Qualla: Guajará-Mirim State Park

Guajará-Mirim State Park: Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AndreiaFortini, CC BY-SA 4.0. The bridges were built from castanheira wood — Brazil nut trees, protected by federal law — and a government report confirmed the timber had been stolen from the very forest the bridges cut through. That detail, buried in an investigation by the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA), captures the brazen contradiction at the heart of Guajará-Mirim State Park. Created in 1990 to protect over 216,000 hectares of savanna and transitional rainforest in Rondônia, the park has spent much of its existence being carved apart by the people and institutions that were supposed to defend it.

Image: AndreiaFortini | CC BY-SA 4.0

Guajará-Mirim State Park: Where Savanna Meets Jungle

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Guajará-Mirim State Park straddles two landscapes. Sixty percent of it is savanna — open grassland studded with stunted trees and pierced by rocky outcrops. Another twelve percent is the contact zone where that savanna yields to dense Amazon rainforest, a gradient visible from th...

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

Guajará-Mirim State Park: The Road Nobody Asked For

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Sometime before 2004, an illegal 14-kilometer road was bulldozed from the BR-421 federal highway straight through the park, splitting it east to west and severing the Guaporé-Mamoré ecological corridor. The road was built right beside the park headquarters, where state environmen...

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

Guajará-Mirim State Park: Flood, Politics, and a Presidential Visit

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AndreiaFortini, CC BY-SA 4.0. In February 2014, the Igarapé das Araras — a tributary of the Madeira River — flooded and submerged the BR-425 highway, cutting off the cities of Guajará-Mirim and Nova Mamoré from the rest of the state. President Dilma Rousseff visited Rondônia and backed the opening of the road...

Image: AndreiaFortini | CC BY-SA 4.0

Guajará-Mirim State Park: Invasion from All Sides

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. The road made things worse, fast. Kanindé environmentalist Ivaneide Bandeira warned that the opening had increased pressure on the park and was being used to transport stolen cars. In May 2015, state deputy Lazinho da Fetagro took the assembly floor to denounce ongoing invasions....

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

Guajará-Mirim State Park: Guarding What Remains

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. In August 2014, the Associação de Defesa Etnoambiental Kanindé was tasked with developing a management plan. The approach was collaborative: environmentalists, park management, and local residents would define the process together before Kanindé launched a full survey of the park...

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