Qualla: Nascentes da Serra do Cachimbo Biological Reserve

Nascentes da Serra do Cachimbo Biological Reserve: 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. The arc of deforestation stretches across southern Pará like a burn mark on Brazil's map, a long frontier where ranchers, loggers, and small-scale miners grind forest into pasture. Inside that arc sits the Nascentes da Serra do Cachimbo Biological Reserve, 342,192 hectares of rainforest and cerrado transition that still holds. A Brazil-nut poison frog lives here that exists almost nowhere else. So does the chorozinho-do-cachimbo, an antbird species described so recently that its scientific name is still being settled. But by the time the federal government drew the reserve's boundaries in 2005, settlers from Mato Grosso had already been clearing land inside for fifteen years. This is a reserve fighting history.

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Nascentes da Serra do Cachimbo Biological Reserve: Where Two Great Rivers Start

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 reserve sits astride the Serra do Cachimbo, a geological complex that is partly mountainous, partly plateau, with flat-bottomed valleys cut by rivers that begin right here. Eleven percent of the reserve drains south into the Tapajós basin, forming the Cristalino and São Bento...

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Nascentes da Serra do Cachimbo Biological Reserve: A Forest Caught Between Biomes

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. Cachimbo sits on the transition between Amazon rainforest and cerrado savanna, and that meeting point is exactly what makes it extraordinary. In the north the climate is humid tropical year-round; in the south, a tropical pattern with a dry season takes over. The flora reflects t...

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Nascentes da Serra do Cachimbo Biological Reserve: Macaws, Mockingbirds, and New Species

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 bird list reaches 409 species, and the varied relief - mountains, plateau, valleys - means many of them are specialists rather than generalists. The white-banded mockingbird passes through from June to August on migration. Threatened species include the hyacinth macaw, whose ...

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Nascentes da Serra do Cachimbo Biological Reserve: The Arc, the Road, and the Squatters

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 reserve's creation on May 20, 2005 was slow. At the time the decree was signed, squatters from Mato Grosso had already been occupying roughly 94 locations in the area for fifteen years. By 2015, about 200 families were living inside a reserve that is classed as IUCN category ...

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Nascentes da Serra do Cachimbo Biological Reserve: A Reserve Under Political Pressure

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 political pressure has not eased. In August 2015, Senator Flexa Ribeiro of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party proposed splitting the reserve into a 162,000-hectare national park open to tourism and a 178,000-hectare Environmental Protection Area where residents could legall...

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