Qualla: Jamanxim National Park

Jamanxim National Park: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Werick França Silva, CC BY-SA 3.0. Loggers call them by their Portuguese names - mogno, ipê-roxo, cumaru, cedro - and in most of the Amazon those trees mean money. In the Jamanxim National Park, which covers 859,797 hectares of rainforest along the Tapajós basin in central Pará, those same trees are protected by law. The park was created on the same day in February 2006 as the much larger Jamanxim National Forest that adjoins it, but the two reserves are legally worlds apart. The national forest permits some sustainable resource use. The national park is an IUCN Category II reserve: strict protection, no logging, no mining, no cattle. In a region where economic use is the rule, the park is a deliberate exception - a place where the big trees are allowed to grow old.

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Image: Werick França Silva | CC BY-SA 3.0

Jamanxim National Park: A Flat Basin and Two Plateaus

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ibama from Brasil, CC BY 2.0. The park sits across the municipalities of Altamira, Itaituba, and Trairão in the state of Pará, with the Trairão National Forest bordering it to the north. Geographically, most of the park lies within the Jamanxim-Xingu depression - a broad, relatively flat basin whose elevation...

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Image: Ibama from Brasil | CC BY 2.0

Jamanxim National Park: Three Kinds of Forest

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. Biologists who have surveyed the park distinguish three forest types. Open rainforest dominated by vines and palms covers the drier uplands. Dense submontane rainforest with an emergent canopy grows on the plateau edges, where taller trees break through the general canopy in isol...

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

Jamanxim National Park: Big Trees, Big Targets

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 tree list reads like an inventory of what the timber industry most wants. Hymenaea courbaril - jatoba, the Brazilian cherry wood - makes premium flooring. Cedrela odorata, Spanish cedar, is prized for cigar boxes and boats. Manilkara huberi is the massaranduba tree whose extr...

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

Jamanxim National Park: Jaguar Country

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Werick França Silva, CC BY-SA 3.0. The two headline mammals of the park tell you a great deal about the ecosystem. The jaguar, Panthera onca, remains the apex predator across the neotropics, and healthy jaguar populations require huge ranges of intact forest - the kind of forest found inside Jamanxim National Park...

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Image: Werick França Silva | CC BY-SA 3.0

Jamanxim National Park: The Politics of a Line

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 park was created by decree on 13 February 2006, administered by the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation, and supported by the Amazon Region Protected Areas Program - the international conservation initiative that has partly funded Brazil's largest Amazon rese...

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