Fishy Business.

Cattle ranchers reel in new income source.

THE HAMLET OF BONITO IN WESTERN MATO GROSSO DO SUL state earned its name, Portuguese for "beautiful," thanks to a geological quirk. High concentrations of dissolved limestone in the regions rivers calcify impurities, causing them to sink and leaving the waters crystalline.

This peculiarity has turned the rivers into natural aquariums bursting with golden dourados, reddish piraputangas, smoky-blue curimbatas and silvery, black-spotted piaus, as well as an exuberance of aquatic flora. Lush riverside vegetation, home to monkeys and macaws, seems almost superfluous in comparison.

Until the early 1990s, only Geraldo Pinheiro, a fourth-generation cattleman who owns the Sao Geraldo ranch in Bonito, and his family and close friends were privy to the piscine pleasures of the limpid Sucuri River, which meanders through his land. What made the river particularly stunning were the calcified snails eggs that carpeted the riverbed.

Eventually, word spread of the watery paradise.

"Several dozen snorkelers began knocking on our door every weekend wanting to not only float down our river but to camp and picnic. If we forbid them, we worried that some would sneak in anyway," says Claudio Carneiro, the ranch manager and rancher's son-in-law. "So we decided that if our privacy was going to be invaded no matter what, we might as well organize the invasion."

Other Bonito ranchers found themselves in the same predicament. So, in 1992, they began teaming up with local tourist agencies. The agencies sell tours to a limited number of people, accompanied by guides, for river trips during strictly scheduled hours.

The ranchers provide snorkel gear, wetsuits and life jackets; the buoyant gear reduces the likelihood that tourists will stand or otherwise disturb the shallow river bottom. Ranchers also banned sunscreen, insect repellent and the feeding of fish.

As the enterprise took off, the ranchers installed eating areas and restrooms, built footbridges and carved paths to the rivers and bought dinghies for those who wanted to spy the fish from above the water. Because of their sizable investments, the ranchers keep the lion's share of the eco-tour revenues; the rest is divided among the tour agencies, the guides and the city government, which taxes the tours.

"We had real doubts about the economic viability of doing eco-tourism on the ranch because we never saw the Sucuri River as a source of revenue," said Carneiro. "So we had a hard time believing that large numbers of people from all over the region, let alone all over Brazil, would want to float down it."

Eco-tourism now counts for 30% of the Sao Geraldo ranch revenues; cattle and limestone mining are 70%. At the smaller Cabeceira do Prata ranch nearby, on the pristine Prata River, eco-tourism brings in 70% of the revenues. "Ranchers around Bonito with natural wonders on their property saw their neighbors making money from eco-tourism and decided that they could, too," explains biologist Guto Bertagnolli, the manager of eco-tourist activities at the Cabeceira do Prata. Most ranchers who joined the eco-retreat bandwagon now get more than half their annual income from tourism.

Today, two dozen agencies sell 30 different tours in the area, double the number offered in 1998. Snorkeling is the mainstay, but there are other options, including whitewater rafting and rappelling 72 meters--the height of a 21-story building--into the Anhumas Abyss, a cavern with a subterranean lake the size of a football field.

Some 71,500 visitors traveled to Bonito in 1999, 15% more than the year earlier; just 5% were foreigners. Tourism has replaced cattle ranching as Bonito's main source of revenues, says Lillian Rodrigues, the town's tourism director.

Bonito's once-sleepy main street is now a strip of tour companies selling aquatic safaris separated by squat hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops. Juca Ygarape, who owns one of the oldest Bonito tourist agencies, says the town may have changed but the natural wonders have not.

"The only way to visit the eco-retreats around Bonito is by booking a tour... and we carefully restrict how many people can enter these areas each day, something which preserves them," says Ygarape. "Tourists who just drop into town during the high-season holidays of July, December and January without booking in advance often get turned away because the tours, not to mention the hotels, are full."