Qualla: Cantão State Park

Cantão State Park: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ruan Lion, CC BY-SA 4.0. For two to six months every year, starting in October, the Cantao becomes a lake. The rains come, the Araguaia and Coco rivers rise, and the abandoned channels and oxbow lakes that thread the alluvial plain between them fill and join into a single continuous body of water. What was forest floor becomes river bed. What was river bank becomes submerged root. In this landscape of seasonal flooding, species that cannot adapt to a few months underwater do not persist, so the forest is dominated by plants whose trunks tolerate the annual soaking - igapo, the flooded forest, a uniquely Amazonian ecosystem. The 90,018-hectare park protects it on the Tocantins side of the Araguaia River, directly across from where Bananal Island begins.

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Image: Ruan Lion | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cantão State Park: Between Two Rivers

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Amanda Leite, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Cantao sits in the municipality of Pium in western Tocantins. Its western boundary is the Araguaia River, the same river that defines the Para state border and wraps around Bananal Island downstream. Its southern boundary is the Javaes River, which separates the park from Ara...

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Image: Amanda Leite | CC BY-SA 3.0

Cantão State Park: The Rise and Fall

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leonardo Azevedo, CC BY-SA 3.0. Abandoned channels and lakes dot the alluvial plain. Each one is a memory of a river course that the Araguaia or Coco eventually abandoned. In the dry season, they appear as disconnected ponds, sometimes muddy, sometimes deep and clear, scattered through what looks like flat fore...

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Image: Leonardo Azevedo | CC BY-SA 3.0

Cantão State Park: An Ecotone at Work

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Iza Guedes, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Cantao holds a transition zone - an ecotone - between the Amazon rainforest of the north and the cerrado savanna of the south. Species from both biomes share ground here. You find rainforest mammals and cerrado birds within walking distance of each other. The park supports a ...

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Image: Iza Guedes | CC BY-SA 3.0

Cantão State Park: Birds and Endemics

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit araguaia.org, CC BY 3.0. One bird survey counted 317 species in the park. Among them are two endemics whose ranges barely extend beyond this stretch of alluvial plain. The bananal antbird, Cercomacra ferdinandi, is a small gray bird of the flooded forest understorey, named for Bananal Island just to the ...

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Image: araguaia.org | CC BY 3.0

Cantão State Park: Law and Infrastructure

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. The Cantao State Park was created by state law 996 of July 14, 1998, with an original area of 88,929 hectares. Four years later, state law 1,319 of April 4, 2002, expanded the boundaries to the current 90,018 hectares. The management plan was first approved on August 25, 2005, an...

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Image: Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0