09/08/2026
We are excited to start our collaboration with Territorio Sagrado do Ouricuri, the sacred, protected and secret lands of the Kariri-Xoco.
Ouricuri is the most sacred ritual of the Kariri-Xoco, celebrated every month and also during most of the month of January. The ritual is named after the aricurizeira, the sacred palm of the KX people, and it has been celebrated since the 18th century on this very site, even though it was banned by Jesuit missionaries. In the past, KX people had to practice this forest ritual in the middle of the night to avoid being caught and punished by the Portuguese.
We are working with Val (pictured) the waire or forest guardian of this territory. He has planted -on his own and without any external support of any kind- over 1,500 native trees.
Territorio do Ouricuri is Caatinga, the dry, semi-arid biome of northeastern Brazil and home to a wide array of endemic plants and animals. Caatinga is very different to the Mata Atlantica rainforest and mangrove ecosystems where we currently work; however, there is enormous value in working collaboratively across ecosystems to support ecological interconnectivity, specific species transfer, botanical knowledge and resource sharing, and of course, to combine the limited available labour, seeing as less and less people want to work in land regeneration in rural Brazil.
Val is doing this work on his own!
The reserve is 100 hectares in size, and another 4,000 are in the process of being claimed. In the first picture you can see a vast area of Caatinga that naturally grew back after farmers moved away 20 years ago.
A 2026 Brazilian government analysis found that 11.7% of the Caatinga is in “severe degradation”, the highest proportion among Brazil’s 7 biomes.
