By Liam Hughes

Conservation starts with a cup of tea. Given the vast challenges facing the natural world, this may seem like a somewhat simplistic starting point, especially in relation to one of the world’s most degraded forests. However, for BirdLife Partner Aves Argentinas, it certainly rings true, as the wildlife-friendly farming of Yerba Mate – a plant used to make a popular caffeinated drink – is the foundation of a project to conserve and restore parts of one of the world’s most threatened ecosystems, South America’s Atlantic Forest.  

Although less well-known than the nearby Amazon, the Atlantic Forest is one of the world’s most important, and threatened, biodiversity hotspots. Once extending from the north-eastern tip of Brazil through to eastern Paraguay, it’s home to more than 930 bird species,  of which 223 are found nowhere else on earth. Unfortunately, centuries of deforestation have devastated the biome, and just 16% of its original 1.2 million km² of forest cover remains, restricted to a series of highly fragmented forest patches in Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina.  

Key to protecting the forest’s rich diversity is therefore to protect patches of habitat that remain, as well as to link each of them up. To do this, in Argentina, BirdLife’s Forest Accelerator Programme has provided seed funding and technical support to help Aves Argentinas promote the organic agroforestry of Yerba Mate, which is an important crop to farmers across the region. As a native plant to the area, that can be grown under the shade of the forest canopy, if managed sustainably it can provide a vital source of income to local communities and a sustainable financial incentive to protect the forest’s rich array of species.