Francisco Barbosa da Silva (54), known as Chiquinho, has just this year become a collaborator of the project, restoring sites in São Paulo and Estrela farms with his company MARFRAN. Like most people in the region, his parents came from Minas Gerais to build water dams in Pontal. His father was also a pioneer in forest restoration: in the 70s, he worked in a Energy Company that restored for environmental compensation, and with the late and legendary restorationist Prof. Paulo Y. Kageyama, he restored forests with native species in the surrounding municipalities. "At that time, restoration initiatives were of only a few dozen hectares, much smaller than the scale that we reach today," says Chiquinho. "The staff had to look for oil cans in mechanical workshops to produce seedlings! My father used to say: ‘One day, we will need to restore much more; currently people don’t seem to care much about the forests'. He was right!" Chiquinho always accompanied his father, and started a restoration enterprise with him, as well as graduating in Environmental Management. "It was my father who showed me the importance of forest restoration for quality of life," he says.