WSJ.com - Page One Feature March 25, 2002 In Brazil, a Desperate Struggle Is Waged Over a Salad Garnish By MIRIAM JORDAN Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ITATIAIA NATIONAL PARK, Brazil -- An anonymous phone tip sent Marco Antonio Botelho and three colleagues speeding into action one recent steamy morning, guns at the ready. After an arduous 50-minute trek by foot through thick tropical jungle, the forest rangers could hear the sound of trees being felled by an ax. But by the time they reached the spot designated by the tipster, all that was left were logs and tree stumps. Palm pirates had struck again. Hearts of palm -- the tender, bone-white stalks that are a staple for Brazilians in salads and on pizzas and a trendy gourmet item for Americans -- are the object of a fierce battle in Brazil's oldest national park. Some hearts of palm are commercially grown elsewhere in Brazil as well as in Costa Rica and other places, but connoisseurs consider those extracted from the trunk of Euterpes edulis, or jucara palms, to be the best in the world. And they only grow in this forest on the Atlantic coast. The delicacy costs the park dearly. Poachers illegally chop down 5,000 to 10,000 palm trees a week, often outmanning and outwitting hardy park rangers. For poachers and rangers, hearts can be a matter of life and death. On one recent mission, "15 poachers came out of nowhere firing at us," recalls Mr. Botelho, who has devoted 30 out of his 50 years to preserving the park. The palm poachers, known as palmiteiros, had automatic rifles and pistols, while the rangers carry old revolvers. "I ran for my life," Mr. Botelho says. "If we hadn't retraced our steps, we'd have been surrounded." A few years ago, ranger Tarcilio Carvalho tried to wrestle a gun away from a poacher. The gun went off and killed the palm pirate. But mostly it's the trees that suffer. The heart comes from a 12- to 16-inch span at the top of the 65-foot palm's trunk. Once the heart is removed, the tree dies. One tree, which can be as much as 100 years old, has enough heart to fill just two 14-oz. cans. The cans retail for about $3.99 apiece in the U.S. Palm poaching, along with rapid urbanization, has left only 7% of the original Atlantic Forest still standing. A few plantations, patrolled by armed guards, legally harvest the palms within the forest. That leaves the palmiteiros to invade Itatiaia (pronounced I-ta-chee-yai-ya) and other sanctuaries, where the palm trees abound. The poachers are threatening this mountainside sanctuary of waterfalls, 365 bird species and dozens of butterfly species, which draws 80,000 visitors from around the world each year. The palm is the most pervasive tree in the 120-square-mile park, and its small, black fruit is a vital source of food for the park's wildlife. "If there's no more palm, there's no more park," laments park director Leo Nascimento, who has received numerous death threats from the poachers. "Birds, monkeys, rodents and other creatures depend on the trees to survive." Most hearts-of-palm production has moved north to the Amazon, where some businesses cultivate multiple-stem palms that are capable of regenerating. But to purists "the best hearts of palm in the world are from the Atlantic Forest," says Roberto Cavalcanti, head of the Brazil office of Washington-based Conservation International. Jucaras are more tender, white and mild-tasting than Amazon species. They tend to have wider trunks and to yield bigger hearts. All hearts of palm, whether sold locally or exported, require certification by Brazilian authorities that they weren't illegally harvested. But labels are frequently forged. "If you're eating Brazilian hearts of palm that are more than an inch wide, chances are they're jucara," says Jose Lelande, inspection chief at Brazil's environmental agency, Ibama. Most Americans couldn't tell you where hearts of palm come from, but chefs say they are serving more of them. "People love them," says Norman Van Aken, owner and chef of Norman's restaurant in Miami, especially in his orange, hearts of palm and fennel salad. "They have a very subtle taste and a very sensuous texture. They add an exotic elegance to a plate." He says he avoids using jucara to spare the trees. At Vong, a French-Asian fusion restaurant in Manhattan, sous-chef Ron Gallo sometimes achieves a "cooling effect" by serving hearts of palm with spicy Thai barbecued beef. But he's surprised to hear about the palm wars. "I didn't know there's a black market for hearts of palm." Brazilian diners are more discriminating about affairs of the hearts. Barbacoa, a ritzy steakhouse in Sao Paulo, says its clientele wouldn't accept anything but the best, and that means jucara, which the restaurant buys directly from a legitimate grower. "Our clients can tell the difference," says deputy manager Altemir Schiavon. In the Itatiaia forest, the enemies are well-financed poaching networks that set up camp in the woods, police say. Each poacher chops down an average of 50 trees a day, for $1 a trunk, authorities say. Working three days a week, the unskilled cutters can earn three times as much per month as low-level factory or farm workers. The more-seasoned poachers "handle the wilderness better than we do," says Mr. Carvalho, the park ranger. Cutting down a palm tree is an act punishable by imprisonment. But the vast area of Itatiaia Park -- it straddles three Brazilian states -- coupled with the density of the forest, makes it virtually impossible to catch a palm poacher in the act. The impunity only emboldens the poachers. Last year, they invaded an area outside the picturesque lodge where Brazilian songwriter Vinicius de Moraes (lyricist of "The Girl from Ipanema") stayed when he wrote a poem about the park's invigorating effect on "the tired traveler." Dora Vidal, the owner of the lodge, recalls hearing thumps from her reception area. When she looked up, she saw a palm tree slamming into the surrounding forest. "In three generations, we never had experienced such a thing here," says Ms. Vidal. By the time the rangers arrived, the culprits had fled. All the park rangers found were a large plot of devastated forest and a pile of palm-tree trunks -- minus the prized tip. Turf wars between palm pirates have resulted in the death of several poachers through the years. Last summer, a poacher intercepted a tour guide with a group of trekkers and discreetly ordered them out of a contraband cutting ground. Alarmed, the park's association of hotels pressed park management to take action. Mr. Nascimento, the newly-appointed park director, demanded that the 14 lodges first do their part: remove hearts of palm from their menus, regardless of their origin. Ms. Vidal stopped serving two of her specialties, hearts of palm pie and pastries. "I filed away the hearts of palm recipes for good," she says. In a mass e-mail campaign to win over Brazilian consumers, Mr. Nascimento questioned the point of killing palm trees to get a vegetable with no nutritional value beyond its fiber. Moreover, he says, "There's no culinary dish that a heart of palm enhances: It's odorless, colorless and tasteless." Write to Miriam Jordan at miriam.jordan@wsj.com1 URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB101701501624132800.djm,00.html Hyperlinks in this Article: (1) mailto:miriam.jordan@wsj.com Updated March 25, 2002 12:31 a.m. EST Copyright 2002 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Printing, distribution, and use of this material is governed by your Subscription agreement and Copyright laws. For information about subscribing go to http://www.wsj.com