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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jocateme" data-source="post: 976749" data-attributes="member: 42091">Hi Larry and Lisa,I looked for English articles everywhere in the net, but couldn't find. Also found strange that BBC Brazil had this article but BBC UK had not.Anyways, here's a translation from the first article made by me (sorry for any errors):"Expedition tames almost unexplored area of the Amazon   Two expeditions to the region between Purus and Madeira rivers this year showed that this area of forest, probably the most biodiverse of all Amazon ecological divisions, really deserves the title.   This region, with about 40 million ha, represents less than 5% of the Amazon Rainforest, but in only two trips, scientists found at least four new species of birds, three of mammals and some sets of ten of unknown arachnids. The stuff, collected between April and May, and then in July, shows a biodiversity threatened by occupation planes.   Still predominantly without impact, Purus-Madeira interflúvio [interflúvio means the region between two rivers] is in the aiming of projects like the pavement of BR-319 road, which connects Porto Velho (Rondônia state) and Manaus (Amazonas state) and the construction of a pipeline between Urucu (Amazonas) and Porto Velho - both of the projects pass through the area. Also threatening the region, there are the construction of hidroeletric stations in Madeira river, the increasing extraction of wood in southeastern Amazonas and the advance of the agroindustry, especially of the soya, and of cattle farming.Threatened richness   'The set is assembled to destrow a small area, until now unknown and believed to have a huge biodiversity and endemism potential', said the ornithologist Mario Cohn-Haft, of Inpa (National Institute of Amazonian Research), which led the expedition of Geoma project.   The six weeks the groups kept in the forest show there really is something to lose. 'We have found species which not only had never been observed, but apparently only exist in that region', said Colin-Haft. The collected animals are now being analyzed by biologists to see if they really are new species. After the confirmation, the discoveries will be published in scientific magazines.   Cohn-Haft already says, though, that at least four of the birds he has seen are new species, two of them being endemics. 'I had already seen these birds in former expeditions, but only now I managed to find samples. It is a sufficiently big series to describe.'   The importance of the finds gets bigger when you consider that birds are the most well-known group by biologists. The discovery of so many new animals, according to the researcher, works like a termometer of that region's diversity. Still, Colin-Haft believes that in some years the number of species described in Amazon will double.      Among the mammals, the primatologists believe having seen at least one new species of monkey. It was also collected a Tamarin which probably is a new subspecies and a primate considered a "rediscovery" of the science.   It's about an animal already described in the literature, but that had never been seen. 'Its existance had begun to be unbelieved, it was supposed that it could be just an extraordinary individual, but now we've found a whole population of them', said the researcher.   Still among the mammals, the biologists bet on a squirrel and 'gatiara' (nocturnal mammal) as new species.   The animal group that might bring the most news, though, are the arachnids. They are still so unknown that the expectation is that 95% [I wrote 98% on the first post, sorry] of the animals found are new species.   The presence of so many different animals in a relatively small area is explained because the region has various types of habitats. In the same area there is typical forest as well as floodable varzeas, small mountains, bamboos and fields. 'All of this in a small interflúvio threatened by every possible projects', sais Cohn-Haft."Hope this helps the understanding.</blockquote>

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