Qualla: Ilha do Bananal / Cantão Environmental Protection Area

Ilha do Bananal / Cantão Environmental Protection Area: 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. There is a strange zone in central Brazil where four of the country's great ecosystems collide. Amazon rainforest bleeds into cerrado savanna. Cerrado meets pantanal wetland. Pantanal touches fragments of Atlantic Forest. Biologists call this an ecotone, a place where biomes overlap - and because species from each push into the others' edges, ecotones tend to concentrate extraordinary diversity. The Ilha do Bananal and Cantão region of western Tocantins is perhaps the most remarkable ecotone in South America. Its protection is spread across a patchwork of reserves, but the largest of them is the Ilha do Bananal / Cantão Environmental Protection Area, a 1.7 million hectare mosaic that serves as the region's vast connective tissue.

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

Ilha do Bananal / Cantão Environmental Protection Area: Nine Municipalities, One Mosaic

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bruno R Fermino, CC BY-SA 4.0. The APA - a Brazilian land designation standing for Área de Proteção Ambiental, meaning environmental protection area - sprawls across nine municipalities in western Tocantins, from Pium in the north to Abreulândia in the south. It is the largest protected area in the state by a ...

Image: Bruno R Fermino | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ilha do Bananal / Cantão Environmental Protection Area: The Inland Delta

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Amanda Leite, CC BY-SA 3.0. The ecological heart of the region is the Cantão, an inland delta of the Javaés River containing more than 800 lakes and channels that fill and drain with the annual floods. Cantão State Park, nestled inside the larger APA, is one of the most important protected zones in the Braz...

Image: Amanda Leite | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ilha do Bananal / Cantão Environmental Protection Area: A Near Loss

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Amanda Leite, CC BY-SA 3.0. The APA was created by state law 907 on 20 May 1997, along with its co-management council. In 2004, the state government attempted to gut it. A bill was introduced to reduce the APA by more than eighty percent to make room for agricultural expansion - effectively eliminating prot...

Image: Amanda Leite | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ilha do Bananal / Cantão Environmental Protection Area: A Landscape of Zones

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Amanda Leite, CC BY-SA 3.0. The APA is divided into four kinds of land-use zone. Special use zones, the smallest at about 1.3 percent, cover urban edges and built-up areas. Economic development zones, by far the largest at 65 percent, permit agriculture and ranching under sustainable guidelines. Wildlife co...

Image: Amanda Leite | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ilha do Bananal / Cantão Environmental Protection Area: COAFA and the Future

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Amanda Leite, CC BY-SA 3.0. Out of the 2003 survey project - which was itself cut short - emerged COAFA, the organization of agricultural families of the APA. It was a small institutional win in a larger story of attrition. The families who live inside the protected area are neither invaders nor obstacles t...

Image: Amanda Leite | CC BY-SA 3.0