巴西聖保羅州西部的 Great Pontal Reserve， 原本擁有非常獨特及瀕危的季節性半落葉森林，但1940於年代後期，大量人類遷居開發導致八成森林消失。科學家在研究極危的黑獅面狨時發現牠們受森林破碎所威脅，於是希望想辦法改善情況。他們與當地社區合作，培養樹苗及植樹。經過35年的努力，他們已種植了超過 270 萬棵樹木，覆蓋了 6000 公頃的森林。這復修不但改善了黑獅面狨的棲息環境，住在那𥚃的美洲獅及貘等亦同樣受惠。 The Great Pontal Reserve is located at the west of the state of São Paulo, Brazil. It contains seasonal, semi-deciduous forest which is an unique and endangered type of forest. Human civilization destroyed 80% of the forest in late 1940s. When studying the endangered black lion tamarins, scientists found out that fragmentation of forests was the main threat to these rare monkeys and decided to improve the forest connectivity. They involved the local communities to plant trees starting from seeding nursery. Over the past 35 years, they planted more than 2.7million trees that covers 6000 hectares of forest. The improvements not only helped the endangered tamarins, but also other wildlife inhabit there like pumas and tapirs.

Malayan Tapirs~ Baby Tapirs look like watermelons 🍉 The stripes will disappear when they grow up. 馬來貘親子～ 你知道馬來貘寶寶小時候身上是西瓜的紋路嗎？西瓜紋路會在馬來貘長大後慢慢不見哦。 今天去動物園，只看到兩隻成年馬來貘，沒想到他們跑起來也是蠻快的！ . . . . . #chocye #paintingeveryday #brushpainting #painteveryday #brushpens #墨水筆 #animalillustration #animalart #drawsomething #doodlearts #wildlifepainting #wildlifeart #wildlifedrawing #animalarts #animaldoodle #wildlifeillustration #野生動物 #動物插畫 #野生動物保護 #馬來貘 #貘 #台北市立動物園 #熱帶雨林區 #熱帶雨林區穿山甲館 #tapirs #tapir #malayantapir #malayantapirs #木柵動物園 #taipeizoo

( this turned into a pretty long post for some reason )  Sometimes I look back at the travel photos Tim and I took during our long distance relationship days and it still feels quite surreal, about how it all started and where we are now. These photos were taken at around the half-way point of our 2.5 years of #longdistance, when I visited Tim in the UK. The day before my flight back to Canada, Tim took me to one of his favourite places in London, ie. one that is on the "need to bring Grace when she is here" list.  It was a gorgeous and peaceful meadow by the River Thames. The moment we set foot on the riverside path, it felt like we were instantly taken away from the city and transported into one of the impressionist pastoral oil paintings, such as the ones by Monet. We grabbed some beers from a local pub and watched the sun setting, its golden rays gleaming over the windswept fields and grazing cows in the distance.  At that time, we did not anticipate that in the following year, I would decide to move to London, and both of us would be here right now, watching countless more sunsets together (although recently it's been multiple sunrises together because for some reason we got stuck in the Vancouver timezone again 🤣). At the time we didn't know when this LongD would end, and we just wanted to hold on to every moment we shared, together and apart. #xeriazlondon   Ps. The cows are not in this post but they're super cute and look like giant tapirs 😆 I posted their photos in the story if you want to see them!