The Hileia Baiana: An Assessment of Natural and Historical Aspects of the Land Use and Degradation of the Central Corridor of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest

Abstract

The exuberant, pristine forest originally occupying an area stretching along today’s southern Bahia to the northern portion of Espirito Santo states was coined as the Hileia Baiana and represents a unique and highly diverse biota that, in addition to high levels of endemics, suffered the influence of past connections to the Amazonian biome. Herein we made an effort to present the key social, economic, and historical aspects that ultimately determined the current land use of this region. From the first colonial territorial division that encompasses two hereditary captaincies, Ilheus in the north and Porto Seguro in the south, the occupation process was fomented by the exploration of the brazilwood and the sugarcane plantation. Unlike the northeastern territories encompassing the Reconcavo and Zona da Mata, where sugar mills multiplied between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in Ilheus and Porto Seguro, the production declined. In this territory, the production of cassava flour, the food basis of the colonial population, was developed, being more vigorous in the captaincy of Ilheus due to the greater proximity of the consumer markets of Bahia and Pernambuco. At the same time, the presence of large stocks of valuable timber encouraged the exploitation of such strategic resource to the metropolitan naval industry. In the nineteenth century, the favorable foreign market promoted a new sugarcane cycle and the introduction of new export crops, coffee, and cacao. In Ilheus, cacao plantations expanded in the second half of the nineteenth century, making the old headquarters of the captaincy the nucleus of a producing area that, in the twentieth century, also extended to territories of the former captaincy of Porto Seguro. Along the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, Ilheus – in the south of what is now the state of Bahia – consolidated itself as a major cacao-producing region, while the occupation and the strengthening of the economy of the two regions earlier encompassing the Porto Seguro captaincy (extreme south of Bahia and north of Espirito Santo) were only solidified during the twentieth century. Five hundred years of colonization and successive economic cycles significantly reduced and degraded the native vegetation, but these forests are still significant reservoirs of the regional biota that inhabits the few remaining forests – legally protected or not – and the complex mosaic of different land uses that comprise the dominant human-modified landscapes. What is left still faces several threats regarding deforestation, fragmentation, and chronic disturbances that, if not adequately curbed, will probably jeopardize the long-term conservation of such important natural assets.