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Brazilian Artist Uses Ash and Mud for Massive Sao Paulo Mural Lamenting Climate Disasters

Workers finalize a mural by artist-activist Mundano depicting the drought in the Amazon rainforest using paint made from the ashes of wildfires in the Amazon and mud from the floods in southern Brazil, on the side of a building in Sao Paulo, Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024. (AP)
Workers finalize a mural by artist-activist Mundano depicting the drought in the Amazon rainforest using paint made from the ashes of wildfires in the Amazon and mud from the floods in southern Brazil, on the side of a building in Sao Paulo, Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024. (AP)
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Brazilian Artist Uses Ash and Mud for Massive Sao Paulo Mural Lamenting Climate Disasters

Workers finalize a mural by artist-activist Mundano depicting the drought in the Amazon rainforest using paint made from the ashes of wildfires in the Amazon and mud from the floods in southern Brazil, on the side of a building in Sao Paulo, Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024. (AP)
Workers finalize a mural by artist-activist Mundano depicting the drought in the Amazon rainforest using paint made from the ashes of wildfires in the Amazon and mud from the floods in southern Brazil, on the side of a building in Sao Paulo, Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024. (AP)

Brazilian artist Mundano on Wednesday is presenting a massive street mural in Sao Paulo that uses ash from wildfires and mud from floods to highlight extreme weather events wreaking devastation across the country — as well as their causes.

Over 30 meters (98.4 feet) high and 48 meters (157.5 feet) wide, the mural depicts deforestation and severe drought in the Amazon rainforest with its parched brown earth and gray tree stumps. It features Indigenous activist Alessandra Korap wearing a crown of flowers and holding a sign that says: “Stop the destruction #keepyourpromise.”

It is a call to the Minnesota-based soy giant Cargill, according to Mundano. Soy farming is one of the biggest drivers of deforestation in the Amazon.

Cargill says on its website that it will eliminate deforestation from its supply chain in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay by 2025.

Mundano is seeking to hold them to account.

“We are tired of being a country, a continent where we and the natural resources we have here are exploited. ... We have to regenerate our planet instead of destroying it,” Mundano said in an interview on Tuesday.

Over the past few months, uncontrolled human-caused wildfires have ravaged protected areas in the Amazon, the vast Cerrado savanna and the world’s largest tropical wetland area, the Pantanal. Those blazes have spread smoke over a vast expanse, choking residents of some cities.

Drought has caused a critical situation nationwide, and forecasts indicate it will persist in much of the country through at least the rest of the month, according to a Sunday report from Cemaden, Brazil’s disaster warning center.

Climate change — primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal — leads to frequent and more extreme alterations in weather patterns.

The depth of the Amazon’s Negro River was 12.46 meters (41 feet) on Tuesday, a slight increase from 10 days earlier, when it registered its lowest level since measurements started 122 years ago. Tuesday’s depth was still around 6 meters (20 feet) less than usual for the same date in prior years, according to data from the Manaus port.

Rivers in Brazil ’s Amazon always rise and fall with its rainy and dry seasons. But the dry season this year has been much worse than usual.

Earlier this year, an unprecedented flood in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul killed more than 180 people, affected over 2 million people and destroyed urban communities.

Mundano, who calls himself an “artivist,” used mud from that flood collected by activist group Movement of People Affected by Dams in the mural, as well as ashes from the Amazon, the Atlantic Forest, the Pantanal and the Cerrado. He also used earth thrown away in dumpsters in Sao Paulo and clay collected from the Sawre Muybu Indigenous land in the Amazon, from where Korap hails.

“From floods to droughts, everything is connected!” Mundano said in an Instagram post on Tuesday, accompanied by a video showing the mural in Sao Paulo, which the artist said was his biggest ever.

Three years ago, Mundano employed ash from the Amazon to create a similar mural in Sao Paulo. That work depicted a firefighter standing amid deforested areas and featured a cattle ranch as well as trucks loaded with logs.

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Varieties

Scientists Gather to Decode Puzzle of the World’s Rarest Whale in ‘Extraordinary’ New Zealand Study

A handout photo taken on July 5, 2024 and received on July 16 from the New Zealand Department of Conservation shows rangers Jim Fyfe (L) and Tumai Cassidy walking beside what appears to be the carcass of a rare spade-toothed whale after it was discovered washed ashore on a beach near Taieri Mouth in New Zealand's southern Otago province. (Handout / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)
A handout photo taken on July 5, 2024 and received on July 16 from the New Zealand Department of Conservation shows rangers Jim Fyfe (L) and Tumai Cassidy walking beside what appears to be the carcass of a rare spade-toothed whale after it was discovered washed ashore on a beach near Taieri Mouth in New Zealand's southern Otago province. (Handout / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)
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Scientists Gather to Decode Puzzle of the World’s Rarest Whale in ‘Extraordinary’ New Zealand Study

A handout photo taken on July 5, 2024 and received on July 16 from the New Zealand Department of Conservation shows rangers Jim Fyfe (L) and Tumai Cassidy walking beside what appears to be the carcass of a rare spade-toothed whale after it was discovered washed ashore on a beach near Taieri Mouth in New Zealand's southern Otago province. (Handout / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)
A handout photo taken on July 5, 2024 and received on July 16 from the New Zealand Department of Conservation shows rangers Jim Fyfe (L) and Tumai Cassidy walking beside what appears to be the carcass of a rare spade-toothed whale after it was discovered washed ashore on a beach near Taieri Mouth in New Zealand's southern Otago province. (Handout / New Zealand Department of Conservation / AFP)

It is the world’s rarest whale, with only seven of its kind ever spotted. Almost nothing is known about the enigmatic species. But on Monday a small group of scientists and cultural experts in New Zealand clustered around a near-perfectly preserved spade-toothed whale hoping to decode decades of mystery.

“I can’t tell you how extraordinary it is,” said a joyful Anton van Helden, senior marine science adviser for New Zealand’s conservation agency, who gave the spade-toothed whale its name to distinguish it from other beaked species. “For me personally, it’s unbelievable.”

Van Helden has studied beaked whales for 35 years, but Monday was the first time he has participated in a dissection of the spade-toothed variety. In fact, the careful study of the creature -- which washed up dead on a New Zealand beach in July — is the first ever to take place.

None has ever been seen alive at sea.

The list of what scientists don’t know about spade-toothed whales is longer than what they do know. They don’t know where in the ocean the whales live, why they’ve never been spotted in the wild, or what their brains look like. All beaked whales have different stomach systems and researchers don’t know how the spade-toothed kind processes its food. They don’t know how this one died.

Over the next week, researchers studying the 5-meter (16-foot) -long male at an agricultural research center near the city of Dunedin hope to find out.

“There may be parasites completely new to science that just live in this whale,” said van Helden, who thrilled at the chance of learning how the species produces sound and what it eats. “Who knows what we’ll discover?”

Only six other spade-toothed whales have ever been found, but all those discovered intact were buried before DNA testing could verify their identification.

New Zealand is a whale-stranding hotspot, with more than 5,000 episodes recorded since 1840, according to the Department of Conservation. The first spade-toothed whale bones were found in 1872 on New Zealand’s Pitt Island. Another discovery was made at an offshore island in the 1950s, and the bones of a third were found on Chile’s Robinson Crusoe Island in 1986.

DNA sequencing in 2002 proved that all three specimens were of the same species — and that it was distinct from other beaked whales. But researchers studying the mammal couldn’t confirm whether the species was extinct until 2010, when two whole spade-toothed whales, both dead, washed up on a New Zealand beach. But none has been studied before.

On Monday, the seventh of its kind, surrounded by white-aproned scientists who were measuring and photographing, appeared relatively unblemished, giving no clue about its death. Researchers pointed out marks from cookiecutter sharks — normal, they said, and not the cause.

The dissection will be quiet, methodical and slower than usual, because it is being undertaken in partnership with Māori, New Zealand's Indigenous people. To Māori, whales are a taonga -– a precious treasure -– and the creature will be treated with the reverence afforded to an ancestor.

Members of the local iwi, or tribe, will be present throughout the dissection and consulted at each turn, allowing them to share traditional knowledge and observe customs, such as saying a karakia -– a prayer -– over the creature before the study begins.

“According to our beliefs and our traditions, this whale is a gift of Tangaroa, deity of the ocean,” said Tumai Cassidy from the local people Te Rūnanga Ōtākou. “It’s very important for us to respect that gift and to honor the whale.”

The iwi will keep the jawbone and teeth of the whale at the end of the dissection, before its skeleton is displayed in a museum. 3D printing will be used to replicate those parts, using a CT scan taken of the whale’s head this week.

“It all builds a richer picture for that species but also tells us how it interacts with our oceans,” Cassidy said.

It’s thought that spade-toothed whales live in the vast Southern Pacific Ocean, home to some of the world’s deepest ocean trenches. Beaked whales are the ocean's deepest divers for food, and the spade-toothed may rarely surface, adding to its mystery.

The assembled scientists on Monday included a few who had traveled from abroad to see the whale, which was put in refrigerated storage after its discovery.

“What we are interested in is not only how these animals died, but how they lived,” said Joy Reidenberg, a comparative anatomist from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. “In discovering how they live, we are hoping to find discoveries that we can apply back to the human condition.”