In a quiet corner of Rio de Janeiro state, a forest that vanished more than a century ago is slowly coming back to life — and it brought an old friend with it. After more than 100 years of absence, the South American tapir has returned to a restored stretch of Brazil's Atlantic Forest, and it isn't just passing through. These shy, pig-like mammals are breeding again in the wild, a sign that a broken ecosystem can be put back together.
The story begins in 2001, when Nicholas and Raquel Locke founded the Reserva Ecológica de Guapiaçu (REGUA) in Rio de Janeiro. Their goal was simple but ambitious: protect the patches of Atlantic Forest that still stood, and restore the land that cattle ranching had flattened into pasture. To do it, the family built a tree nursery where they grew native seedlings by the thousands. Over the years they planted roughly 840,000 native trees across former grazing fields, bringing back around 607 hectares of grasslands, wetlands, and broken forest patches.
The Atlantic Forest is one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, but only a fraction of it remains, squeezed by farming and cities. That is why the greening of REGUA mattered so much. As the forest thickened, it once again offered food, shelter, and safety — just the conditions the tapir needed to make a comeback. These large mammals disappeared from the state of Rio de Janeiro more than a century ago, mainly because of hunting and the loss of their habitat. In 2017, a program began to reintroduce them into the reserve.
The results speak for themselves. According to REGUA, there are now 11 released tapirs living in the protected area, along with three calves born in freedom. Their return is about more than one species. Tapirs wander over huge distances and feed on fruit, scattering the seeds wherever they go. In doing so, they act as gardeners of the forest, helping new trees grow and spreading life across the land they roam.
Twenty-five years of patient restoration turned old cattle land into a refuge for hundreds of species — and proof that nature, given time and help, can heal. The tapir's reappearance shows that conservation is not just about stopping damage; it is about undoing it. As these gentle giants wander through the regrown forest, carrying seeds on their journeys, they carry a hopeful message too: even a landscape that lost its forests can welcome them back, one tree and one animal at a time.