Qualla: Lagoa São Paulo Reserve

Lagoa São Paulo Reserve: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jairmoreirafotografia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Fernando Costa meant well. In November 1942, the governor of São Paulo state signed Decree 13.049 creating a 14,200-hectare ecological reserve around seven lagoons in a stretch of forest that was, by then, the last large woodland remaining in the interior of his state. He had watched squatters and land-grabbers pick apart the frontier for years, and the reserve was meant to be a stop. It was not a stop. By the 1950s, five hundred families were living inside the reserve. By the 1980s, bulldozers and excavators had started carving the lower Paraná River into a hydroelectric reservoir. By 1998, a presidential decree formally abolished thirteen thousand hectares of the protected area that the water had already swallowed. What started as the last great forest of interior São Paulo is now a fragment, a scar, and a case study in what happens when the state stops defending the land it claims to protect.

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Image: Jairmoreirafotografia | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lagoa São Paulo Reserve: The Pontal

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jairmoreirafotografia, CC BY-SA 4.0. The reserve sat in the Pontal do Paranapanema — a wedge of land at the far western tip of São Paulo state, bounded by the Paranapanema River to the south, the Paraná River to the west, and the state of Mato Grosso do Sul across those waters. This was the last frontier of São Paul...

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Image: Jairmoreirafotografia | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lagoa São Paulo Reserve: The Politics of Neglect

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jairmoreirafotografia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Costa's successor saw the reserves differently. Adhemar de Barros, who followed him as governor, allowed the destruction to continue and was backed by mayors of the region, many of whom had been elected by or were personally connected to the ranching and logging interests that wa...

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Image: Jairmoreirafotografia | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lagoa São Paulo Reserve: The Water Came

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 Companhia Energética de São Paulo, known as CESP, began damming the Paraná River in the 1980s. The Engenheiro Sérgio Motta dam — named for the engineer and politician who had championed its construction — would become one of the largest hydroelectric projects in Brazil, inund...

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

Lagoa São Paulo Reserve: What Escaped

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jairmoreirafotografia, CC BY-SA 4.0. About 3,500 hectares of the original Lagoa São Paulo Reserve escaped the flooding. This remnant should have been protected in practice as it was on paper. As soon as the reservoir filled, hunters moved in. Sport fishermen came next. Then landless rural laborers, then cattle ranch...

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Image: Jairmoreirafotografia | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lagoa São Paulo Reserve: A Corridor Still Imagined

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jairmoreirafotografia, CC BY-SA 4.0. By 2007, private-public partnerships were working to restore what could be restored. The reserve was proposed as part of the Trinational Biodiversity Corridor, an ambitious project intended to link conservation units across Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina in the Upper Paraná ecor...

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Image: Jairmoreirafotografia | CC BY-SA 4.0