Brazil Establishes World's Largest Rainforest Reserve
11/12/97
OVERVIEW, SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE
Brazil has established the Amana Sustainable Development Reserve,
which together with two other protected areas in the Central Amazon
Basin, comprise over 22,000 square miles of unbroken habitat. The
approach of protecting large-scale eco-regions and their constituent
species and processes is laudable. The question is whether the
rhetoric of local people's participation in the area's conservation
can actually be realized. Or whether this becomes another "paper
park," unable to address local people's reasonable development
aspirations, and in so doing, becomes slowly degraded. This item
comes from ENN. Somehow this item slipped through the cracks, but I
am sending it belatedly.
g.b.
*******************************
RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Brazil Establishes World's Largest Rainforest Reserve
Source: Environmental News Network
Status: Copyrighted, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: October 30, 1997
The Government of the Brazilian State of Amazonas has created a new
reserve in the Amazon, thus establishing the world's largest
contiguous block of protected rainforest, the Wildlife Conservation
Society, headquartered at the Bronx Zoo, announced this week.
Called the Amana Sustainable Development Reserve, it is the third of a
network of protected areas in the Central Amazon Basin that together,
comprise over 22,000 square miles of unbroken habitat -- an area
larger than Costa Rica.
The reserve will be managed under a legal category in Brazil created
in 1996 at the adjacent Mamiraua Reserve, which permits residence in
protected areas and encourages local participation in their
conservation. The Amana region is known for its spectacular and
untouched biodiversity including endangered Amazonian manatees, black
caiman, river dolphins, anacondas, jaguars, black uakari monkeys,
harpy eagles, and a wealth of plants and aquatic life.
Dr. Jose Marcio Ayres, senior conservation zoologist with the Wildlife
Conservation Society, designed and wrote the reserve's management
scheme.
"The creation of the Amana Reserve is one of the most important
measures taken in the Brazilian Amazon in the past decade. It
establishes a new vision in conservation in the region, where
rainforest corridors will protect not only species but entire
evolutionary and ecological processes. It also preserves the unique
biodiversity of the Amazon's black and white river systems. In
addition, this solidifies the formation of the Central Amazonian
Corridor that will protect Amazonian flooded and dryland forests,"
said Ayres.
For more information, contact Stephen Sautner, Wildlife Conservation
Society.