Branded for a balanced biosphere.

• Author: Malatesta, Parisina

We were flying toward Hato Pinero, an hacienda located between the plains of the Orinoco in central Venezuela and the Caribbean mountain range to the north. From the airplane we looked down over the magical hill country of El Baul, where prehistoric slopes rise to 600 meters above sea level, breaking the monotony of the vast plains.

When the light aircraft landed an hour later on a neatly tended strip, we had arrived at what is surely one of the few spots where livestock, nature conservancy and biotourism are harmoniously joined - a feat due to the energy of one man, Antonio Julio Branger, owner and visionary of Hato Pinero.

The Pinero expanse, 80,000 hectares in all, is part of a large flat region, known as the llanos, which occupies more than 300,000 square kilometers of Venezuelan territory and stretches a good way into Colombia. The lowest portions of these savannas were once a sea that linked the two oceans before the Andes came into being.

In the austere natural setting of the plains, all greenery disappears when the rains stop. With only two seasons, dry (November to March) and rainy (May to October), conditions change brusquely from desert heat and baked earth to violent downpours and "rain in buckets." Rivers that were down to a fine trickle swell torrentially. They burst out of their beds as if trying to create a new inland sea. All of nature suddenly enters a new cycle. For animals that survived the drought, thanks to a few isolated water holes, the water everywhere means renewed freedom.

The abrupt change, the stark, transitionless climate, shape the character of the people living on the plains. To a llanero like Antonio Branger it is a land of dreams and challenges. It was the llaneros who made possible victory in the war of independence against Spain in the early 19th century. Nobody could move faster than these plainsmen on horseback, or bear up as well under the harsh climate, or survive in a wilderness inhabited by jaguars and pumas.

Antonio was 15 years old when he crossed the wild, trackless plains between Valencia and what would be his future hato or ranch. Travelling on his mule Medalla, a tireless companion always alert to danger, he rounded up livestock along the way. It took him more than ten days to cross that immense, desolate terrain.

In his wanderings Antonio dreamed of finding a virgin land that would grow with him and adapt to his plans. When he was still a young boy, he inherited the estate of Hato Paraima...