We are very proud to announce that our new English website has now been launched. Our previous website, launched back in 2007, has served us well but as technology moved on the site was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain and update. Our new website integrates software that will enable the site to be maintained and updated much easier in the future. The new website also enables donations to REGUA to be given much more easily. There is so much more that we could do, given the funding, to extend the protected areas around the valley side.

Launched simultaneously, and accessible on our home page and our Vimeo site, is a film produced by Wildscreen and narrated by Michael Palin, who is also one of our supporters, showing the progress that we have made in protecting and restoring the Atlantic Forest in the Guapiaçu valley of Brazil.

There has been a huge amount of effort over the last few months to create the website and the film. Firstly we must thank Kim for her financial and practical support in getting the film made, which we hope you will all agree is wonderful. Secondly we should thank our volunteer Lee Dingain for building the site, ably supported by Rachel Walls and Sue Healey who have written much of the text and taken many of the photographs – we shouldn’t underestimate the amount of time and effort that they have all put in.

We hope you enjoy the film and our new website and share them with your friends. A Portuguese version of both will follow later in the year.

REGUA has been working with Wildscreen, the award-winning film-making conservation charity, to produce a short film about our work in the Atlantic Forest of south-east Brazil.

Experienced producer and film-maker Verity White of Five Films, visited REGUA in March 2015 to capture some wonderful images, and comedian and presenter Michael Palin will provide the narration. The film shows the beauty of the forest and its wildlife, and features some of the people that continue to make REGUA one of the very best conservation projects in South America.

Verity White had been in Brazil as a student and loves the country and its people. She filmed most of the people who are vital to the success of the project including the rangers, tree nursery staff, the ladies who look after our visiting volunteers and guests, REGUA’s visitors and bird guide, research students as well as the local children who visit under our Young Rangers programme and schools outreach programme. Thumbs up and excited cartwheels along the forest trails were all captured!

Verity would wake as early as possible to do time lapse sequences from the observation tower showing the clouds forming from the forests. One early morning she even saw a puma slink back into the forest!

Early dawn sequences with parting mists and rising sun bathing the Guapiaçu valley in glorious light and tropical colours. Of course the drone was the highlight and the aerial filming of forests provided for perspectives rarely seen.

With perfect weather, cloudless cool mornings, the drone could hover, tilt and slowly climb providing just magical footage of REGUA’s protected forests, the tree planting campaign and even dense verdant valleys that had never been filmed before.

Verity left us with a taster of the film that left us breathless and we cannot wait to see the final cut version that gives a glimpse into the magic which makes this project such a wonderful success. The finished film is due for release in April 2015.