{"id":185433,"date":"2025-06-15T04:08:17","date_gmt":"2025-06-15T04:08:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/185433\/"},"modified":"2025-06-15T04:08:17","modified_gmt":"2025-06-15T04:08:17","slug":"sao-paulos-pumas-under-attack-as-stone-jungle-threatens-rainforest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/185433\/","title":{"rendered":"Sao Paulo\u2019s pumas under attack as \u2018stone jungle\u2019 threatens rainforest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

JUNDIA\u00cd, June 14 \u2014 Apartment blocks and shopping centres sprout like mushrooms around a wild cat sanctuary that shelters pumas recovering from injuries suffered at the hands of mankind in Brazil\u2019s Sao Paolo state.<\/p>\n

The Mata Ciliar refuge stretches over the equivalent of 40 football fields just 90km from the state capital Sao Paulo \u2014 Latin America\u2019s biggest metropolis.<\/p>\n

Twenty-five pumas and 10 jaguars are receiving treatment at the centre \u2014 including Barreiro, a five-year-old puma named after the semi-rural neighbourhood where he was found caught in a trap made with a steel cable.<\/p>\n

Barreiro is being treated for a deep cut to the hip.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

A puma (Puma concolor) injured in a hunting trap is treated by veterinarians and biologists from the Mata Ciliar association, an organization for the conservation of biodiversity, in Jundiai, Sao Paulo state, Brazil, May 29, 2025. \u2014 AFP pic<\/p>\n

\u201cDue to the advancement of urbanisation into its natural habitat, when the puma moves, it gets lost between roads, gated communities and other human interventions,\u201d Mata Ciliar president Jorge Bellix told AFP.<\/p>\n

As its habitat shrinks in step with human expansion, the puma is forced to move closer to settlements to find food \u2014 which may include pets and livestock, as its natural diet of deer and smaller wild animals gets diminished.<\/p>\n

The big cats risk being run over by cars, electrocuted by security fences or trapped in snares set by either hunters trying to catch wild boar or residents warding off predators.<\/p>\n

Some are poached for their skins or as trophies.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this continues, we will unfortunately witness the extinction of several (animal) species within a few years,\u201d said Bellix, whose refuge has treated some 32,000 creatures since it was founded nearly 30 years ago.<\/p>\n

\"An <\/p>\n

An aerial view of a neighborhood near a forested area in Jundiai, Sao Paulo state, Brazil, May 29, 2025. \u2014 AFP pic<\/p>\n

\u2018Stone jungle\u2019 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Mata Ciliar also houses monkeys and maned wolves, and is located within the vast Mata Atlantica forest in a country with some of the highest wild cat diversity in the world.<\/p>\n

But just a few kilometres away looms the grey expanse of Sao Paulo, a metropolis of 21 million people nicknamed the \u201cstone jungle.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe situation is critical: the animals of Sao Paulo are losing the war against urbanisation,\u201d said veterinarian Cristina Harumi, who helped save Barreiro and hopes he can be returned to the wild soon.<\/p>\n

The puma, sitting as it does at the top of the food chain, is considered a bioindicator: its disappearance would be an alarming sign of the extent of environmental degradation, she added.<\/p>\n

The puma, also known as mountain lions, is listed as \u201cnear threatened\u201d in Brazil by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which maintains the \u201cRed List of Threatened Species,\u201d while mountain lion sub-species outside the Amazon basin are considered \u201cvulnerable.\u201d \u2014 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JUNDIA\u00cd, June 14 \u2014 Apartment blocks and shopping centres sprout like mushrooms around a wild cat sanctuary that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[2106,75980,728,75979,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-185433","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-brazil","9":"tag-endangered-animals","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-pumas","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114685418645210763","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}