Qualla: Morro do Chapéu State Park

Morro do Chapéu State Park: Introduction

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Brazil_location_map.svg: NordNordWest derivative work: Виктор В (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. A park decree in Brazil does not necessarily produce a park. Morro do Chapéu State Park was created by decree on December 12, 1973, and then essentially nothing happened for twenty-five years. It was recreated by a second decree on August 17, 1998, and then almost nothing happened for another decade. In April 2011 the state government signed a third decree abolishing the park entirely. Thirty days later a fourth decree reversed the abolition. Through all of that, the caatinga kept blooming on rocky outcrops, 543 springs kept feeding tributaries of the São Francisco River, and the prehistoric rock paintings in the Brejões, Boa Esperança, Igrejinha, and Cristal caves kept waiting - as they have for thousands of years - for Brazil to decide what to do with them.

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

Morro do Chapéu State Park: The Land the Park Was Meant to Protect

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chico Ferreira from Feira de Santana, Bahia - Brasil, CC BY 2.0. The municipality of Morro do Chapéu sits in the northern reaches of the Chapada Diamantina, a highland plateau where scenic beauty is almost an understatement. The park covers 46,000 hectares at the meeting point of two of Brazil's great biomes - the cerrado savanna to the south ...

Image: Chico Ferreira from Feira de Santana, Bahia - Brasil | CC BY 2.0

Morro do Chapéu State Park: Cave Paintings and Deep Time

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chico Ferreira from Feira de Santana, Bahia - Brasil, CC BY 2.0. Long before the decrees, long before the cattle ranchers, long before the Portuguese came looking for diamonds in the plateau that still bears their name, people lived here. Their paintings survive in four caves the park was meant to guard: Brejões, Boa Esperança, Igrejinha, Cris...

Image: Chico Ferreira from Feira de Santana, Bahia - Brasil | CC BY 2.0

Morro do Chapéu State Park: Bureaucracy as Threat and Shield

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chico Ferreira from Feira de Santana, Bahia - Brasil, CC BY 2.0. The story of this park is, in part, the story of Brazilian land tenure. The 1973 decree was never implemented. A state conservation event in 1985 called for action; not much followed. A geological survey in 1995 laid out infrastructure plans. The 1998 decree recreated the park wi...

Image: Chico Ferreira from Feira de Santana, Bahia - Brasil | CC BY 2.0

Morro do Chapéu State Park: The Wind-Farm Question

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chico Ferreira from Feira de Santana, Bahia - Brasil, CC BY 2.0. In 2012 a new threat entered the conversation. The hills that channel the caatinga air also channel reliable, powerful wind - exactly the resource that made the plateau attractive to wind-energy developers, and exactly the resource that made it ideal cougar habitat. Environmental...

Image: Chico Ferreira from Feira de Santana, Bahia - Brasil | CC BY 2.0