of these now play a crucial role: some owners maintain tracts of native forest for sustainable timber, eco-tourism, or conservation-minded initiatives, while others have partnered with NGOs to create protected reserves. So, even though public protected areas are limited, individuals can still make a real difference by maintaining and reconnecting habitats for endemic birds and other wildlife.
In July 2025, Owen visited three key sites within the southeastern Atlantic Forest, each offering a slightly different view into this endangered ecosystem: Itatiaia, Salesópolis, and Tapiraí. Itatiaia straddles the border of Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais, protecting dense montane forests and high-altitude streams. In the São Paulo foothills, Salesópolis preserves patches of riverine and secondary forest. Tapiraí, a private reserve in the Serra do Mar, shows how conservation-minded landowners can safeguard both mature and regenerating forest, providing essential habitat.
The Atlantic Forest is not remote wilderness; it lies exactly where Brazil’s population and economy took root. Cities like Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Salvador—all now home to over 120 million people—sit squarely within its former range, and around 70 percent of the nation’s GDP is generated here. And yet, that proximity offers hope. Because people live and work within the Atlantic Forest’s footprint, reforestation corridors, urban green belts, and eco-tourism projects can reconnect its fragments faster than in more isolated biomes. In places like Tapiraí, the results are already visible: forest edges are coming alive again with the chatter of tanagers, the drumming of woodpeckers, and the soft whir of hummingbird wings.
Owen’s photographs capture this contrast perfectly. Take the Saw-billed and Dusky-throated Hermit hummingbirds, for instance. Most people associate hummingbirds with vibrant colors and shimmering jewels, but here is a subtle lesson in survival. Unlike the multi-hued, sunlit hummers of the Amazon, species like these keep their iridescence muted, blending into the shadowy understory while still catching flashes of light for courtship. The dense, misty forest makes bold colors risky, as they can attract predators, whereas brighter birds like Green-headed Tanagers thrive in canopy gaps or along forest edges where sunlight brings their feathers to life. Elsewhere, there’s the warm burst of gold of the Saffron toucanet among the foliage, and its larger cousin, the Toco toucan, whose oversized bill and bold plumage remind us that even in a diminished forest, the extraordinary still survives.
The Atlantic Forest may never reclaim its full extent, but awareness is growing. Once overshadowed by the Amazon, it is now recognized as an equally vital, and far more urgent, stronghold of biodiversity. Its recovery depends on countless yet impactful choices by landowners, communities, and visitors alike, but in every regenerating patch of green, the birds are already showing us what’s possible.
