When it was founded in 2002, the Tumucumaque National Park in Brazil was the largest protected area in the world. Even 20 years later, the protected area is exemplary. But it is coming under increasing pressure from the Brazilian government. The park director wants to break new ground for protection.
The Tumucumaque National Park in the extreme north-east of Brazil is still a paradise in the Amazon region largely untouched by tourism. For adventurers and nature lovers, Tumucumaque could be a discovery. Park Director Christoph Jaster raves about the jungle and the gigantic trees more than 80 meters high. “The forests are breathtakingly beautiful and in impeccable condition,” says the native German with Brazilian citizenship. The Brazilian mountain sports portal “Alta Montanha” writes of a “true Noah’s Ark” in view of the diverse animal world.
In the state of Amapá, bordering French Guiana and the former Dutch colony of Suriname, Tumucumaque National Park covers an area of ??more than 38,000 square kilometers. That is almost the size of the Netherlands.
According to the Brazilian government, when the national park was founded 20 years ago, on August 22, 2002, it was the largest primeval forest reserve in the world – until the Grão-Pará environmental station was established in 2006 with more than 42,000 square kilometers.
“People ask, ‘Why a park of this size?'” says Jaster, who has managed Tumucumaque on behalf of the conservation agency ICMBio since 2003. Only such a large park can guarantee the stability of species populations and contribute to climate regulation. The future of the global climate will also be decided here.
The Tumucumaque, 360 kilometers wide and 320 kilometers long, is in turn surrounded by other protected areas and borders roughly on the indigenous territory of the Waiãpi. This location also offers some shelter to the Waiãpi and allows animals to roam fairly undisturbed.
The park was declared a protected area before the destruction of the forest could begin. “We have very good prerequisites for protecting the Tumucumaque,” says Jaster, who comes from Cochem on the Moselle and studied forestry in Curitiba. Even 20 years after its founding, the national park is exemplary.
The fact that the Tumucumaque is in a “relatively good situation”, as Mariana Napolitano Ferreira, scientific director of WWF Brazil, tells the dpa, is also due to the fact that it is supported by the large protection program for the Amazon region, ARPA (Amazon Region Protection Areas). is supported. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, on the other hand, sees Amazonia primarily as an economic area. Critics accuse the right-wing politician of having created a climate that encourages loggers to enter protected areas.
Since Bolsonaro took office in January 2019, environmental agencies have been weakened, with the directors and chairman of ICMBio replaced by military police officers. Staff and controls have become fewer. The corona pandemic reinforced this development.
International funds flow into the ARPA protection program, including from Germany from the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW) – a “great engine for sustainability in the long term,” says Napolitano Ferreira. But there is a lack of staff. In the meantime, Jaster only had one other colleague on the team – far too few to meet the requirements of a national park.
The park aims to attract visitors, promote research and protect nature. 70 percent of Jaster’s working time in the office in Macapá, the capital of Amapá, is spent on administration. The rest of the time he can be out and about in the field.
It is difficult to counteract poachers and illegal fishermen. A gold digger’s nest and an illegal shop settlement are located in the park. The solution seems to be to change the boundaries of the park so that the settlements are outside of it. “Besides that, we can withstand the pressure from outside,” says Jaster.
However, the location in remote Amapá cannot be compared to states such as Pará, Amazonas or Mato Grosso. These areas along the so-called deforestation arc in the east and south of the Amazon region are under great pressure from the agricultural economy. They are particularly affected by deforestation and fires. According to the WWF Brazil, more than 100 square kilometers of forest were destroyed in a nature reserve in the state of Rondônia in 2021. Dozens of attempts have been made in recent years to reduce the size or status of protected areas. Most of the time this works.
90 percent of the state of Amapá is still covered with forest – most of the approximately 900,000 inhabitants live in two cities, Macapá and Santana. “But we have to hurry,” says Jaster, “so that we are prepared and can offer an alternative to clear-cutting and livestock farming.”
Jaster relies on ecotourism. Tumucumaque National Park was made to be visited. Amapá could transform itself into a “Mecca of environmental protection and ecotourism”. If it is possible to make environmental protection palatable to the population, he hopes, if money flows, then the forest will remain.
So far, the “luxury” of sleeping in hammocks in a forest station of Tumucumaque and bathing in the river has been reserved for groups of around 15 visitors at a time. Jaster has personally received several hundred guests in the region that is difficult to access in recent years. All you need is courage, a straw hat, boots and a mosquito net.
