Qualla: Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve

Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jecogeo, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1996 the Brazilian state of Amazonas tried something no one had tried before. It created a new category of protected area - the Sustainable Development Reserve - and it drew the first one around 1,124,000 hectares of Amazonian flooded forest between the Solimões and the Japurá. Mamirauá was the test case. The question it asked was blunt: could you protect one of the most biodiverse stretches of flooded rainforest on Earth while also protecting the rights of the 6,306 ribeirinhos, caboclos, Ticuna, Cambeba, and Kokama people who already lived there? The answer required a scientist who had spent his life on the river, an international argument about what conservation was for, and decades of practical work that is still ongoing.

Image: Jecogeo | CC BY-SA 4.0

Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve: A Triangle Between Two Rivers

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Phietica Silva, CC BY-SA 4.0. The reserve covers an elongated triangle between three stretches of water. To the south, the Solimões - the upper Amazon - runs its whitewater course eastward toward Manaus. To the north, the Auati-Paraná Canal splits off from the Solimões and meanders eastward to rejoin the Japu...

Image: Phietica Silva | CC BY-SA 4.0

Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve: A New Kind of Reserve

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovações from Brasília - DF, Brasil, CC BY 2.0. The Sustainable Development Reserve category did not exist before Mamirauá. Traditional Brazilian conservation units came in two broad kinds - fully protected areas like national parks, where human extractive activity was prohibited, and units of sustainable use, which permitted ...

Image: Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovações from Brasília - DF, Brasil | CC BY 2.0

Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve: The Scientist Who Made It Happen

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mateus S. Figueiredo, CC BY-SA 4.0. Mamirauá is the legacy of the Brazilian primatologist José Márcio Ayres, who spent much of his career studying the white uakari, the red-faced bald monkey whose only home is the varzea forests of this stretch of the Amazon. Ayres saw what was happening - hunting pressure from out...

Image: Mateus S. Figueiredo | CC BY-SA 4.0

Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve: What Lives in the Flood

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MTur Destinos, Public domain. The reserve sits at the junction of two ecoregions - the Solimões-Japurá moist forests on the upland terra firme edges, and the Purus varzea on the flooded lowlands that make up most of the area. Two primates are endemic. The white uakari, Cacajao calvus calvus, has a face so red...

Image: MTur Destinos | Public domain

Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve: Recognition, Global and Local

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Artur Warchavchik, CC BY-SA 3.0. Mamirauá carries some of the heaviest credentials in global conservation. The Ramsar Convention designated it a wetland of international importance, recognizing its role in a global network of protected marshes and floodplains. UNESCO, in 2003, added it to the Central Amazon Cons...

Image: Artur Warchavchik | CC BY-SA 3.0