Rapid Assessment Program - Conservação Internacional

Preface
The Amazon Forest represents the last large expanse of tropical forests on this planet and Brazil
harbors most of it. The conservation status of the Brazilian Amazonia is heterogeneous and some
States presents higher deforestation rates. The State of Amapá has an area of more than 14 million
hectares and can be considered as being in an exceptional position, with more than 90% of its
surface still pristine. The major part of the State (actually up to 73%) is legally protected, forming
a mosaic of state and federal conservation and Indigenous Lands. In 2004, the Government of
Amapá adopted a proposal to integrate such areas, forming the Amapá Biodiversity Corridor.
The proposal foresees an integrative approach, linking existing conservation units and Indigenous
lands, proposing studies for the creation of new conservation units, and establishing a mosaic of
sustainable-use areas among them.
As part of the strategy to implement the Amapá Biodiversity Corridor, it is necessary
to effectively implement and support the main conservation units in Amapá, especially the
Tumucumaque Mountains National Park, the Amapá National Forest and the Rio Iratapuru
Sustainable Use Reserve, three of the largest conservation units in the State. While in 2004 no
conservation units in Amapá had management plans, currently, most units are preparing or
concluding preparation of such plans. One of the largest gaps in this process was the lack of
inventories conducted in Amapá and the consequent absence of basic data on the biodiversity of
the State. This problem was more serious inside the conservation units, most of them with their
actual biodiversity literally unknown to scientists.
In order to fill some of these data gaps, in 2004 the Instituto de Pesquisas Científicas
e Tecnológicas do Amapá (IEPA) and Conservation International (CI-Brasil) established a
partnership to create a group of excellence in biodiversity. This group is based in Amapá and its
main goal is to inventory and map the occurrence of important ecological species in the state. The
Brazilian Institute for Environment (IBAMA) and the State Secretariat of Environment (SEMA),
the legal managers of the conservation units in Amapá, also took part in this partnership. Such
inventories were planned to generate scientific information on Amapá’s biodiversity, as well as
to produce the technical information necessary for the elaboration of the conservation units’
management plans.
As the largest continuous tropical forest National Park in the world, Tumucumaque
Mountains represent a huge scientific challenge. Its gigantic size, habitat diversity and complexity
of logistical access impose limits to the feasibility of a large-scale study inside the Park. Therefore,
the scientific team responsible for sampling had to select sites representing the diversity of
vegetation within the park. Five Expeditions were successfully conducted in Tumucumaque and
we present here the results of the inventories of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fishes,
crustaceans and superior plants.
Inventários Biológicos Rápidos no Parque Nacional Montanhas do Tumucumaque, Amapá, Brasil
Rapid Biological Inventories in the Tumucumaque Mountains National Park, Amapá, Brazil