Qualla: Contagem Biological Reserve

Contagem Biological Reserve: Introduction

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 word contagem means count, or score, in Portuguese. The reserve takes its name from a Portuguese colonial checkpoint that operated on this land in the eighteenth century - a tax office where officers literally counted the goods and the enslaved people being moved north from Minas Gerais toward the mining camps of Goiás and Tocantins. The checkpoint is long gone, its exact location forgotten. What remains is a 3,426-hectare biological reserve on the escarpment north of Brasília, where the Cerrado savanna meets the capital's expanding suburbs and where giant anteaters still cross between protected lands. The counting that matters now is of species.

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

Contagem Biological Reserve: Eight Thousand Years of Passage

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. Archaeologists have identified three sites in the reserve with artifacts dating back 8,000 years. The plateau has been a transit corridor for most of human history in central Brazil - indigenous peoples crossed it for millennia, and by the colonial era it was part of the Royal Ro...

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

Contagem Biological Reserve: The Ecological Corridor

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 reserve was formally created on December 13, 2002, and classified by the IUCN as Category Ia - a strict nature reserve, the most protective designation, intended to preserve biota without direct human interference. Its purpose is straightforward. To the south sits Brasília Na...

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

Contagem Biological Reserve: Who Lives Here

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. Giant anteaters, Myrmecophaga tridactyla, move through the reserve - long-snouted, slow, ant-and-termite specialists that need large ranges to find enough mounds to feed a 30-kilogram body. Giant armadillos, Priodontes maximus, use the same corridors. The yellow-faced parrot, Ali...

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

Contagem Biological Reserve: A Reserve Under Siege

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 protection is unequal. Only 54 percent of the reserve is clearly public land - the rest is private property, contested title, or unregularized claims, a legacy of the speculative land grabs that accompanied Brasília's creation. Before the reserve's legal protection existed, s...

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

Contagem Biological Reserve: Three People for Three Thousand Hectares

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 reserve is administered by the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation, the federal agency responsible for Brazil's protected areas. As of 2009 - the last published staffing figure - only three personnel were assigned to Contagem, and they were based at the natio...

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