At Fazenda Lagoa we have preserved for more than one hundred years 600 hectares of native forests, in various fragments, accounting for 25% of the farm area. Those forests are worthy remains of the tropical forests of the Southern Minas Gerais plateau, an important ecosystem of the Atlantic Forest.

In 1978 Horto Monte Alegre was created, and a project for the description and documentation of the region's flora began, together with the reforestation of parts of the farm with native species. In 1985, ISM was created with the main goal of researching the preservation of the region's native forests, with its headquarters at Fazenda Lagoa.

The Center has the following facilities:

• Environmental Education Room.
• Library with more than 5000 volumes in subjects such at Environmental Science, Geography, Botanics, Zoology, and others.
• Herbarium with more than 2000 exsiccates.
• Museum with rocks, fruits and birds nests from Sul de Minas.
• Network of 20 educational and scientific tracks in the farms' forests.

The projects and research carried during these years have resulted in more than 30 scientific and technical works as Master's degrees dissertations and PhD thesis. Besides it, more than 4,000 students and visitors have already participated in field visits.

The extraordinary biodiversity of Fazenda Lagoa, known as a result of 22 years of research, has classified the zone as a biodiversity pole in the Minas Gerais Biodiversity Atlas.

In those forests more than 300 bird species have already been identified, 25 of humming birds only, and 124 species of flowers and fruits of dicotyledoneæ angiosperm plants have been collected. Click here to see a PDF* (119KB) file with the list of bird species identified at Fazenda Lagoa.

Our forests preserve important populations of rare hard wood trees such as the jequitibá (Cariniana sp) and the peroba (Aspidosperma sp), as well as many species of local fauna that are threatened with extinction such as the white faced sagüi (Callitrix aurita), the sauá monkey (Callicebus personatus), the pavó (Pyroderus scutatus), and the tariri (Picramnia ramiflora).

* For visualization and printing of files in the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), the free software Adobe® Reader®. Click in the image to download.